Art, Family, Kids, Uncategorized

Oops!

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After my father-in-law’s funeral last week,  Husband and his two siblings divided up the memorabilia. There was no quarreling or hard feelings or difficulties. Husband got lots of photos, an Ohio State sweatshirt, an acrylic painting of willows on the Sheboygan River that his mother had done years ago, and two beer steins that his dad and stepmother had bought in Germany and Austria.

We decided that our son should have the steins. He was back at the hotel when all this dividing up happened, and when we got back to the hotel I marched up to his room, a stein in each hand, knocked on the door, and enthusiastically announced “Bier Her!!”  A total stranger answered the door. I was at the wrong room on the wrong floor! The middle aged female occupant was very nice about it, and we laughed, but my did I feel embarrassed.

Tell about a time you were embarrassed. Any interesting stories about dividing up things after a funeral?

49 thoughts on “Oops!”

  1. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    Renee, that is funny. You are our Bier Baboon. I award thee the Golden Banana!

    Years ago, at the beginning of my career, I worked at an agency in Southern Minnesota that combined Social Services and Mental Health Services. There was a psychologist on the MH side who was quite arrogant. He would attempt to intimidate the social workers with a stare and some verbal jabs, which were meant to distract from some deficiencies in his diagnostic and report writing skills.

    I had a very difficult child protection case, for which he had done some testing. I had to meet with him about this. I was new and came into the situation when things had become conflictual with a supervisor above me, so that person was also there, but the conflict did not involve me. However, everyone emphasized that it was important I hold my ground with the psychologist. I did that during the meeting. However, in a state of victory and focus on the topic, I did not realize that my legs were crossed and my right leg fell asleep.

    I stood up to leave proudly and victoriously. My right leg collapsed, and I fell to my knees at the feet of Dr. Arrogant.

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      1. The Golden Banana must have gone by the wayside when our winter was so difficult and there were so many losses (for awhile I did not have the oomph to be on the Trail). I must be pulling out of it now if the GB has re-appeared.

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  3. Husband said that during the memorabilia sorting he kept thinking of that scene in A Chistmas Carol in which the are dividing up Scrooge’s possessions after his death.

    My paternal grandfather had a prosthetic left leg from just below the knee. My grandmother and my dad had an argument over it, as Dad thought it should be buried with Grandpa, and my grandmother wanted to see if she could sell it. She was ever the penny pincher, and said “We paid good money for that leg!”. My mom had a discrete word with the funeral director, and he disposed of it.

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    1. There are people who make lamps out of old mannequin parts and prostheses. Your mom missed an opportunity to have a “fashionable” piece of home decor…or maybe she did not miss it.

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      3. Make a lamp from old mannequin parts? I can imagine a floor lamp built around a mannequin woman’s leg. The leg ends in a heeled shoe, which would be unstable, so we put a base under. Stick a shade on top. Hell, let’s make that a fringed shade! This might sound wild, but I can picture such a lamp clearly in my mind.

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        4. I recognized it as well Steve, but wasn’t on the trail yesterday. I actually have a friend whose husband and son recreated the leg lamp from Christmas Story and the son has it in his den in the basement. It’s hysterical.

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        5. Steve, I had such a busy day—weeded, then made jam (strawberry-rhubarb, sour cherry, raspberry-chili pepper), and then afternoon chores. It was funny, just needed to wait til this morning.

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    2. I am in from weeding, now drinking liquids and preparing to cook.

      I have temporarily survived the weeds, but maybe not the mosquitoes.

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  5. My most memorable embarrassments can’t be told in polite company. But there’s some lurking memory of knowing I was right and stating it emphatically, only to discover they were right. More to come as the day wears on, I’m sure.

    Not so much right after a funeral, but when I moved my mom to a senior apartment months after my dad died, I got the lion’s share of the choices in the “leftovers”, since I was traveling by car and my California sister by plane. But I promised to save some things for her. Now every time she visits, she puts into her suitcase a few more pieces from a set of Depression glass.

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  6. Funny story, Renee. It reminds me of my own mix-up wearing a Swedish Santa Claus suit. I know I’ve told the story here before, but if you’ll bear with me, I’ll tell it again.

    We were celebrating Christmas Eve with Ken and Eva and their three young daughters in South Minneapolis. Eva had asked if I’d be willing to dress up in her newly acquired suit for the occasion, she’d like for her girls to experience a visit from the Swedish jultomte. Of course I would, and the girls and I had a lovely visit where I handed them presents from their Swedish grandparents.

