What with two wars, milk at $4 a gallon and an environmental crisis of Biblical proportions, I’ve been a little tense lately.
Unlike our President I don’t smoke, and my husband forbids me to drink before noon. So what’s a gal to do??As a child I bit my nails, a nasty habit that halted when I got braces. After two days of bloody cuticles, I stopped. It was an efficient, if expensive, cure.
Years ago, during my divorce, I got so jittery I baked like a crazy lady around the clock. After a couple of weeks, none of my friends would answer the door when I showed up with muffins in hand.
My mother smoked when she was tense. She also cleaned house. Many’s the time I’d hear her vacuuming wildly in the wee hours. Once my older sister got up at 3 a.m. to go to the bathroom. Seconds later she crawled back in bed, madder than a wet hen. “Mama’s bleaching the toilet,” she said. “I have to wait.”
(Come to think of it, living in a tiny house in the middle of nowhere with four kids, a husband and one bathroom, Mama was probably tense most of the time.)
My father, a man of few words, cleared his throat when he was stressed. He also jingled the change in his pocket.
When I was about 10, he accidentally locked all of us out of his Ford Falcon during a downpour, miles from home. Mama gave him a bobby pin (and a murderous look) and herded us kids beneath the overhang of a closed gas station.
Moments later, as Dad fiddled desperately with the lock, a lodge brother walked by, safe and dry under a huge umbrella.
“Hello, Russ,” he called out. “Everything all right?”
“Ahem! Yes, everything’s--HURRK!—fine,” Dad said, jamming both hands in his pockets and jingling change furiously. “We’re—RURRH!—just running errands. Say—RHAACK!—hello to the wife for me.”
“Are you crazy?” Mama yelled. “Tell the man we’re locked out!”
Dad harrumphed and jingled until the brother returned with a coat hanger and jacked open the lock. Mama fussed at Dad all the way home. “You stand there gargling, I swear,” she muttered. “Jingle those nickels, pal!”
My oldest brother, Bubba, talks a lot when he’s tense. His wife is a gentle soul who listens patiently, so that actually works out well.
My other brother, T-Bob, has been nervous since his first-grade teacher tried to cure him of being left-handed. He developed the habit of twisting a lock of hair around his left index finger. Forty-five years and 5 million twists later, he wonders why he has a cowlick.
I tend to pace when I’m nervous. I can’t sit down, let alone eat. I used to clean out the cabinets, until the day I opened a cupboard and a falling bowling ball almost took my ear off. That was the end of that.
I’ve tried exercising more, counting all the books in the house, downloading music, praying and, my personal favorite, watching Bernie Mac re-runs. Nothing helps for long…. no, wait!
I just realized what works.
You’re reading it.
Julie R. Smith, who also flosses compulsively, can be reached at widdleswife@aol.com.