Theresa Lewis

When we were kids growing up at home, it became normal for us to hear our mother shriek from time to time. I guess with ten children, and a husband who was a practical joker, it was to be expected.

There are only seven days in a week and there were eleven of us against our mother. We all had to get our licks in at some point. Happy were the days for mom when no one scared the bejeepers out of her, albeit those days were few and far between.

I don’t know why, but it was so easy to scare mom. She always screamed and flapped her arms while doing a wild uncoordinated tap dance. She made every attempt to scare her well worth our effort.

When we were little, one of us would hide in the pantry around suppertime because inevitably, she would have to go to the pantry for a tin of something, or maybe some seasoning. As soon as she would open the door and reach for the light switch, someone would roar and jump out and startle her.

When we were little, we lived in a house that had a gas stove and beside the stove there was a gas water heater. I don’t know about the others, but I was terrified of them. I remember my mother saying that we could never let the pilot light go out on the stove because it was dangerous. She had told us that the gas fumes could kill you, so she always checked several times a day to make sure that the pilot light was lit.

I guess my mother had had enough of us scaring the wits out of her so she paid us back… in spades. She heard us coming in from school one afternoon, so she sprawled herself half over the open oven door and half on the floor. She pretended to be dead. As soon as I saw her I screamed in panic, but she didn’t react. My sisters also called her, but still no reaction. I started to cry. I really thought she was dead.

When she got the desired effect from us, she laughed and got up. I thought that her joke was the meanest thing of all times.

Never, at any time when we terrorized mom did any of us ever think we were being mean. It was just good fun as far as we were concerned.

I’ll bet you are wondering why I made mention of the gas water heater beside the stove. It’s sort of a tangent because when I remembered the oven incident, it reminded me of that water heater that constantly scared me senseless.

When mom or dad wanted to heat water for a bath or for doing the dishes, they would strike a wooden match and poke it through the perforated holes in the gas chamber door then turn on the gas. Sometimes the escaping gas would blow out the flame. They would turn off the gas and start over. If there was any gas in the chamber, it would ignite with a small explosion and blow the chamber door open.

My grandmother had her own technique for lighting the water heater. She would turn the gas on first then look for a match to strike. Every darn time, there would be a huge loud bang and the chamber door would burst open and bang against the water tank.  I should add here that our grandmother had no eyelashes, no eyebrows and her hairline was quite far back on her head. It was the result of too many gas explosions to her face.

Oh, no, now I am off on another tangent… how to stop a baby from choking. In the old days, most babies wore nightgowns and booties, not sleepers like they do now.

If an infant turned red in the face, particularly after eating, our grandmother would pick the baby up by the feet or by the material of the nightgown and swing him through the air as she made the Sign of the Cross with him. I watched her do that to my baby brother and I prayed that she wouldn’t accidentally lose her grip on him, or that he wouldn’t slip out of his night gown, or have his brains dashed out on the corner of the kitchen table, or on the wall. I guess she didn’t know about the Heimlich manoeuvre. Maybe the baby turned red in the face because he had gas. No matter, the treatment was the same because she didn’t want to take any chances. We all may be a little twisted, but somehow we all survived, so who’s to say that grandmother’s method didn’t work.

The End