    When I had completed that assignment I hopped in my car and headed down the street to deliver a small gift I had purchased for the young daughter of some friends who lived a few blocks away. I checked the house number and rang the doorbell. To my chagrin the door was opened by a total stranger surrounded by a bunch of small Asian children. My pitiful pillowcase held only one small package, not even a candy bar or an orange. I felt pretty deflated when I had to explain that I was at the wrong house. Wonder how the kids felt; Santa had come to their house but claimed to be at the wrong address.

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  7. I’ve written before about the night I was mugged at the intersection of Cedar and Riverside. The next day I bought a little brass canister of tear gas for self defense. It was small enough to carry on a key chain. During lunch hour at the adviser’s office where I worked, coworkers wanted to see this thing. One of them put it back on my desk. It rolled, fell, landed on its trigger and exploded. Tear gas–an amazing amount of it–flooded the second floor of Johnson Hall, forcing us to shut down the office, although a few stalwart deans continued to work in nearby offices, weeping on their papers as they did.

    While I did nothing really wrong, I found this embarrassing.

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      1. I agree with PJ. You can’t be embarrassed if you lack ethics and a capacity for shame. You can’t be embarrassed if your only touchstone for discriminating between good and evil is that whatever suits you is, by definition, good.

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    3. I believe that those like #45 experience embarrassment to an astronomical degree, which is why they fight so hard to avoid it. Look up “narcissistic injury”. It may explain a lot.

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  9. I just returned from our small local farmer’s market. Such a lovely market with a bunch of very friendly growers and vendors of all kinds of homemade stuff. Alas, business is slow, three different vendors tried to give me stuff. One handed me a large bag of green beans, and said, “Here take these. I have too much stuff to get rid of.” So I purchased some uncured bacon from him instead. I managed to spend $17.00 in total despite the bacon being the only thing I purchased. I got a raffle ticket, tipped the musician a few bucks, and somehow ended up with an insulated cover for a frying pan handle. My favorite bread maker wasn’t there today, so I didn’t get the one thing I came for.

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      1. Things are moving at a snail’s pace. While it appears that everyone has moved out, Tommy is still hanging around outside from time to time. Yesterday he had another huge fire belching black smoke in the back yard, and he mowed the lawn while it was raining! Oldest brother, Pauli, came and boarded up a shattered kitchen window, and Jackie, oldest sister and the executor of the estate, stopped by a couple of times to survey the lay of the land. The junk cars remain, and there appears to be no attempt to deal with all of the stuff in and behind the garage, and inside the house. This could take months, I’m afraid.

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  10. Last night I met my son at Pumphouse Creamery so he could look at my computer and make a pronouncement as to its health. The computer and I have so much in common! It is old. It is missing parts. Nothing can save it from the rigors of age. We sat out on the bench in front of the ice cream shop, licking drips and discussing tech issues. I need a new computer is the bottom line. I am so grateful for this guy, his knowledge, and his patience with me.

    He had a scoop of strawberry and a scoop of chocolate. I had a 1-scoop cone of praline-salted caramel. It did ease the poor prognosis. And their ice cream is So Good.

    Today we are off to an afternoon wedding at a winery. I hope there are no embarrassing incidents, but if there is I will return home and write a story for the blog. Meanwhile, I have one more patch to weed this morning. And yesterday I found 3 ripe 🍅.

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  11. Yesterday morning I visited a local branch of my bank. The visit surprised me by showing how rapidly this part of town is changing. The banker who helped me was from Thailand. The bank had an African-American greeter keeping things moving. One customer was from Somalia, and another chatted on her phone in Spanish. This used to be a boringly white neighborhood. No more. Although I left just five years ago, the pace of change is remarkable.

    After the banking I visited the apartment my daughter’s family is renting. I hadn’t seen it before. Wow. The apartment complex was quite swanky in 1961. While the building shows signs of aging, the place is still beautiful and impressive. The building is 23 stories tall. My family is on the 13th floor, high enough to offer a stunning view of the river and the surrounding neighborhood. My grandson talks dreamily of falling asleep while looking out his bedroom windows at the colored lights of airplanes taking off and landing. It is a joy to see how enthusiastic my family is about starting life anew in this area.

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  12. Husband’s 95 year old uncle died in the night. Husband will make the trip to Chillicothe, OH for the funeral. Now he has only one aunt left. She is in her 90’s, too.

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      1. It is. In one month my mother turns 91. Her only surviving sibling is 84; her husband just turned 87. I have been living in dread of phone calls lately given their advanced ages.

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  13. I once attended a memorial for a friend who had collected rocks during her life and placed them around her house and yard. At the memorial we were invited to select a few rocks and take them home. The one I have is a grayish white and sort of egg shaped.

    Kind of a nice memento that sits in the yard and doesn’t need to be dusted.

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