Thursday, March 31, 2005
Flour: My Mom’s worst Nightmare
Have you ever made a really big mess? I have. This is a story about my fascination with flour. This love began at a young age, I do not remember how young. I love flour because it is so light and is just so cool.
I am the type of person that is curious about absolutely everything. I am famous, or infamous for putting flour in socks and tying the flour-sock with someone else’s shoestrings. I then would go outside with this combo and swing them around hitting things with them because I loved the little puff the flour filled socks made and the mark it left. I also would do similar things with rocks such as tie a large rock with a shoestring, swing it around and throw it. From all this shoestring activity in my youth, I was always to blame if a shoestring was missing.
To my saintly mother’s credit she allowed me to do most of these things if I asked her first. So when I was disciplined for doing some of the stuff, my parents made it clear that it was not me doing it that was the problem but the way in which it was done. Then they encouraged me to continue as long as I cleaned up the mess. My mom would give me string and old socks so I would not use someone else’s, she is a saint, she really is.
One day I saw how flour would just float in the air and started experimenting (I had in mind a smoke screen for a fast car). In our basement we had big containers of flour and I would reach in and grab a handful and run around the basement (we have a big one). The flour was like a plume of smoke fo0lowing me. I did this for several hours. When my mom saw the basement filled with flour like a very thick layer of dust she started crying. With good reason, even with her doing a good part of the work the basement still took several days to clean. But after my explanation and the inevitable spanking (it was a long one) the dear lady still gave me no new restrictions. She is a saint.