January 15, 2008
How cool is that?! I think it’s the cat’s ass, myself.
Okay, onto the original subject, for which I have no pic, which is why I had to post the groovy-cool gizmo link… I’ve been harangued about this subject since I first brought it up, by all the Ruby fans (okay, mostly by Cardiogirl), and I can’t go another day with all the betch, betch, betching…
Ruby’s Mom was born with her arms drawn up so that her teeny-tiny little hands were pretty much touching her teeny-tiny little shoulders. It was all they (and by “they”, I must assume Ruby means her mom’s parents with the help of a midwife, considering her mom must have been born close to a hundred and twenty-five years ago, if not over…) could do to draw her little arms down into a normal-looking position, and it took days to a week to do it. She never was quite able to straighten her arms right out and lock her elbows, either.
Afterward, it became rather painfully apparent that this otherwise normal and most beautiful infant had been born… with….
No.
Forearms. (cred to Cardiogirl, who won’t type it any.
Other.
Way).
Yes, folks, the poor kid’s hands were growin’ out her elbows.
I know that sounds a little mean-spirited, but that’s how Ruby said it to me, so that’s how I’m saying it to you. From Ruby’s mouth to your ears (eyes, ahem…*).
ANYway….
Ruby’s Mom (whose name I never did remember to ask, but I’d only have to come up with a pseudonym anyway, so I will stick with “Ruby’s Mom”, I guess) never let the fact that she had.
No.
Forearms.
get in the way of anything. She grew up, went to school, taught school, got married, had eight kids (EIGHT!!!! KIDS!!!!), and ran her house like clockwork back in the days when most women had their share of overwhelming days.
She lived in the middle of the Northern Ontario “bush”, in a little, wee berg called “Northland”, where the only way in was by train. They eventually got a road built in; Ruby was old enough to remember it being built, but even then… Wow!
There was no electricity. No running water. And it’s not like Ruby’s Mom could run to the corner store to buy a loaf of bread, either. Nope. She made her own. Enough to feed EIGHT!!!! KIDS!!!!, remember?! Washed her family’s clothes by hand. Sewed most of them herself, too, with the exception of their “dress-up” clothes, the ones they wore to church, funerals, and dances. On top of all of this, she ran a small farm, growing vegetables, raising pigs and chickens, and chopping kindling… with.
No.
Forearms.
Ruby remembers that she never wore short sleeves, although she’d push her sleeves up past her elbows when she was working at home. If there was a knock on the door, though, first thing she’d do was yank her sleeves down over her wrists, so Ruby thinks that in some ways, it did bother her a little.
But, here’s the real kicker… it wasn’t until one of Ruby’s older sisters went to school for the first time and came home afterward crying, that Ruby even knew that her mother had.
No.
Forearms.
Seems that in the one-room school house that the kids all went to, that they liked to trade their lunches with each other (some things never change, huh?). It was during her first lunch hour at school, that Ruby’s older sister found out in that mean and nasty way that only kids have of treating each other, that she wasn’t able to join in on the lunch trade with the other girls.
Why? Well, that’s what Ruby’s sister wanted to know, wasn’t it? Well, it was because, they said, “Your mother works her bread with her elbows!” And they laughed until Ruby’s sister cried.
And then some.
When her sister came home with this story, Ruby was first puzzled. Then hurt. Then steaming mad. Ruby’s Mom, on the other hand, set about making a chocolate cake. In the middle of the week.
Un.
Heard.
Of.
And the next day, Ruby’s sister was most certainly the STAR player in the school house lunch circle, seeing as how she had a coveted piece of the Blue-Ribbon-Winning-Chocolate-Cake-of-Which-the-Recipe-was-
Never-Shared-and-Everybody-Else’s-Mother-was-Green-with-Envy-Over in her lunch pail.Not bad for having
No.
Forearms.
Boo-Yah, Ruby’s Mom!
As a bit of a PS… watch this space tomorrow (or the next night, at the latest) for evidence of dead people. Damn, Suzi and her Dumb Dares.
Random Song for the Day: “Me and My Shadow” – Frank Sinatra & Sammy Davis Jr.