Friday, November 2, 2018

Jekyll & Hyde




All this talk of costumes and dressing up that I've been doing lately made me remember something our kids did.  It involved costumes, props, and scripts.  It was imagination at its best.  Young Man would decide on any given night, "Let's play church." 

Our kids, good like Catholics! 

So they got the VCR cabinet pulled out and partially opened up to make a pulpit.  They would line up the dining room chairs as pews.  Young Man would get my bathrobe to use as priestly vestments.

Poor Molly, she was the congregant who had to listen to Young Man's hellfire and brimstone sermons, and let me tell you, he could get fired up and be a real Judgey McJudgemuffin!  Then it was time for communion, so they broke out the bite-size tortilla rounds.  Molly would be sitting in the front "pew," get up to receive her "wafer" then go back, sit in the second pew for a couple of seconds, and repeat the process until she had processed for communion from all four pews. 

This is where it gets interesting, lest you think my kids were practicing for ordination in the convent and seminary.  After Young Man gave his benediction and dismissed church, he would say, "Okay, let's play saloon!"

I'm not kidding even a little bit. 

Church was transformed into a saloon by replacing the robe with a barkeep apron, opening the VCR cabinet up all the way to make a bar, lining up the dining room chairs as bar stools, and getting empty beer bottles from the recycle bin and filling them up with water to serve.  Young Man was the barkeep and poor Molly...she was the down and out town drunk. 

Our kids, good little Irish souls!



I'm fairly certain that only our kids would go from holy to unholy in the blink of an eye.  It was almost a Jekyll and Hyde thing. 

Which got me thinking about how most of us...okay, maybe it's just us...who have two sides of the same coin in our personality. 

For example, in my case, I tend to be a free spirit, go-with-the-flow kind of person and don't have OCD habits.  Except for hanging clothes on the line.  I know that the clothes will dry no matter where they get hung on the line, but it literally makes me grind my teeth to see Captain put three items on one line, two items on another line, four items on the next line, and one item on the last line. 

Dude, seriously?!?!



The proper way (meaning MY way) to hang clothes is to start at the left end of the first line and work your way all the way to the other end of that line, and then go to the left end of the next line.  Repeat as needed.  It's logical.  I don't know why that is my organizational kryptonite, but it is. 

So the opposite side of that coin is that once the clothes are dried and folded...I don't put them in their drawers.  I usually (a) leave them on the laundry table and take them as I need them or (b) take the pile off the laundry table--because I got told in no uncertain terms that it was not the responsibility of the clothes folder to also deliver the clothes--and carry it up to my bedroom and put the pile on the cedar chest at the edge of the bed and take them from there as I need them.  Go ahead and judge me, I don't care.  I want there to be full disclosure there before I move on the Captain's OCD quirk.

So Captain is in charge of unloading the clean dishes from the dishwasher.  His organizational kryptonite is that the plates have to be stacked according to pattern.  We have about six different sets of plates, so this gets to be something of a pain in the butt.  But it's his thing.  Fine. 

However.

The bowls, which should be stacked according to size so that they nest nicely, are shoved in there haphazardly so that they look like the Leaning Tower Of Pizza.  I don't get it, but I've learned not to criticize because I've had that whole pile of clothes thing tossed back at me (and rightfully so). 

But I digress.  Back to our kids going from church to bar.  I think it shows that they know how to work hard and follow the rules, and they also know how to play hard and enjoy life so that it doesn't become a drudgery. 

Our kids...just plain good people!

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