The sinister trouble with everyone's parents! :)

I've got a reputation to protect, so I won't dwell in those stories.

I'd rather beat my mom unconcious than let her post them stories about the cute little smart boy with a golden heart. Yeeeech!
Yeeeeeeech!
Yeeeeeeech!

Fortunately, I am an orphling.....

Not too many stories, now that we've all grown old and curmudgeonly.

Mom does still sometimes tell of me in the pool in Florida (I think I was 4), eluding my grandmother's grasp, going to the deep end (I was wearing a bagel-shaped flotation device) and announcing, "I'll do it myself!" I was an independent preschooler.

I hate to be maudlin...

One day you will perhaps have to stand up at a eulogy and recall one of those stories with grieving fondness.

Enjoy them while they can still tell them and laugh.

I don't know if I'll ever recover completely from hamburger detailing the circumstances leading to my conception at my surprise 40th birthday party - with some of my work colleagues in attendance.

i love hamburger and mrs. hamburger very much, but that was a truly bizarre moment.

Now, Ebeth, don't leave us hangin'!

Really, Deb?
Or are you just joshing?

Me, too. Orphling is good! No more embarrassment!

margo

Do you mean *real* orphling, or perhaps you've divorced your family, like I have?

Nope
Father, mother, sister dead, brother shot through like a Bondi tram!

Gosh, margo, this explains why you're so independent!
I have one parent left but may as well have none ... It feels very *orphling*, I can tell you!

I actually try to embarass my parents by pointing out how very bad they were - like the time we climbed a high hill on the moors in Cornwall when i was about 6 - my father decided there was a quicker way back to the car to get down.

Well yes it was quicker but landed us in the middle of the biggest bog. We came to one bit where they could jump the water but i was too small so they decided to swing me across between them ...

yes ... splat on my back in this big pool of marshy water ...

they laughed all the way home....

see what i mean?


or the time when as a new born baby my mum went off to the shop about a mile away - came home and my grandmother said 'where's vivien?'

- i was still in my pram outside the shop... she'd forgotten me

oooooooooh, Vivien - that is brilliant!

I was always quite proud of myself when my parents tried to embarrass me with this one...

My grandmother was a 24K bible-thumpin' Pentecostal. No makeup, no jewelry, most CERTAINLY no fun. You know the type, right? She came over to our house for a big gathering a few days after Christmas when I was about 4 or 5. I could hardly wait to jump up on her lap and tell her...loudly, in front of ALL the relatives...that my Dad had waited until she left the Christmas Eve party before he put a whole bottle of rum in the eggnog.

Apparently they paid for it for years. And it was all MY fault. Heehee!

I am a "real" orphling - well, both my parents are dead - but I am not sure if my father counts in the orphling status determination stakes, because he didn't die until I was 38. I am not sure if that event - which was a blessed relief in soooooo many ways - confers orphlinghood, since he was 87 years and 359 days old!

I tend to think both orphlings' parents have to die unusually early, and only me mum qualifies.

Eva - good on you! heeheeeeee.......

too many stories ... argh! My mind is melting. ... melting.

c'mon jugbo, share!