Ann
Ipock
Humorist,
author, speaker
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Family follies
and personal perils
By Ann Ipock February
09, 2005
My family seems to have all the luck — bad luck, that is. If there
is a nasty hair to be found when having dinner, Kelly, our oldest daughter,
will be the one to find it on HER plate.
If there is a menacing water bug to be found late at night, Katie, our
youngest daughter, will be the one to find it in HER bedroom.
What is it about my daughters that attract bad luck? Oh. I just answered
my own self. They are MY daughters, indeed.
Once at a charity golf tournament, Katie and I volunteered to help Russell,
my husband, by watching from a golf cart near the green on a par 3. We
were supposed to verify any holes-in-one. Not being familiar with the
sport, we positioned ourselves too close to the green and were immediately
scolded by a ranger to “move away from the whizzing balls flying
overhead.”
And then there was the time Katie and I set up our lounge chairs right
in the middle of a game of horseshoes on the beach. How were we to know?
Recently my sister, Nancy, and Kelly visited us. One night Russell and
Kelly were going out to pick up a meal. Nancy told them to take her car
since she was parked in back. Russell heard this, but Kelly didn’t.
It turned out they both sat there in separate cars before the error was
discovered. That was when Kelly looked out from inside our car, parked
in the garage and saw Russell inside Nancy’s car, waiting in the
driveway. Amazingly, this “ditz-ease, i.e., ditziness” has
rarely affected Russell — the only level-headed one in the bunch;
though there was that one time he ended up in the hospital E.R. with a
bleeding tongue from a piece of chewing gum that went awry.
And now that I ponder this phenomenon, I realize even my nephew Huck (Nancy’s
son) and his fiancée Heather aren’t immune. They told me
about a strange thing that happened when they volunteered at their church
nursery: The fire alarm went off right in the middle of the 11 a.m. service.
Panicked, Huck and Heather fumbled around, trying to scoop up five squirming
babies — aged 6 to 9 months. Dozens of other volunteers and children
scrambled about simultaneously, running out of the building en masse.
Everyone covered their ears to the sound of the ear-splitting “beeeeeeeep”
of the alarm, which droned out any possible communication.
Next, the supervisor of the nursery zoomed past them, urging Huck and
Heather to “throw some of the babies in the crib and hold the others.”
Following her orders, they put three babies in a crib; then carried one
baby apiece. They then proceeded to a grassy courtyard outside, cradling
one baby each, and using their free hand to move the crib with the other
babies through the thick green grass.
The wheels locked up as Heather and Huck pushed-and-pulled, going forward,
then backwards, then sideways — each of them dizzy, out of breath,
and trembling, with an adrenaline rush. Can you imagine what this fiasco
looked like from the road?
The lawn was packed with a confused congregation, frantic nursery folks,
a stunned minister, and one very naughty kid, who they discovered later,
had pulled the fire alarm.
I’d hate to have that on my conscience for the rest of my life.
Another calamity happened when we were out of town, having dinner with
family at a nearby restaurant. My brother Steve asked Katie if she’d
like to ride back with them. In the parking lot, Katie somehow lost Steve
and his wife, Lori, but then caught sight of their green Explorer. She
eagerly jumped in the back seat, only to discover that was NOT Steve and
Lori. The stunned front-seat passengers never knew what hit ’em,
or what left ’em, as the case might be. After all, she was with
the wrong family.
Kelly once burned her nose when she got too close to a curling iron. Don’t
ask. On the night of her prom, she backed into a mailbox. This might have
something to do with her inability to drive in reverse. I don’t
know what it is, but let that girl back out of our driveway and she’ll
end up in the ditch. She even says to me if I’m in the car with
her, “Which way should I turn my wheel?”
My steadfast readers that have been reading my column for seven years
in the Georgetown Times might remember these next personal stories, but
just in case: A recap of my most horrific, embarrassing moments are: When
working as a dental hygienist, I got the mayor’s mustache caught
in my polisher; the time my shoes were nearly stolen out from under me
at a store in Raleigh; when I was interviewed on TV and didn’t realize
the cameras were rolling; and the first time I ever went on a cruise and
thought during the “drill” that after we donned our life preservers,
we had to jump in the ocean, just to make sure everything was working.
Well, everything wasn’t working. My brain is a fine example.
I guess all of this just shows to go you: My family’s follies and
personal perils have proved a rich, fertile ground in which to write columns;
and thankfully for you all — it’s a safe one where no one
gets hurt!