by Kathy Brasby | Jun 3, 2019 | Country life, Humor, Stories
A few weeks ago, I was teaching chicks how to drink. That probably makes no sense to you but baby chickens pop out of their eggs with no clue how to drink. When the hen is not in the picture, their human owner gets to fill in.
Chicks are amazingly cute little beings. There’s no room for brains in their head, but they make up for it with cuteness.
Photo by Kathy Brasby
If you’ve ever gone to the feed store with your six-year-old, you know how amazingly cute the chicks are. Six-year-olds never miss the chick cages. Once there, they unfurl all the tricks a child knows. Anything is fair here. They might scream or plead or remind you that you hadn’t bought them anything in decades, maybe centuries.
Parents: don’t trust traditional responses. Don’t tell your child, “You’re not old enough to care for this chick,” because the child will assure you that this is their chance to reveal the profound changes in their heart, character, and behavior that have emerged since breakfast when they left their cereal bowl on the table and spoon on the floor. They are changed creatures, just like that chick that just transformed from an egg to a fuzz ball.
Don’t tell your child, “We don’t have a place for any chicks,” What your child hears is “yet,” as in “We don’t have any place for any chicks yet.” They have hope! All they now need is a cardboard box, a saucer, and a bag of chicken feed.
Stay away from the chick aisle!
Amongst the research regarding chickens is the discovery that chickens wearing red-tinted contact lenses fight less, eat less, and produce more – the chicken trifecta.
Can you imagine the scientist putting contact lenses on chickens? I wonder if they were soft or hard contacts. What if a chicken lost a lens? Would she attack the hen on her right while giving sweet words to the one on her left?
Would you have to change contacts every day? Maybe mellow chickens would stand in line to get their contacts in for the day. Right after brushing their teeth and combing their hair.
If scientists could put contact lenses on chickens, you’d think researchers could find a way to teach chickens how to drink when they first pop out of the egg. Apparently not.
Chicks remain as ill-prepared for life as ever.
But back to my teaching moment. I had two dozen cute yellow fur balls wandering aimlessly in the desert of their cardboard box, about to start crawling wing over wing in the sand, lips swollen and canteens dusty. The overhead light probably looked like a huge angry sun to them.
They needed a mama to teach them how to drink water.
My son watched. “They don’t know how to drink?” he said.
“They don’t know how to find water,” I said. I dipped each chick’s beak into the water and let each one shake its head in amazement at finding water just before dying of desert exposure.
My son shifted gears. “And why did you put paper down in their pen?”
“So they wouldn’t accidentally eat the wood chips underneath. They don’t know the difference between wood chips and their feed yet.”
He stared down at the yellow wave of chick energy. “So you’re telling me that they don’t know how to eat or drink?”
“Well, I guess…..”
He headed for the door. “I’m amazed they know how to breathe.”
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by Kathy Brasby | May 27, 2019 | Humor
We have a great Mexican restaurant in our town called El Jacal. I had to find out what the name meant because I don’t speak Spanish. What if I was ordering burritos in a place called The Sloth or The Dirty Laundry?
You see my point. I looked it up. It meant The Shack.
Much better than The Horse Hoof.
One day recently, I made arrangements to meet my nephew at El Jacal for lunch. Full of myself, I asked him if he knew what it meant.
“It means the mansion or something like that,” he said.
“No, it means the shack.”
“No, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t.”
He obviously needed enlightening. I asked, “Who told you it meant the mansion?”
“My buddy Jose,” he said. “Who told you?”
“Google Translate.” It stinks when you might be less right.
Photo by Kathy Brasby
Translating is a tricky business. Once a Chinese translator turned our American idiom, “out of sight, out of mind,” into “invisible, insane.”
That translation was handy when the kids were young. They knew the story about the Chinese translation so I thought I was being cute when I responded to their chaotic race through the house by calling out, “Be invisible, insane.” It was less helpful when they said they thought the last part described me.
A few years ago, I bought a small (cheap) PA system and dug out the instructions.
You’ll want to see these. And I did not make anything up:
- “Features: Lithium battery, long battery life. Loud-speaker works pretty good.”
- “To extend the battery life, please charge after the battery is use out.”
