Wooden Spoons

Somewhere along the way I learned about this magic trick. It was probably from one of those “Owl” magazines you used to get for free or an episode of “Real People” or something.

What you would do is take a banana in the peel and run a needle and thread around the banana — ‘sewing’ it like you would clothing. Around the outside, pushing the needle into the peel just enough to pierce the peel but not the banana inside.

And once you go around the circumference of the banana, and then pull on the string, it would cut through the banana but leave the peel intact. And if you gave it to someone to open, they’d be surprised to open a banana that was cut in half inside the peel. Wow! What a cool magic trick.

So after doing it endlessly for Mom (who was a great sport about the whole thing, acting surprised every time) and Gramma at her house for Sunday dinner, it got old.

It was summer vacation, and things got old and boring fast. You know, no internet, no video games, and a small town you could ride your bike end to end in about 20 minutes.

So then something dawned on me. I could cut other things and fool people that way!

I even had a fancy-dancy workbench Uncle Don had made for me with a vice and real tools and everything… including a hand saw.

Now, what to saw. While Mom was away at work, I wandered around the house thinking of funny things to saw. And in the utensil drawer, I found mom’s stash of 3-4 wooden spoons. And an idea dawned on me from one of the failed magic tricks where the banana didn’t get cut all the way in half — just almost all the way. It had stuck together and you couldn’t really notice that it was cut at all until you tried to bite into it and it fell apart.

Now, Mom wasn’t big on using wooden spoons to, you know, spoon stuff. What she was big on was using them for spooning my ass when I really made her mad. And while that wasn’t very often, it was often enough for my eight year old ass.

So I picked up the wooden spoons in a heap and headed out to our garage, unloading them on the workbench. And I got to work — carefully putting each spoon into the vice to hold it steady but gentle enough not to mark the handles. And, using the little hand saw, sawed through each one near the end of the handle where it meets the spoon. Not all the way, mind you — that was the key. Only part way. Say 2/3 or 3/4 the way through. And after meticulously doing it to each one, I gleefully carried my bundle back to the utility drawer.

And then I had to think of something that would make Mom mad. Not just grounding mad, but mad enough to spank me with a wooden spoon. And I thought and I thought there at the kitchen table. Paula wandered in, and asked me what’s up.

So I told her my idea, and we thought. And then an idea occurred — Paula and I had got into another endless water gun fight the other night and I chased her into the house, squirting her with it. And that got Mom really pissed off. I didn’t get the spoon for it, but man it was close.

So, when Mom came home from work that afternoon, we staged an epic water gun fight in the back yard for exactly when she got home. She pulled her little blue car into the driveway in the back alley, and got out, curious about the commotion in the back yard. Laughing, she came in, cheering us on with our water fight like she always did. And after a few playful squirts at her, she went inside so her work clothes wouldn’t get wrecked.

And that was when we engaged the plan. 

Paula ran into the house behind her, and I grabbed the hose, turned it on, and ran into the house after her.

Using my thumb over the end of the hose, I sprayed Paula and Mom in the back entry way, getting it all the way into the kitchen. I made sure I made a good job of it, hosing down both of them and getting the walls, the floor, even the stove. 

And then the shit really hit the fan.

Now Mom didn’t get mad a lot. I mean, she had me, and I survived, right? Which was a lot to ask now that I think about it. But when she got mad, she got mad.

And this time I succeeded in making her mad… a bit too well.

She totally flipped out. Yelling, swearing, red faced, calling me “damn kid” and everything. Sweet, this was totally going to work!

I stood there, hose still running all over the floor, with a stupid grin on my face.

Mom reached into the drawer and grabbed the first spoon, and without even bothering to bend me over she whacked me in the shoulder with it. And I didn’t flinch, knowing what was about to happen.

The spoon broke perfectly. Flawlessly. Epically. The end of the spoon went spinning away on to the kitchen counter, while mom looked at the end of the handle with this shocked look on her face. I mean, it basically blew up when she hit me with it. She must’ve thought she really hit me hard, except that by this time I was bowled over laughing, dropping the still running hose onto the floor.

So she grabbed the next one, screaming, and hit me with that on my back. And the same thing happened. I was laughing hysterically, with Paula in the background laughing, too. 

