The Blues

Lately, I’ve been reminded how wonderful family and real life situations are for providing funny and poignant writing material.  One of my relatives asked if I was really listening to her when she told me a recent story about something – if the truth be known, I was listening intently and thinking how awesome her anecdote would be if (and when) it was inserted into a story.

She arched her eyebrows at me.  Typical, she probably thought

Not so!  I was able to answer every one of her questions when she interrogated me about what she had said, being careful not to embellish her words with ‘sparkly’ adjectives and ‘flashing’ adverbs of my own.

One of my family members (code name: Sheila)  provided a fabulous story and a funny character during a conversation about visiting a bridal shop.  This particular lovely is to be A Bride in the new year.  In keeping with family tradition, she is very organized and with six months to go, she is starting to think of (perhaps) buying a dress.

I always think A Bride should act on instinct.  She should find a shop, drag her female peeps inside, look at two dresses, try one on, buy it.  End of story.  This worked for me!  However, Sheila is a well travelled and classy chicka.  She’s on the prowl for the perfect garment – preferably not one that contains harem-style pants due to the low-crotch problems – and she will not be settling for anything below par.

She ventured into a bridal boutique a few weeks ago.  She was alone, intent on keeping this scouting trip low key.  She brushed through some dresses on the rack, admiring their fineness.  Suddenly, A Bridal Gown Guru appeared at her shoulder and smiled with the force of five thousand suns (rebounding off an 18-carat engagement ring).

‘Welcome.  Hi.  Oh, my God, you are here! You are!  You are looking for your Gown Experience, aren’t you?’

The BGG pulled gently on Sheila’s arm and drew her down unto a comfy couch close to the magnificent array of dresses for A Bride.

‘You’re going to be such a beautiful bride, you know?’ said the BGG, sitting inside Sheila’s personal space and stroking her arm (yep, I don’t know if this really happened, but it’s good for storytelling.)  ’You are going to be gorgeous! Your hair.  So lovely.’

The BGG flipped at Sheila’s locks and styled them in a couple of random ways, as though setting up the scene in her specialist mind’s eye.  Apparently, Sheila (may have) said something along the lines of ‘I’m only just starting to look,’ when she was interrupted with great pantomime by  The Guru:  ’Oh, but you know,’ the stroking was back, this time up and down the biceps.  ’I see the making of a bridal gown as a journey.  It’s a wonderful journey to be made.  Together.  I’d like to take the journey with you. AND, I call all of My Brides my ‘babies, just FYI.’

Now Sheila is a chatty, confident woman, but I think BGG had a way of gob-smaking the unsuspecting browser.  It certainly seemed to happen in this situation, because the next thing filtering from the Bridal Gown Guru’s mouth was ‘so, about that journey? How much are you looking to spend on this particular trip?  With me?’

Rightio.  That was one short-lived journey as the Bride-to-Be travelled out the door and is now considering white harem-panted jeans as her ‘down-the-aisle’ attire.

Consider the other stories abounding – the relative who has been wandering all through Asia, eating everything, drinking water when she forgot to close her mouth in the shower, being bitten by local insects, stepping on rusty wiring and walking to areas where she might get altitude sickness – comes home to Australia for a couple of weeks and gets a gastric illness.  Or the friend who was changing clothes in the fitting room of a large shop when her 2-year old daughter yelled out, ‘Mum, I like your bosoms.  They look nice and they’re big and round.’  Or one of my own children – Pop – told another family member that I wouldn’t have any more babies because my ‘breast milk was all used up.’

Jeez.  What a tired old cow, eh?  Obviously my talk about ‘how babies are conceived’ went over like a lead balloon (or perhaps that’s just an udder story).

Enough with the cow jokes.  I’m just thankful for the colourful people that make up life.  It’s by listening to their fantastic tales that we realize real life is a lot funnier – and often stranger – than anything we could ever make up.

Random Reads

• February 15, 2012 -- There’s something about Magda
• February 25, 2011 -- A Good Day
• June 23, 2010 -- Aussie-mosis
• August 1, 2011 -- Heavens Above
• April 9, 2011 -- What LiveJournal Means to Me