Way back when renting videos was a fairly new concept, we often rented them from a certain store. It was not the closest store, but it rented them for a dollar. It was also an appliance store. Go figure.
It was sometime in the winter, January I think. We had rented a couple of movies. Don't remember what they were. If I did, I would never watch them again. It snowed overnight. Enough that we couldn't get the car out of the driveway. We lived outside of town on a few acres and had a long driveway. My dad had taken his truck and gone to work. There was probably less snow when he left at five. Either way, the driveway wasn't plowed and we weren't going anywhere. And those movies were due back. Keep in mind that they cost a dollar a day to rent. A dollar!
My mother, in her infinite wisdom decided that those movies had to be back on time. And if we couldn't drive to the store to return, by golly we would go on horseback. More precisely, the children would go by horseback. She would stay at home in the warm house. The store was about 5-7 miles away. The trip included time on a highway. I was about ten.
At the time I rode a Shetland pony named Snoopy. He looked something like this one. So my brother and I saddled up and headed out to return the movies. By the time we got about half way there, I could not feel my toes. Cowboy boots are not known for their warmth. So we started stopping at various businesses. One of us would go in and thaw out, while the other froze outside with the horses.
I'm sure all the people who were driving past thought we were cute or nuts. I wonder if any of them wondered where our parents were. We got the movies returned and by this time I am using words that would get me in a lot of trouble. I am hating every minute of it. I didn't like riding that much to begin with. I have never liked to be cold. It was times like these when I wished my real parents (the royalty) would hurry up and come and collect me. (Remember I firmly believed that I was a princess switched at birth.)
I remember looking fondly at every car that drove by and wishing I was in it. I remember hating my mother with a passion. I remember that saying I wouldn't go was not an option. My family believed in that whole spare the rod, spoil the child philosophy. I remember not feeling my toes, my ears or my nose. I remember my legs tingling with cold. I remember sitting on Snoopy outside an auto parts store, hating that it was my brothers turn to go in. I remember I was wearing a blue stocking cap with a strawberry patch on it. It didn't quite cover my ears.
Remember this was to save $2. Now that I have children, I wonder even more what she was thinking. Besides, not spending that $2. And what was she thinking the whole time we were gone?
I don't know if I got any real frostbite from the experience. I do know that my feet get really cold and have a really hard time warming up again. It can take an hour for them to feel warm. I wear a warm hat at the beach almost year round because the wind makes my ears ache. Even if it is 70 degrees out. And Ducky has said that my nose resembles an ice cube sometimes.
I don't know if my dad ever knew that she made us do that. Lately, I have been finding out that he didn't know a lot of the things she did.
I am not surprised that I hate horses and being cold. I rarely watch movies. And I still resent that my mother put $2 above the health and safety of her children. If anyone invents a time machine, let me borrow it to visit my former self. I would like to give her $2 to rent the movies for another day.
Okay, it got cranky at the end. But my toes are getting cold. In a 70 degree house. And I am wearing socks. Maybe my toes were reliving it too.
4 comments:
oh my god.
this is a terrible story, but it's also a great, great story. it says so much about your mother.
was your mother a depression baby? this is exactly the kind of thing my mother would have done, had we had horses.
exactly.
and i bet you do get cold easily now. i bet you really were frostbitten. wow. what a story.
Wow.
That is something else. I think I would still be quite bitchy about that if it were me.
I think laurie might be on to something though. Was she always like that??
my mom used to pull my hair in a ponytail and then use one of those skinny blue rubber bands that you get on a bunch of green onions. because my hair was so wiry and curly and fuzzy, the rubber band would be completely embedded in my hair by the end of the day. (or the next morning--i usually slept with the ponytail.)
and then she'd stand there and pick at my head for 20 minutes trying to get the rubber band out so she could use it again.
it hurt like hell and i'd cry....
but she was a depression baby. you don't spend money on rubber bands when you can get a perfectly good one in the greengrocer section of the grocery store.
My mom came along at the end of the depression. So she never really had to live through it. My grandmother was frugal, but not cheap. Basically it boils down to my mother doesn't do anything she doesn't want to do. And she prefers to spend all the money on horses.
I had those hair bands that had the two plastic balls on them. And then I had crocheted springy things that she tied on the top. I had long hair because she wanted me to. I hated it. Two skinny little braids every day.
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