10-18-10...I CAME IN KICKING AND SCREAMING
I was born on a hot August day in 1944. My Mama had kidney poisoning and almost died. I asked her one day, “Mama did I almost die as too”? “Heck no Clydene, she said, you came in to this world kickin' and screamim' and you haven't stopped since”!! When I think back on all the honery things I've done I know she was tellin' the truth when she said that. I must have been a mess all my life and with the help of my side-kick Brenda there was no stopping me. What a relief it must have been to our Mama's when we started to school. Out of their hair for a while. I figured they both sighed with relief every morning when we got on the school bus. Now I cried for a long time in school. Miss Sallie gave me lots of paddlins', shamed me to the others, ignored me and everything she could think of. Just didn't work. Mama would get me ready every morning and send me up the road to catch the bus. I tried and tried to sneak back to the house and 'miss' the bus. I knew there was no way for Mama to get me there if I missed the bus. That Woman always caught me and sent me right back up that road . Heck fire, I never got away with that even one time.
One night when Brenda stayed at my house I devised one of my brilliant plans. “Brenda we'll get sick and they wont make us go”. “How Clydene”? Well I had to think on that for a spell but I came up with a brilliant plan. YEP A Stupendous plan (as in stupid). Mama kept ex-lax for the obvious reasons. I knew that if she ate too many of them she had PROBLEMS!! I saw her do just that a few times and I knew she was , shall I say disabled? indisposed? for a while. “Heck Fire Brenda that'll do it. And they are chocolate and I bet they are good!!” EX-LAX came in a cute little blue box all wrapped up like a candy bar. Shoot I'd always wanted to taste them and I knew where she kept them too by golly. I got me a chair and climbed up to reach them on a shelf in the old pie safe. “Brenda it's a whole box”. “Recon how much we should eat” Brenda said. Well I heard Mama say she took too much so it must be a lot. Heck we just divided them and ate the whole durn box. That outta work. “Well shoot fire Brenda it aint working” I said sometime in the night. “Guess that aint'a'gonna keep us outta school after all. SHOOT!! Well I don't know how long it took but Yep it did work. It worked big time!! I woke up with the most awful ache in my stomach I ever had. “Oh Brenda, go get Mama, I'm sick!” “Clydene I'm sick too, You go get her”. “OOOHHH Brenda I'm dyin' I'm dyin' Get Mama Quick”. “I'm dyin' too Clydene. Whadda we a'gonna do”? Well we knew right away what we were gonna do. Yep no doubt about it. We knew. It lasted the rest of the night out in that ol' toilet. I was never so sick and by golly I didn't have to go to school either.
I'm quiet sure Mamma got a few more gray hairs that night. Oh I came in kicking and screaming all right and I'm still good at kicking an screaming by golly.
