Unwanted Guests

My Dear Fellows and Dear Princess Normal,

Today, Lemon was telling me about her unique methods in child-rearing again. This is because "The Boy" always gets upset when he's leaving her house to return to his parents.

"He always cries," she told me. "I just keep edging him toward the door, saying 'Bye then! Byeeee! See ya later alligator!'"

"Waaaaah! Crocodile! Snuffle snuffle! Crocodile! Waaaaah!"

(He sort of understands, "See ya later alligator" but not really, she told me.)

Then she slams the door on him and her son. "And I pull the curtains if I see The Boy peering in at us," she continued. She told me she could hear her son explaining to her daughter-in-law, "Naw, she was just the same with me when I was a kid."

This reminded me of hiding from Jehovah's Witnesses as a child. My mum would turn off the telly and tell us to pretend we weren't home. Very non-confrontational, you must admit, but also it meant I could miss huge chunks of "The Hair Bear Bunch" if the JW's were particularly persistent.

I remember a friend of mine told me about an even better JW gambit. Apparently his dad, a man with a big white beard opened the door to them one time. The brief conversation went like this:

JW's: Hullo. We're Jehovah's Witnesses.
MAN WITH BIG WHITE BEARD: Hullo. I'm Jehovah. How're we doing?

This prompted Lemon to tell me about her mother. Lemon was very concerned about her, because stories had been going around the neighbourhood of sharp-dealing salesmen conning the elderly into buying 6000 dollar vacuum cleaners. Lemon warned her mum, "DO NOT let anyone come in the house trying to sell you a vacuum cleaner!"

And then one day Lemon was around at her mum's house with her sons. She was about to step out when she noted her mother was very keen on her to leave. 

LEMON: Why are you trying to get rid of me?
MUM: I'm not! I'm not! It's just I'm sure you have things to do.
LEMON: No. Not really.
MUM: Well? When are you going?
LEMON: I might hang around.
MUM: You don't have to. You should go.
LEMON: What's going on? I know you are up to something.
MUM: It's just... well... I have a man coming around to demonstrate a vacuum.
LEMON: Mum! I TOLD you...
MUM: I'm not going to buy it! I just want him to vacuum the house.

So anyway, Lemon decided to leave one of her boys behind to keep an eye on things. It was just as well she did, because when she returned, she found her mum was having an argument with the vacuum salesman and throwing him out.

LEMON: What's going on?
MUM: He didn't do ANY vacuuming! He just wanted me to fill in the paperwork! He didn't even BRING his vacuum.
LEMON: (To her son) Is this true?
SON: I don't know. I wasn't paying attention. 
LEMON: I told you to keep an eye on things!
SON: I'm a CHILD! How irresponsible are YOU?!

"I suppose he had a point," admitted Lemon.

So that made me laugh. But now I am home where I have just found a whole lot of right-wing b*llocks on my Facebook feed from a relative. Which is annoying. If you call relatives dumbarse dickheads it tends to get awkward at Xmas.

Ssssshhhh let's just pretend we're not home, shall we? Maybe my mum had a point after all.

S.