The Stories

Eating Daddys’ mirror
Every Sunday morning when the family was young, my mother would drag us all to the local Methodist Church. We would all sit every Sunday as the same spot the second aisle in the front on the left. My father never attended church except when there was a baptism, but my mother felt it was her duty and desire to get all of us to church weekly. Arriving on time to church was a treat, early was almost a never happening thing. Most often we were usually late, and would enter the church and take our seats when the minister was usually going through the Sunday morning announcements or when the congregation was singing the first hymn. Needless to say, the eyes of the congregation were usually on us. For those of us that were shy (and that was most) it was usually uncomfortable.
We attended church in the early days long before the invention of the electric curlers. Every Saturday night while we were watching the Saturday evening programming ;sometimes shows like “Gentle Ben”, “Please Don’t Eat the Daisies”, “My Mother the Car”, and “Here Come the Brides”, our mother would curl our hair for church the next day. She would take turns curling our hair after each of us took our baths. Quite often there were two, three and sometimes four of us in one bath. If there were Babies or cars to play with in the bath tub, sometimes what could have been a ten minute task would turn into a forty five minutes to an hour playtime in the tub. The “prune looking” fingers and toes were testament to the time spent in the tub. The story that probably originated from this time and told to all of us by Lynn, the oldest was that” we were not to play with our belly buttons or our arms and legs would fall off.”
I was quite often impatient and had other things to do than to wait around for “my turn” to get my hair curled. (Either with bobby pins or sponge curlers) One Saturday night when I sat impatiently waiting for my turn to have my hair curled, I told my mom “Mommy, if you don’t curl my hair RIGHT NOW, I’m going to eat Daddy’s best mirror!” She sat patiently on the couch with one of my sisters in front of her and curling her hair and answered “Carla, you go right ahead!” Of coarse, I was too young to figure out the “I’m going to call her bluff, thing” and decided to show her that I was a woman , well, little girl of my word! I marched my legs right into the only bathroom in the house of nine, ( seven females and two males) pulled the potty over to the sink for a stepping stool, climbed onto the sink, opened the medicine cabinet, scoured the contents, and looking for the best hand mirror. How would Daddy do his “comb-over” now!? The best choice, no cracks and still containing a grip to hold on to; I found my prize mirror. I set it down, climbed off the sink, stepped onto the potty, and then my legs were able to once again reach the floor. I marched victoriously into the living room where everyone sat in their pajamas surrounding Mommy, watching T.V. and getting their hair curled. “OK Mommy,” I said, “I have Daddy’s best mirror and I am going to eat it now!” I was giving a few seconds hesitation and waiting for the “Oh Carla, please, don’t eat the mirror, I’ll curl your hair!” But, it never came. Knowing that it wouldn’t be a good show of determination to back out, I put the mirror to my mouth and began to chomp. Little pieces of mirror crunched between my little baby teeth and slithered down my throat. My mother quickly jumped from the couch, called for my father and they both administered salt water to me. I threw up the parts of the mirror that I had swallowed, and never ate or threatened to eat another mirror again.