This is a confession.
Yeah. It was me . . .
Mom had a pair of toenail clippers.
Large.
Effective.
Those suckers could cut through anything.
Well almost anything.
They had sat atop her dresser in lonely glory for all of my life.
I had watched Mom use them on numerous occasions. Seated on a chair, one ankle cross over the other knee for convenience and leverage.
Always with a garbage pail beneath in case of accidental drop-age/escape-age.
There would be the steady sound of clip-age.
Then mom would get to her feet, restoring the garbage to its rightful corner, and returning those great, heavy clippers back to their place.
Until next time.
And there they sat.
Now, I had borrowed these clippers from time to time.
Usually when I had misplaced my own.
Because mine didn't have a place of honour on my dresser.
Or anywhere, for that matter . . .
Now, that day:
I was somewhere far out in the pasture. Doing the things I was supposed to be doing.
Not in my parents room snooping around for Christmas presents.
Or at least that's the story I always told my mom.
Ahem.
And it wasn't me who took a straight pin from the pincushion which also resided atop Mom's dresser and tried to clip it with her clippers.
Just to see what would happen.
Resulting in a gap in the very center of the smooth edge of said clippers.
Because--just FYI--in a contest between straight pins and clippers, straight pins win.
But now, I'm changing my story.
A little late, but there you are.
I'm telling you this so you don't have to watch your mom, to the end of her days, clip her toenails with a defective set of clippers.
Sigh.
Oh, dear. Did no one consider buying her a new pair? No one? Not even the guilty party? Not even much later in life? :p
ReplyDeleteOops.
ReplyDeleteThere might (just might) be similar incidents in my childhood. But there are no confessions and no proof.
Now that you've unburdened yourself of this life long secret do you feel any better?
ReplyDeleteWe always kept our clippers in a drawer away from little hands that might accidentally clip fingers instead of nails.
ReplyDeleteI would never have tried to clip a pin, wouldn't even have thought of that. Children's minds travel along strange roads sometimes.