- “Attentions before wearing the ear-hanging microphone: Before wearing, please don’t turn on the power and volume.” I am still not making this up.
- “Don’t change the battery by yourself under warranty. Be sure that the pole is right when the change the battery.” (Why would I have to know how to change the battery if I’m not supposed to, under threat of voiding warranty?)
- “Turn the volume button clockwise or anticlockwise can increase or decrease the volume.”
- “Cut in and pull out the plug often may cause the disbad connection between microphone and amplifier.”
I kept the instructions long enough to copy these juicy phrases and then figured out the little PA system on my own.
My theory? These instructions were translated. Maybe by Google Translate.
In any case, I think they fall in the “invisible, insane” dustbin.
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by Kathy Brasby | May 20, 2019 | Humor, Stories
As we get better acquainted, you’ll know things about me that my kids may someday pay you to keep to yourself. This is a great reason to keep track of me. Think of it as retirement planning. Just fill out that email signup over there and the money may well come flowing one day. No promises, though.
Don’t you, by the way, get annoyed with promises coming at you in the mail and on your phone and email? You know what I mean. I have gotten a garden catalog in the mail for years. Most of the catalogs have a big red sticker on the front: “Warning: this may be the last catalog you will receive unless you order.” Yeah, yeah, big promises. I’ve never ordered. I’d be OK if this were the last catalog but no such luck.
I don’t make promises like that. I promise.
Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash
I’ve had several jobs in my life, none related to the one before as far as I can tell. I’ve been a property manager for four years. Managing rental units provides endless story possibilities. That’s almost a good enough reason to keep managing.
As you can imagine, we occasionally have tenants who don’t pay their rent. This particular tenant not only got behind on his rent, but he had creative excuses. One month, he assured us that his check must have gotten stolen since we hadn’t received it.
In fact, the police had contacted him about the stolen check, and he was getting another one issued. We asked, could he send us a copy of the police report? No, since the police were in another state.
What, they hadn’t heard of faxing or email?
He did finally get that rent payment paid. It was sort of the sweet-and-sour-sauce with that tenant. One month, he was great and the next, lots of complaints and no rent.
I reported the final events to my business partner, who is also my sister, Ann, via texts:
Me: “Guess what? No rent today again.”
Ann: “Still nothing? Didn’t he promise?”
Me: “Yep.” Captain Obvious is my texting handle.
Ann: “Can’t you just email him and tell him to send us his kidney.”
I was typing, “I’m OK with a kidney,” when Ann answered, “No! Ack! Money. Not kidney. Money.”
I liked kidney better.
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by Kathy Brasby | Sep 16, 2013 | Country life, Humor
I am a careful reader and I did read that poster before I jumped in.
Free cats. On the wild side. The photos on the poster were of three lovely orange and gray cats. My son and I were running errands when I found this treasure.
We needed cats for our barn, which was constantly under attack from a squadron of field mice. I didn’t care that these cats were a little on the wild side. Better to hunt mice.
I found the girl with the cats. “Do you still have them?” I asked.
Her face should have clued me in. Body language says raised eyebrows, wide eyes and an open mouth mean surprise. “Do you want them?”
“Yes.”
“Great! I’ll tell my dad.” She scampered away and I turned to my son.
“I’ll finish up here and you go with them. We can put the cats in the car and go home.”
He followed the girl and I finished my work. When I walked into the parking lot toward our car, I spotted Son at the edge of a small group, a large cardboard box in the center.
The girl’s father snugged the last piece of shipping tape over the flaps on the top of the box as a bystander said, “If they can’t get air in there, they might die.”
The father stepped back from the box, which was tap dancing a bit, and brushed his hands together. “That wouldn’t be the end of the world.”
My son turned to me. “He had welding gloves on when he put the cats in the box.” Welding gloves are long leather armor against welding sparks. And apparently against cat weapons as well.
By now, I was near enough to hear scratching inside the box. A lot of scratching. The sort of demonic scratching that threatens to claw through trees and steel walls.
“A little wild?” I asked him.
Son shrugged. He likes cats and he hoisted the box into the back of the car. “It’ll be OK.” I watched the box shimmering with cat rebellion and muted yowls.
