I wondered why my desk looked unusually uncluttered. It’d been a few weeks since I sat here, so maybe my memory (which currently has the capacity of a stick) is faulty. Maybe I cleaned off my desk and started down that elusive perpetual path of well intended organization before I left town.
Nah. There’s only one reasonable explanation: My printer has grown legs and walked away. I didn’t figure this out until I hit the print button and nothing happened. Not that that’s unusual — the thing is always messing up, forcing me to call my high paid technical support advisor in the middle of a busy work day. Despite my pitiful whimpering and begging for phone assistance, he’ll undoubtedly say, “Can’t it wait until I get home?”
Then I’ll slam down the phone and yell to no one in particular, except the dogs, who by now have sensed something the way dogs sense earthquakes and other natural disasters and have taken cover under the coffee table, “Oh sure! I’ll wait till you get home! You don’t have time for me but you have time for all those kidlet employees of yours who whine worse than our teenaged daughter and they don’t have a column deadline or wash your boxer shorts!”
At least I think that’s what I say because remember, I have the memory of a stick… and sticks remind me of skinny little bird legs and, oh, right, my printer grew legs and walked away. How will I explain this to my mother? Is it proper for a grown daughter to tell her aging mother she was horribly misguided and plain wrong all these years? During my entire childhood, the woman was constantly telling me things “don’t just grow legs and walk away.” She also threw her hands up in the air and exclaimed, “Money doesn’t grow on trees!”
I’ve got to run outside and check those “leaves” falling onto my lawn — maybe she was wrong about that too! Bounding down the stairs I wondered what else she could have been wrong about:
• “Wait an hour to swim after you eat.”
• “If you cross your eyes and someone slaps you on the back they’ll stick that way.”
• “The mommy gerbil did not eat her babies, she left them on the doorstep of a kind, childless gerbil.”
• “Go ask your father; he’ll know.”
• “If you close your eyes those beets will taste just like sweet corn.”
Sprinting past my daughter’s doorway, I caught a gleam of sunlight bouncing off white printer paper. Neatly loaded into a printer. My printer.
Maybe I don’t need to inspect those “leaves” outside after all. But then again, who’s to say my daughter carried that printer into her room? It could have still grown legs and walked there on its own. Right? Oh please say “right” so I don’t have to call my mom and apologize.
Karen Rinehart is a syndicated newspaper columnist, public speaker, and creator of The Bus Stop Mommies™. Her book, Invisible Underwear, Bus Stop Mommies and Other Things True To Life, is a popular read in book clubs, school pick up lines, and soccer fields. She enjoys hearing from readers across the States and as far away as Australia, Japan, and England. You can read more at BusStopMommies.com. Karen lives in North Carolina with her two kids, two dogs, and one husband, where they attend St. James Catholic Church. (Well, they leave the dogs at home.)
