Throwback Thursday - The Crisco Incident
Children of the 70’s were often
not supervised in the same way that children of the millennia are, and the two
year old had been sat upon the brown and orange linoleum flooring in the galley
kitchen to entertain herself. Her mother set about doing the things a young
woman might do on a Saturday morning when the responsibilities of adulthood had
been thrust upon her, perhaps cleaning the small apartment of messes made by both
toddler and husband, laundry or thoughtfully looking introspectively, seeking
wisdom, to ponder the state of the life she had found herself in. One will
never truly know.
The one and only phone in the apartment
was located on a wall at the far end of the long narrow kitchen where the
toddler had been placed. It rang, once, twice, three times, the mother ran from
the back bedroom on the opposite side of the apartment to answer it before the caller hung up and she was
left wondering; Who was it? What did they want? Was it important? At full
speed, her feet transitioning from the brown shaggy carpet of the living room to the smooth linoleum
floor, she was caught off guard by a slippery substance of unknown origins. Her
arms flailed, and stretched out to grab hold of counter-top on either side,
while her legs and feet tried desperately to gain traction, down the length of
the alleyway like kitchen. She crashed into the wall, knocking the phone not
only off the hook, but off the wall entirely. Looking back from a crumple on
the floor, her daughter stared wide eyed and innocent at the spectacle she had
witnessed and began to laugh at her silly mama. The open can of Crisco from the
lower cupboard sat beside her, empty.
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