Paraskavedekatriaphobia, Anyone?
Paraskavedekatriaphobia: the fear of Friday the 13th.
I’ve never considered myself to be a superstitious person and have always laughed at the idea of a particular number causing an ordinary Friday to be an “unlucky” day.
Maybe not anymore though. Yesterday may have gone a long way towards convincing me that maybe there just might really be something to all the fuss.
I actually managed to get a haircut without catastrophe but that was about the only thing that didn’t seem to go wrong all day.
Aside from the fact it was about as hot, sticky and miserable a day as we have had so far, the first clue came early when I was drying water off my car and discovered someone had run something up under the undercarriage and left a small scratch. A tiny one, but a scratch nevertheless. Needless to say it was not the best way to start the day.
Then I discovered a certain bank branch (not local) had mixed up my account with my daughter’s and changed the checking status. No biggie, just another straw like discovering later that the spell checker file seems to have disappeared from my computer.
Staying in the house didn’t help either. I was pretty sure it would be fairly safe to dip some cherries in melted chocolate. Wrong. I had about finished the task and was quite proud I had managed to get it done without getting any on me when the spoon I had been using to scrape the bowl flipped straight up and spilled the stuff on me, the counter, the floor and what seemed like the whole kitchen. (I never knew an iced teaspoon could hold that much!)
Somehow though, the mess skipped from my blouse to the floor and missed my white pants entirely. I was feeling pretty good about that but by the time I got it all cleaned up, I had gotten chocolate all over them.
About then, the dryer shut off and I went to get my coverlet out before it wrinkled. In a momentary lapse of sanity, I just gathered the clean linen up to my chocolate covered shirt and headed into the den. You can guess what that did to the “clean” part of clean linen. As if that was not enough, after I managed to get that fisasco straightened out, the darn thing had shrunken 3-4 inches and doesn’t fit the bed anymore. Go figure!
Things quietened down for a little while but I should have known it wasn’t over. My cell phone rang late in the afternoon and a sweet little thing named Heather said she was calling about a Father’s Day Contest I had entered my dad into. I swear I am not usually rude to telemarketers but with the day I had had so far, coupled with the fact Daddy has been dead since 1978, I was really annoyed with her. I thought, “How cheesy,” using a sentimental holiday to try to sell something!
I told her my father had been dead 40 years (yes, I know it’s 30 but that was no time for math) and asked how she got my cell phone number. But I snapped the phone shut before the poor thing had time to answer. I must say in my defense, Heather talked quite rapidly and I only understood about every other word.
Unfortunately, about the time I closed the telephone, I realized what she was calling about. I had entered my son-in-law Jamie in a Father’s Day contest on a nationally syndicated radio show. I had 30 seconds to tell them why I thought he deserved to win one of three really nice Craftsman tool sets (or one of several tool boxes) and apparently my entry was a winning one.
I called right back but she had gone on to the next person on the list and given Jamie’s prize to them. I don’t know if it was one of the biggies or not and I don’t think I want to know.
When I called my daughter and told her what had happened, into between entirely too much snickering and giggling, she said I didn’t even have to tell them about it. I said yes I did. When I do something that supid, I have to share it with someone. She asked if I wanted to tell Jamie but I let her handle that job. He called back in a few minutes and he was laughing even harder than Julie did. Unfortunately, that gift of uncontrollable mirth was all he “won.”
That was by no means the last aggravating thing that happened before I went to bed but was probably the most traumatic. It’s really bad when the highlight and lowlight of your day is losing a really nice gift for your son-in-law.
He was a good sport about it though. He says my thinking that much of him was gift enough. Knowing how much he loves Craftsman tools, I can only hope he still feels the same way when he finally stops laughing so hard!
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