Saturday, March 1, 2008

Who Are You Calling Stupid?

A summer evening seven years ago Katie, Hailey, Carl and I enjoyed a leisurely walk to Sonic to share ice cream treats and soak up the late sunshine. I can still feel the humid southeast Kansas air and smell the mixture of deep fried food, hot asphalt and marigolds. Living in a micro-small town, we walked home down the middle of the street, slowly so as to allow little toddler legs to keep up. I basked in the innocence of the moment, taking pleasure in my young family and our small-town life.



Soon, a group of four pre-teen boys turned the corner, walking towards us on the sidewalk. We continued chatting amongst ourselves, happy to ignore the boys and continue in our own little world.



Until one of the boys hollered, "Hey STUPID!" in our direction. How dare they! They waited for us with "double-dog-dare-you" looks on their faces, the little creeps.



Just as I prepared to spew out every old-fart retort in the book, Carl said in a goofy voice, "Sth-tupid? Who awre you calling sth-tupid? I'm not sth-tupid." He sure sounded stupid. Time seemed to stop. No one moved. No one said a word.



Carl remained unmoved. He created an opening by grabbing his left foot with his right hand, balancing on his right foot. He said, "Have you guys ever seen anyone do this?" and hopped his right foot through the opening.



"Wow! How'd you do that?" the boys asked, walking towards us. Unable to believe what was happening, I tried to decide whether to hurry my young daughters from these hoodlums or stand there waiting. I waited. Carl did a few more of what I call his "stupid-human tricks" and we had new friends for life. They walked two blocks with us before turning towards their own destination.



Several years later the clay sewer pipes under our fifty-year-old house collapsed. Small town living provides many benefits, but a plethora of plumbers is not one of them. When the local middle-aged, overworked plumber finally made it around to our house, he took one look at our tiny crawl space and said, "I'm getting to old for crawling under houses. You're going to have to call someone else."



Guess who we employed. One of those boys had grown old enough that Carl hired him. The kid crawled under our house and dug up that old, crumbled clay sewer pipe with a hand shovel for less than half the price we would have paid the plumber.



Sth-tupid? Who were they calling sth-tupid?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a fantastic post!!!

Hey - I'm a native Wichitan - woo hoo!

Angela said...

Thanks Lis! Are you still in the Wichita area? We travel back there to visit family regularly.

Anonymous said...

LOL! What a great story!

Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment on my blog today! Yes, my dear T did actually write those words himself. My soon-to-be-ex would have NEVER even attempted something like that!

Hope ya have a great day! :-)

Tara R. said...

That was awesome... great way to defuse a potential problem. I like how it came full circle.... NICE.

(I'm prolific? I don't think I have ever written THREE posts in one day. You are my new bloggy hero!)

Ashley said...

Isn't it funny how things turn out?

LunaNik said...

I am fascinated by small towns and their happenings. I can't really explain why.

This is a great story!