The Sky is Falling!
I have this friend who I call “Chicken Little.” She\’s always forecasting doom and gloom and that\’s not all. Chicken knows every “Old Wives Tale” ever told and follows her horoscope as if it were her life\’s blueprint.
I\’ve suggested they rename Horoscopes to “Hormonal-scopes” for us boomer-age women because Menopause and wacky hormones determine what we allow to transpire in our daily lives, horoscope or not!
“DON\’T TOUCH ME!”
“GET OUT OF MY KITCHEN”
“NO, I DON\’T WANT YOUR MOTHER COMING TO DINNER”
“YOU DON\’T UNDERSTAND ME!”
“DOES THIS CELL PHONE MAKE MY BUTT LOOK BIG?”
And so forth, and so on.
But Chicken is a hoot. I said to her yesterday, “My, the sky sure is blue today” to which she replied, “Yeah, but it will probably rain. I heard it was raining like cats and dogs in Memphis, Tennessee.” I stared at her for a second as a mental image of her being dropped on her head as a baby immediately formed in my head. It could explain a lot since Memphis is nearly 300 miles west of us.
I\’ve never put any stock into her forecasts until-
Somewhere around the middle of June she phoned me and said, “Hold on to your seat Queenie ‘cause we\’re in for a bumpy ride in July.” Again, I just stared and wondered if it\’s humanly possible for people to be born without brains. Ever the sadist, I said, “And why is that, pray tell?” She rolled her eyes at ME for Pete\’s sake, put her hands on her hips as if to say, “Well, duh?” and laid it all out for me.
It seems the planet Mercury was retrograde and whenever it spins backwards, so do our lives. She said, “You mark my word. Things break down, break off, and life becomes unpredictable. You\’ll loose car keys, house keys, and sing off key. Don\’t sign any contracts! Oh, and don\’t start any diets during a retrograde, either!” In other words, look out, the sky is about to fall. I thought to myself, where does she get this stuff? Like I\’m going to start a diet? Gimme a break-but for clarification I repeated her revelation, “Mercury, the planet up in the sky, is spinning backwards and you want me to go underground, zat bout it?” She threw up her hands and said, “You just wait, you\’ll see. Don\’t you ever watch the Astronomy for Dummies channel?” More staring.
“Ah, no, I don\’t. But thank the good Lord you do. Now I can arm myself against … against … ah, now what exactly am I arming myself against?” Giggles … Silence. “Fine, but don\’t come crying to me for help when it hits.” Hits? Visions of a big boulder crashing into my tiny home suddenly took over and for once, I thought, “Are retrogrades real? Could it be possible that she actually knows something like this?” Nah…I dismissed these thoughts … until-
Two weeks into this planets decision to reverse itself, my riding lawnmower passed over into mower heaven, and the next day I ran my push-mower over some deadly, blade-eating rocks. I killed two mowers within 24 hours. That has to be some sort of record. The brakes on my car went kaput, I forgot to mail an important bill, I missed a vital writing assignment, I threw my back out by sneezing, put the ice cream in the refrigerator instead of the freezer (bye-bye Moose Tracks), locked myself out of my house, and was pushed into a swimming pool with my BRAND NEW cell phone in my pocket. Not bad for one weekend, eh?
The following Monday, I called Chicken and asked her to meet me for dinner at our favorite restaurant. When she walked in, she was smiling from ear-to-ear and said, “So…I see you found out that the planet retrograde isn\’t just hocus pocus.” Stumped, I said, “Huh? How\’d you know?”
Giving her best Sherlock Holmes look, she said, “Elementary, my dear JawJaw. I drove by your house on the way here. You need some goats for your lawn, you\’re cell isn\’t working; I know, I tried to call to say I was running late, you just ordered a chocolate sundae in a Mexican restaurant, and I\’m knowing you\’re completely out of “Static-B-Gone.” How am I doing so far? Amazed at her ability to assess my retrogradeNESS, but still curious to the last statement, I had to ask … “But how did you know I was out of Static-B-Gone?”
“Oh that one was easy Honey; by the socks and underwear on the back of your blouse.”
I don\’t know about you, but I\’m doing two things. I\’m never eating in THAT restaurant again, and I\’m staying in bed till August.
© Copyright Queen JawJaw 2001-2008
