Let me tell you a
little story.
I guess I was about
eight or nine at the time. My grandma had
offered to take me and my brother out for dinner one night, and we went along
with her (and a buddy of ours came with us to visit her, so we made for quite
the little trio as usual). We were
laughing it up in the back row of her car as usual, and I was more than
satisfied with the meal; I’m guessing I patted my stomach and licked my lips a
few times like some fat cat as we headed back to her house. But somewhere along the way, my brother
started to notice that we were being followed.
Not by any secret agents or a deadly stalker. Just by your average neighborhood policeman.
“Is he after us?” he
wondered.
“Maybe we should pull
over,” my buddy suggested.
But I tried to shrug it
off. “There’s no way they’re after us,”
I said, trying to reassure the group (and hope they didn’t spot me shaking in
my shorts). “We didn’t do anything
wrong.”
No, we didn’t do
anything wrong. At least we sure thought
so. But the police car kept following
us, and started getting uncomfortably close.
“Okay, now I know they’re
after us,” my brother said.
“But we didn’t do
anything wrong,” my buddy said. “Did we?”
I’d like to think that
between the three of us, I’m the voice of reason. The mediator.
That’s not always the case (for obvious reasons), but I’d like to think
that there was no greater lapse in composure than there was at that moment…particularly
when the police sirens started going off.
“We’re gonna get
arrested!” I yelled. “We’re gonna get arrested! We’re going to jail!”
By that point, my
grandma couldn’t ignore the police car any longer. My brother had already brought it to her
attention, and I’m pretty sure that even if she was getting a bit long in the
tooth, she could tell for herself that the boys in blue were behind her. She’d probably been willing to let the
presence of a policeman slide, but once those lights started going off she
couldn’t ignore him any longer. She
pulled over, and the three of us -- or rather the two of them and one shorts-wetter
-- watched in near-silence to see what would happen. What had tipped him off.
He came up to the
window and -- rather than hold my grandma at gunpoint -- he offered a friendly
greeting. “Good evening, ma’am. Did you know that your tail lights aren’t on?”
My grandma -- and the
three of us, of course -- was utterly confused.
“Oh, they aren’t?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Huh. Hmmm.”
She looked around the car for a moment.
“Do you know how to turn them on?”
The policeman tried
helping her out, and it wasn’t long before they succeeded. “All right, ma’am, you just be sure you keep
those lights on when you’re driving at night.”
He shot a glance at the backseat, and an arctic chill ran through
me. “You’ve got three little men to take
care of back there. Drive safely.” And with that, he was off. No tickets.
No arrests. No police brutality.
My grandma did indeed
get us home safely. All it cost us was
one measly little scare and the imagined threat of spending the night in the
slammer. Not surprisingly, my buddy
never came with us to my grandma’s house again…though I’d assume that the fact
that we’d arrived there when the power had gone out colored his expectations.
Still, that was a
pretty potent memory -- one that engraved Red Lobster into my mind almost
irrevocably. (That and Macaroni Grill,
but that’s another, far less entertaining story.) I don’t know if it was because of the
delicious food or the delirious fear, but I think I’ll remember it for a while
yet. Just like I’ll remember a lot of
kooky memories like those.
Thinking back, I’d say
there are a lot of kooky memories when it comes to me, my family, and the
source of it all, my grandma. There was
that time when she and my mom made the exact same movements at the exact same
time, making them look like alternate-universe versions of themselves. There was the time that we drove for a couple
of hours around town, searching for the one component that would make our
gaming setup complete. There was that
time when she tried to teach me and my brother about what “raconteur” meant,
and my brother just kept joking around, making me laugh, and ticking her
off. There was that time she taught me
that the key to a Christmas miracle is a healthy helping of alcohol. There was that time where she conned me into
spending a week at a vocational bible school, an experience that nearly turned
me off religion forever. And of course,
the word “cabinets” will forever have a unique meaning to me thanks to the
fallout it caused.
There is a lot of stuff
in my head. A lot of stuff that I won’t
forget anytime soon. A lot of stuff that
I’ve kept buried in my mind until now. A
lot of stuff to think about. But I think
that for now, the important takeaway is this: life is silly. I doubt there will ever be a greater comedy
out there than the one we live through every day. If you’re going to live, you’d better do so
in good humor. Be willing to look at
events, past, present, and future, with an open mind -- and feel free to laugh
when appropriate. If you don’t, you’re
doing no one -- least of all the person who helped create those memories -- a
disservice.
So that’s what I plan
to do one of these days. One of these
days, I’ll be laughing freely all over again.
I pretty much have to. Because if
I don’t, then my teacher -- my guardian -- my grandma -- would be
dishonored. And I intend to do all the
living, and laughing, I can. For her
sake, as well as mine.
I’ll keep on moving
forward. You just watch -- and laugh
when I fumble and trip.
But that's all right. I’ll recover. And I’ll be laughing, too.
In Loving Memory of
Elodia S. Rhem
6/19/1918 -- 4/21/13
To the one who taught us all how
to move toward a smile,
Your teachings will live on