I’ve never heard Mom scream so loud as she went through the next two wooden spoons, one after the other. Broken spoons littered the soaked floor.

But I made a very big tactical mistake. See, I hadn’t thought the whole plan through. 

What happens when she runs out of spoons?

Well, as it turns out, Mom could hit with her bare hands just fine. Whack! 

My ass stinging, I shot out the still open door into the backyard, jumped on my bike, and just got the hell outta dodge.

And I don’t remember exactly when I found the courage to come home, but I’m sure it was hours later.

When I would only be grounded and put on kitchen duty for a week…

Sigh. 

It was worth it.

Halloween Scare

It was a warm fall in Drayton Valley. I was in Grade 7, the year was 1983. America had just put it’s first woman in space on the shuttle Challenger, the economy was in the toilet, and Fraggle Rock debuted to great success. 

Return of the Jedi had come out that summer at the DV Drive-in, and WarGames had hit the theatres teaching me how to get free phone calls and war dial into the phone, power, and gas companies. The Police released “Every Breath You Take” and Micheal Jackson was dominating with “Beat It” and “Billie Jean.”

Cabbage Patch Kids and Glo Worms were a big deal, and Mom had already started a frantic search to get Paula one of each. That’s probably why Mom and I were at ‘The Monkey Store’ — the drug store on Main Street. We called it that because there was a robot monkey on a trapeze stuck to the ceiling that would do flips and spins, and amuse us kids.

It was at The Monkey Store that I saw the mask. It was an expensive latex rubber zombie mask, all grey and black, with blood dripping from long teeth. I was in love with it, and decided that I wanted to be a mummy that Halloween, and that would be the perfect mask to go with it. Desi and Darren had taken me to some kind of horror double feature at the drive in featuring mummies, and I thought they were super cool.

But it was too much money and we were in a hurry so she said no. I don’t remember if we found Paula’s gifts there or not that day, but I remember leaving and feeling disappointed.

That weekend, Mom had to work on Saturday like usual. She always worked her ass off to keep us afloat, and many times we’d join her down at LTV. Either to keep her company, or help tidy up, or some days I’d even help the bottom hole pump guy fix something or get to drive the forklift when Mom wasn’t in the back.

But not this Saturday. It was a glorious Saturday, probably in September. I got to sleep in, watch cartoons like Spider-Man and Rocket Robin Hood, and play with my Lego. I’m not sure where my sister was, but Mom had probably dropped her off at Grandma’s house or something.

Anyway. I’m downstairs finishing probably my third or fourth bowl of Cheerios, watching the last of the Saturday morning cartoons and trying to figure out how to build a Super Star Destroyer out of my Lego, when I hear a pounding on the back door.

Which I ignored. I mean, who would pound on the back door? If it was Mom, she would let herself in. If it wasn’t, they would probably go away and leave me to the problem I had at hand: how to build an accurate model of a 19km long Star Wars spaceship with my pile of Lego?

But the banging didn’t stop. Remember, this is small town DV where we probably didn’t have the back door locked or anything. So what the heck could the problem be?

Annoyed, I walked slowly up the stairs to the back door landing. There was nobody at the window. Shrugging my shoulders, I turned around and started to go back down the stairs. But there was another loud Bang!

So I turned around and opened the door… and nobody was there. I remember our back deck well, looking out onto the grass and the detached garage. Our rabbit hutch was there, with our one or two rabbits hopping around lazily in the sunshine. 

“That’s weird,” I thought.

And then someone jumped out at me from around the corner with a grey scary face, holding their hands up menacingly, and said “Boo!”

I was scared shitless. I fell backward, and luckily we had a low bench there to catch me. I was frozen stiff. It was a zombie!

Who pulled off the mask from The Monkey Store, and it was Mom. She got some kind of money unexpectedly, and had bought the mask for me, and thought it would be funny to scare the crap out of me.

She saw that my face was totally white, and apologized and hugged me, but I was furious with her. She had gotten me good. 

That lasted for about 10 seconds when I realized that I had the mask! I was going to be an awesome vampire that year, and wanted to start to work on my costume right away. Mom kissed me and said she had to go back to work, and left me to it.