I hope this post finds everyone alive, well, and enjoying life. ( If this post finds you, then the odds are at least 30% in my favor. You’re *probably* alive.)
I’ve been a busy couple of months in my life. My part-time teaching job has morphed into about twenty other things. Which, I’m beginning to understand, is simply the norm for teachers all over the country. Teaching is never quite as simple as it sounds. But it’s totally worth it.
My husband – bless him – tries to help out by fixing dinner on Thursdays.
Okay. If I’m being honest, I told him he has to fix dinner on Thursdays. Not that I issued an ultimatum or anything. I just told him that if he wanted to eat dinner on Thursdays, then it might be in his best interests to start cooking dinner on Thursdays. With love, of course. I said it with love. Always with love. (In my defense, Thursday and Friday are my husband’s regular days off. Does that make me sound like less of a shrew?)
Unfortunately, last week’s Thursday was a bit of a cooking disaster. My van was in the shop because the brakes had spontaneously decided to stop working one day as I drove to school. By the time we got the van picked up, it was too late to cook, and we were all starving. So we ordered dinner – a rare treat.
I figured I could capitalize on that, though, and have my husband fix dinner on Friday. That’s fair, right? I texted my husband to ask what was for dinner that night, and I’m pretty sure I got the look via text. Eventually, though, he said he’d fix French toast. When I got home that day, I walked into the house to the pleasant smell of French toast sizzling in the kitchen.
Right before the house began to fill with smoke, that is.
My son opened windows, turned on a fan, and tried to clear the smoke out. It started to billow, though, and the fan and windows couldn’t keep up with the billowing smoke.
Pretty soon, my son was covering his mouth and nose with the sleeve of his sweatshirt and backing out of the kitchen while saying (from behind the sleeve of his sweatshirt), “I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die.”
Meanwhile, my husband was staring at the frying pan, a puzzled look on his face. “I followed the recipe. I followed the recipe.”
It was one of those priceless moments in time where you can’t help but laugh. And you know what? I like to laugh. So I kind of enjoy moments like these – especially when there’s no actual fire involved. Just some burnt French toast and the charred scent of egg, sugar, and cinnamon.
With a touch of pizza for good measure. Because, after all, that’s what you get for dinner when the French toast gets burnt. Everybody knows that.
These are the kinds of moments in life that tie us more closely together to the ones we love. Shared memories bind us to people each and every day. If you’re going to be bound to someone, what would you like the bindings to look like? Chains? Rope? Or the musical notes of laughter? I choose the latter. What about you?
Share a memory that you and your friends or family still laugh about whenever someone brings it up. One commenter will be randomly selected to win a $5 Amazon gift card, winner to be announced in the upcoming Sunday Edition.
Heather Gray loves coffee, God, her family, and laughter – not necessarily in that order! She writes approachable characters who, through the highs and lows of life, find a way to love God, embrace each day, and laugh out loud right along with her. And, yeah, her books almost always have someone who's a coffee addict. Some things just can't be helped. Despite their different lives and situations, Heather’s characters have something in common. They're all flawed...but loved anyway.
When we were in 8th grade and being silly while doing homework, a book on the table spontaneously fell off. We giggled until we cried and still laugh about that incident. Why it was and still is funny, no one is sure.
Hi Heather, reading this made me smile:) I love the quote “Love is a mural painted on our hearts”- how beautiful.
A funny memory (that wasn’t so funny at the time!!): on holiday in New Zealand, I had to move the rental car a short distance. As I reversed, I accidentally hit the accelerator rather than the brake, and crashed into this massive tree behind me! So thankful for travel insurance!!
Or, thinking to save some money on haircuts and attempting to cut the boys hair myself, lets just say, that won’t happen again! Even with simple clippers!
Blessings:)
Hi Heather! Love your opening paragraph. You had me chuckling. Needed to laugh since I have been recovering from a nasty cold. Love your husband’s cooking disaster. In seminary days, your husband’s meal was an Old Testament dinner “burnt offering.” Whenever I don’t want to cook, hubby offers to make his “awful waffles.” When our boys were young, one semester I was taking grad courses for certification. When I came home, I asked hubby how dinner want. He said he had a brick in his stomach. He tried to make waffles, but we didn’t have baking soda, so he substituted and made bricks. Even the grandkids do NOT want their Opa to make waffles. He will never live it down. Makes for great family stories. As a teacher Thursday night was always Little Caesar’s Pizza night. Best wishes and Happy Writing!
Thanks for a light story to start the day with – I needed it!
When I was growing up, my mom used the toaster oven as extra storage because she didn’t use it much. Apparently one summer she stored our sparklers in there and forgot. One day she turned on the toaster oven, without cleaning it out, and the sparklers ignited! The next thing I knew, she was dumping baking soda in the thing and running out of the house with it still flaming! We like to bring that up from time to time… :)
Our daughter reminded us of this the other day, so it’s fresh in my mind. You know how we think people notice things about us that they really don’t. She was in her freshman or sophomore year of high school when she woke up to go to church only to be greeted by a a giant pimple right on the middle of her forehead. She spent about 10 minutes attempting – to no avail- to cover it up, and then she gave herself the pep-talk: “You notice it, but no one else is going to pay that much attention to it. Just suck it up and pretend it’s not there”. She finally left mher room and joined the family in the kitchen where her father wordlessly opened up a drawer, removed a red dry erase marker, and made a giant circle on his forehead saying, “so you wouldn’t be the only one”…So, sometimes people really do notice the thing as much as you! The memory made us laugh so hard that we almost were in tears!