“What if they get through the cardboard?”
“I guess we open the doors and bail out ’til they escape.”
That was comforting.
As I turned back to the family that had advertised the cats, they were nowhere to be seen. What a shock.
And so we drove home. My kids as toddlers usually dozed off as soon as I put the car in drive – and so, apparently, did this cat trio. No sounds until we got to our barn.
We laid the box on its side in the middle of the building so the top faced away from us. We were fools but not that bad.
I peeled off the tape while my son stood guard. I’m not sure what his plan was if the cats did a u-turn. Well, maybe we were that bad of fools…
I had donned my own leather gloves and goggles before I lifted the flap. There was a pause before an explosion of orange and gray fur burst into our barn, across the floor, and out the back door. Followed by heavenly silence.
Son and I looked at each other and I brushed off my hands. “Well, that wasn’t the end of the world.”
But I do read a little more carefully these days.
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by Kathy Brasby | Sep 3, 2013 | Family, Hope, Humor
I’m always amazed at how common life experiences translate into metaphors of meaning.
When my daughter and son-in-law moved from one apartment to another, they were forced to leave their beloved goldfish behind.
They’ll probably read this account so I’ll try to be as accurate as I can remember. That’s code that means I’m making up most of it.
Goldie was a beloved fish who would follow them from corner to corner within his little aquarium and never needed walking or rabies shots. He was the perfect pet.
But poor Goldie couldn’t live in their new apartment.
After great discussion, they decided the kindest thing for Goldie would be to give him his freedom. So my son-in-law, as compassionate a guy as you’ll ever meet, drove Goldie and his fish bowl to the edge of the river.
Kneeling at the edge of the water, he met Goldie’s eyes. “You’ve been a great goldfish. Go and have a good life.”
And he gently poured Goldie into the river water.
The little fish took three brave swishes of his tail into his new freedom when a big fish came out of the murk and swallowed him whole.
The number of metaphors in that story are staggering.
Do we learn that little fish have no chance at the good life?
Do we learn that big fish can be counted on to spoil the day?
Or that well-intentioned plans for good don’t always work out?
Those are pretty deep for me. What I learned was when you set your goldfish free, don’t watch afterwards.
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by Kathy Brasby | Jun 3, 2013 | Family, Humor
I’m not a big fan of car commercials because I really don’t think the right car will give me peace, bring my family closer together, or define my sophistication index.
But I do like to tell car stories. Like this one.
We were filling our car at a little gas station in Omaha when we noticed a guy pushing his car up the driveway of the station. He was a skinny young guy but he handled his rig like he’d done this before.
He had a faded tank of a car that gulped gas and apparently had run dry somewhere nearby.
All the pumps were occupied so he guided his old vehicle to the curb and waited. Finally a spot cleared and he walked confidently to the front pumper, bent low, and heaved.
The car rolled like a lumbering ox to the open pump.
By this time, we were pretty sympathetic for this man who seemed to have had a touch of bad timing, running out of gas so close to the station. He settled his car by the pump like a mother tucking in her toddler and pulled out his wallet.
That pump allowed bills as well as credit card payments and so we watched as he tugged $5 out and slid it into the pump.
He pumped his gas – almost two gallons in those days – tightened the gas cap, and drove away. I knew then why he rolled his car with such confidence. He had done it before.
He reminded me of a guy we knew who wanted to borrow some money to buy gas.
Yeah, he’d gotten his paycheck but his pickup had two fuel tanks and the switch between the two tanks didn’t work. So he’d blown his week’s paycheck installing a new switch so that he had access to two fuel tanks rather than one.
Then he had no money for gas.
Could we help? We didn’t.
And then there was the gal who complained that she had to buy a radar detector. “And they’re expensive.”
“Why did you have to buy a radar detector?” I asked.
Her look made me wonder if I’d sprouted Martian antenna. “My tire has a slow leak.”
“Huh?”
“If I don’t speed, I can’t get home from WalMart before the tire goes flat. So I had to buy a radar detector.”
I checked to see if she had sprouted Martian antenna. I also wondered how a new tire compared to the cost of a radar detector.
For some people, their car defines their image. For others, their car just reveals it.
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