Snapshots In My Time...
Of My Time.....Hauntings.
Can you have home improvement in reverse? That is what I did. I started a home improvement in reverse when I tried to make some egg salad. Let me tell you how. When I was in middle school I decided to make egg salad for lunch the next day. (This is a true story. Nothing is made up on my blog.) The time was about 7pm. I put 2 eggs on to boil. I was tired. I leave the kitchen table and collapse on my canopy bed just to rest my eyes. I will get up in just a few minutes and finish my egg salad.
Later, my eyes open to pitch blackness with a hand covering my mouth tighly so that I could not scream. It is my mother. She is whispering. What I do not know. I just woke up and do not know what is going on. She whispers some more and will not remove her hand until I understand the whispers. The whispers are orders... over and over again orders--to get up, to not speak, to tiptoe and come with her. I get up and follow her out my room into the hallway. There is my father with the shotgun aimed ahead of him. There is my brother as well. My mother places us in the correct order. She gets behind my father, I am behind her and my younger brother is behind me. We all tiptoe down the hall toward the kitchen.
I hear sounds now and we are all terrified. Sounds like someone is moving in the kitchen and looking for something. We got to the entrance of the kitchen and my father fired that shotgun blindly into the night..into the kitchen. I grabbed my brother and tried not to scream. I think my father fired all the bullets. I heard a click and no more firing from his gun.
We only heard silence from the kitchen. We all stood frozen in the hallway for what seemed like an eternity. We still only heard silence. My mother whispered for my father to turn on the light. He did. I was expecting to see dead bodies. I saw gunshot holes in the walls, gun shotholes in the cabinets and more on the floor.
The only thing of any great notice in the kitchen was just my pot sitting on the stove, black from heat. It was devoid of water and devoid of eggs. The burglar sounds we thought we heard was the sound of eggs exploding right out of their shells. They had burst wide open and yoke and egg white was strewn all over the cabinets and the floor. My parents turned to look at me. My legs turned to jelly. My father had shot up the kitchen for the love of egg salad!
That is what is called a home improvement in reverse. As a result of that crazy episode my parents had to use Local Contractor Services to undo the damage I had done. They started with the cabinets that were all shot to hell! Our house had a kind of galley kitchen and the house was kind of old, so there was no way to replace and make things look uniform. They had to remove the old cabinets and get new ones. Maybe if they had painted? Maybe they could have salvaged the old ones that were not damaged.
The flooring had to be replaced as well. There was no way to just take out a section and replace. The color would not match. One wall had to have some new sheet rock and the entire kitchen was repainted. While everyone was really mad at me for a long time, my mother's anger seemed to be diminishing. In fact, she seemed downright happy whenever my father was not in view. She was getting a whole new kitchen.
Back then it was before the age of the internet. Why the internet was not even a twinkle in Al Gore's eye at that time. My parents had to do everything the old fashion way...by telephone. To day we have the web and it makes things so much easier. With a click of a mouse all your home improvement needs can be found on Residential Contractors. Everything from A to Z, from architects to demolition, to home security to pools can be found there.
My advice to you? Don't do what I did. Do home improvement the right way. Don't do home improvement in reverse. You might end up like me...no allowance for the next year and with a mother who is secretly happy because she got a new kitchen! And for goodness sake, never leave boiling eggs unattended.
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