Great story, thanks for the morning smile!
I’m with you Heather, give me laughter any day!
I played Bible Bowl in high school and one time during a game my team had to give answers to a bonus that would spell out a name at the end. Well, the first clue had one of two answers and my brother and other teammates decided to overrule me on the first answer and it was wrong. So at the end of the bonus we had the letters M E S U S and they are all looking at each other and saying, “Mesus” and trying to figure out what that was supposed to mean. I realized that the answer was Jesus and said that to them in exasperation and they thought I was cussing at them, not saying the answer. So then I earned the nickname Sailor. My family still laughs about it to this day.
LOL, this was great to read! I am a terrible cook, so missed ingredients, smoke alarms going off and ordering pizza end up a part of my life. :) I try, though! Our family grew up with laughter being what we turned to in a sticky situation. So we laughed quite a bit! One of the bigger stories that gets told at every gathering is the one where my mom and I got stuck in the mud in a field. I got stuck while playing with my brothers. My mom came to help me and she got completely stuck a few feet away from me! I was crying thinking we were going to die there – as only an 8 year old would do! My dad and brothers stood on the edge of the field laughing at us. Finally my dad pulled us both out. To this day he still says it took special talent to get stuck like that. ;)
I definitely prefer to be bound by laughter. Here’s my family’s funny story. My sister invited her newish city boyfriend (no offense intended to anyone here, but we’re country Kentucky folk) to Thanksgiving dinner. It was his first time meeting any of us except my parents. Everything was going well until dessert. While we were eating my mom’s hummingbird cake, my (then) husband, with a straight face, asked how many hummingbirds the recipe called for. My sister’s boyfriend turned a little green and said “Wwwhat??” We still laugh about the look on his face. Well, we all laugh except my sister. She doesn’t appreciate the humor of it.
this is a wonderful post. I love the quote that Our lives are one big tapestry. Only we look at the back and God looks at the front. We see the tangles and mess and God sees beauty.
I have epilepsy, so when I was in high school, I wanted to learn to cook. Mom gave me the basics to start with. Yah, I was good. So I would put water on to boil to make mac and cheese. Problem was I would get distracted and forget. After burning three pans my mom told me not to worry about cooking that there were more important things in life. But my brothers who were all wonderful cooks have never let me live it down. Then I just cried and cried. Now we can all laugh at the situation. And I turned out to be an ok cook. LOL My husband and children like what I cook.
It’s been fun to read everyone’s stories! One summer while we were missionaries in Hong Kong, I was teaching an English class one afternoon a week, and wouldn’t get home until supper time. So my husband would cook that night. Every week we had spaghetti… and every week he’d experiment putting different spices in the sauce! Let me tell you that cinnamon doesn’t really cut it in spaghetti sauce :-)
My dad was putting together a Little Tikes train and when he connected the motor to see if it worked it scared my two year old son. He ran out of the room so fast we couldn’t stop laughing. We had never seen him run that fast. I am laughing now as I write this. He loved the train so I guess it did not scar him?
The funniest moment was when our 3 year old twin grand-daughters were flower girls in our daughter’s wedding. One of the girls pulled her dress over her head and the other twirled her flower basket around and around causing flowers to fly everywhere. How I wish we had gotten that on video.
We still laugh over the Rock biscuits my sister made when a teenager. We took them outside and hit them with a bat. ?
Nothing like laughter…thanks Heather! Love your story. Years ago we were eating at my Mom’s house. Hub had parked his truck in the yard….with our GS dog in the back. Later we heard a strange noise….the truck had rolled into a “barn” my parents had kept when they built their house. Evidently, hub did not put the truck in park and the dog jumped around and made it roll into the barn. We have laughed about that a lot!
“Wedge salad” is the phrase that will still set one friend and I off to giggling *years* after we spent a week vacationing near Myrtle Beach, SC. I wasn’t all that hungry, so thought I was ordering something light for dinner at the restaurant we had selected. Turned out the ‘wedge’ salad had a base that was more like 1/2 a head of iceberg lettuce. And then the man at the next table over ordered the same thing, and had the same bug-eyed reaction, despite the waitress pointing out that I was eating what he was thinking or ordering.
I agree, Margaret! I’ve enjoyed the stories in comments, too!
My family loves french toast for supper, even the grandchildren. But I wanted to share a funny story. My youngest son, now father to my grandchildren, was learning how to cook. This son is very bright, in a logical kind of way. We were starting with something simple, Lemon Pudding, from a box. I said something about how it didn’t look like as much as it should be. His reply was but I put in two one/half cups of water. So we had a little talk about reading recipes and that the space between 2 1/2 Cups was a infured and. We can laugh about that now with our grandchildren.
One time, my cousin farted in our aunt’s house. The smells was so unbearable that my aunt kicked us all out of the house. We still laugh about it today
Laughter all the way! Great post Heather :) I appreciate all the images and am thankful to end my night on a smile!
Thanks for fun stories. I read it a day late. We’ve been busy with family. New baby ,sick grand child,etc. keeping people with germs away from new baby. When my oldest children were little I set off the smoke detector so often, that when they heard it they said, “Dinner’s ready!”
wow!! this sounds interesting and I can think of quiet a few, but one that sticks out in my memory is when my Aunt Mary used to be afraid of moths and used to brush them away from around her.