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Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: ENTERTAIN (04/27/17)
We live with a three-year old. She puts her pants on backwards, pretends she is a dog, and cries to eat the soap shaped like a cupcake in my bathroom. She clogs up my toilet, dances on the couch, and calls me her grandma…even though we are not remotely related. I love her like no other. She makes me laugh. Children are just innately entertaining – without even a thought as to how to do it properly. It is a gift. However, she is not the only one in my life with this gift. Oddly enough, the power to innately entertain, also belongs to my parents. This power tends to make them armed and dangerous…

I feel like it may be rare to have even one parent who is blessed with the ability to find humor hidden in the ordinary events of a day, but I had the good fortune to receive the genes of two. My mother is a professional – storyteller, that is. She can retell an event with such color, that I have no trouble picturing the story she told of how she got out of her car, tripped with a pot-luck dish in her hands, ran headlong across the church parking lot to try and catch her footing, and stopped herself only by plowing her head into a shrub by the glass entry door. Pot-luck saved. Dignity lost.

“Your mother has more stories than you can ‘shake a stick at’,” my father will say. He is a man of few words, so he makes all of his count – and then apparently shakes a stick at the rest? He is armed with an arsenal of ‘one-liners’ that are perfectly timed and ridiculously positioned. Listening to my parents relate to one another is like watching a snowball fight in slow motion…and as with any good snowball fight, it is impossible to ever tell who wins. Sometimes both players leave angry and cold, but often my dad’s well-placed ‘one-liner’ can diffuse the situation and suddenly the whole war was just for fun. It is definitely a gifting. Neither one of them even have to try.

I grew up watching the talent in which my parents wielded their words. I didn’t always find it as entertaining as I do now. Thankfully, my teenage and young adult children seem to all genuinely appreciate that their grandparents are skillful at handling conflict by throwing humor at it and then threatening it with a stick – and have accepted the fact that their family legacy will be one that is ‘armed and dangerous’.

Non-fiction
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This article has been read 291 times
Member Comments
Member
Date
Bonnie Bowden 
05/11/17
I don't have the gift of storytelling. Unfortunately, my mind can't seem to keep track of all of the different elements. However, I'm glad your family celebrates the imagination and humor of your parents.
Elaine Hemingway
05/11/17
I enjoyed your introduction, and then the link to your parents which could perhaps have been a little clearer. Their entertaining spirit came through. Well done and keep writing.