JOYCE!
I love to "yank" people. Y'know saying something outrageous, delivering some awful statement, just to get a reaction. I love the look on their faces. I have a much greater appreciation for the elderly and my own safety nowadays so I keep the yanking to a harmless minimum.
I come from a long line of pranksters. When I was a kid I used to work with my dad at his Kielbasy shop (polish sausage to the uninitiated). On the way home one hot summer day we had to deliver a large fresh meat order so we stopped to get a block of dry ice. I don't know if any of you youngsters know what dry ice even is, but, it is frozen carbon dioxide, super cold and a 20 lb slab could cool a whole box of meat and evaporate into a gas so, as it breaks down, it turns directly into carbon dioxide gas rather than a liquid, so it doesn't make everything soggy even on the hottest summer day.
Remember, it was the sixties pre-Viet Nam boom, where here in the States, a monkey could run business and profit. Well even with 8 kids my old man did pretty well. He had just installed a heater in our 20 x 40 cement pool, so that we could swim well into the October. (he hadn't gotten the heating bill yet - do you have any idea how much it costs to heat 22,000 gallons of water!) needless to say, we used it for only one season.
Anyway, we arrived home, and my dad says, "Watch this".
We come around the back of the house. All the kids (our own and the neighborhood kids) are milling about, waiting 'til my mother and her best friend at the time, sipping afternoon cocktails in the kitchen, will "watch" them in the pool. This was a means of torture that my mom would use on hot summer days in order to get us to do our chores, or perhaps to just piss us off to get even. There would never be any unsupervised swimming allowed, but nobody said anything about being sober. Like refugees the kids were gathered around the gate into the pool area. My dad carrying the box of dry ice, gets them all pumped up to see something cool. He dumps the dry ice into the pool which proceeds to vaporize at a rapid rate seemingly boiling the water. All the kids are running alongside the pool following the block as it floats toward the deep end.
From her vantage point in the kitchen, my mother and her friend spot the kids running in the pool area. This was FORBIDDEN. NO ONE goes in the pool area until there was adult supervision!
They both come out of the kitchen, ready to admonish the kids and add another half hour delay until they would be allowed to swim. As they notice my dad, standing in the pool area, in a flash of comic brilliance, he bellows in his most intimidating tone , "JOYCE! HOW HIGH DO YOU HAVE THE HEAT IN THIS POOL TURNED UP??!"
They both look at the gas bubbling up from the water and damn if it doesn't look just like boiling water. Well my mom's jaw dropped! Her friend dropped her cocktail glass and bolted toward the pool gate, "screaming, "OH MY GOOD, GET THE KIDS AWAY FROM THE EDGE!" Both her and my mother, scrambling frantically to grab the kids away from the 22,000 GALLONS of "boiling water" ..... from a friggin' pool heater.
My father starts to laugh uncontrollably and my mother realizes that she's been "yanked". Her friend, however, never really gets the joke and grabs her kids and does not come back to our house that summer.
I come from a long line of pranksters. When I was a kid I used to work with my dad at his Kielbasy shop (polish sausage to the uninitiated). On the way home one hot summer day we had to deliver a large fresh meat order so we stopped to get a block of dry ice. I don't know if any of you youngsters know what dry ice even is, but, it is frozen carbon dioxide, super cold and a 20 lb slab could cool a whole box of meat and evaporate into a gas so, as it breaks down, it turns directly into carbon dioxide gas rather than a liquid, so it doesn't make everything soggy even on the hottest summer day.
Remember, it was the sixties pre-Viet Nam boom, where here in the States, a monkey could run business and profit. Well even with 8 kids my old man did pretty well. He had just installed a heater in our 20 x 40 cement pool, so that we could swim well into the October. (he hadn't gotten the heating bill yet - do you have any idea how much it costs to heat 22,000 gallons of water!) needless to say, we used it for only one season.
Anyway, we arrived home, and my dad says, "Watch this".
We come around the back of the house. All the kids (our own and the neighborhood kids) are milling about, waiting 'til my mother and her best friend at the time, sipping afternoon cocktails in the kitchen, will "watch" them in the pool. This was a means of torture that my mom would use on hot summer days in order to get us to do our chores, or perhaps to just piss us off to get even. There would never be any unsupervised swimming allowed, but nobody said anything about being sober. Like refugees the kids were gathered around the gate into the pool area. My dad carrying the box of dry ice, gets them all pumped up to see something cool. He dumps the dry ice into the pool which proceeds to vaporize at a rapid rate seemingly boiling the water. All the kids are running alongside the pool following the block as it floats toward the deep end.
From her vantage point in the kitchen, my mother and her friend spot the kids running in the pool area. This was FORBIDDEN. NO ONE goes in the pool area until there was adult supervision!
They both come out of the kitchen, ready to admonish the kids and add another half hour delay until they would be allowed to swim. As they notice my dad, standing in the pool area, in a flash of comic brilliance, he bellows in his most intimidating tone , "JOYCE! HOW HIGH DO YOU HAVE THE HEAT IN THIS POOL TURNED UP??!"
They both look at the gas bubbling up from the water and damn if it doesn't look just like boiling water. Well my mom's jaw dropped! Her friend dropped her cocktail glass and bolted toward the pool gate, "screaming, "OH MY GOOD, GET THE KIDS AWAY FROM THE EDGE!" Both her and my mother, scrambling frantically to grab the kids away from the 22,000 GALLONS of "boiling water" ..... from a friggin' pool heater.
My father starts to laugh uncontrollably and my mother realizes that she's been "yanked". Her friend, however, never really gets the joke and grabs her kids and does not come back to our house that summer.
posted by BUK at 3:02 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home