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Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Granny Panties

This is another repost from an old Facebook note. Why? Because I am lazy and new material takes at least some effort.

This is a true story. Any inaccuracies may be blamed solely on faulty memory.

Summers at Rushford Lake were one of the best parts of being a kid in the Kemp family. In the early eighties, my younger brother Jeff and I would often spend a week with our grandparents at the waterfront cottage they owned.

The days were long and there was always something to do. We'd swim until we were wrinkly, imagining we could cross the whole lake. Next, a boat ride with Grandpa, where he'd pretend to run out of gas. We learned to waterski, light fireworks and take a bath in the lake. We hunted crayfish and collected interesting rocks. There were all sorts of visitors at our dock. The most exciting was when we saw Aunt Lil and Uncle Art's pontoon boat on its slow approach.

In the middle of the week, we'd all take a short trip back to our grandparents full-time house in Williamsville. There was no washer or dryer at the lake and there were always other small tasks to attend to. Grandma would wash all the clothes and fold them back into our suitcases. Then we'd head back to the lake for a few more days.

Once upon one of these fun summers, my brother and I returned home as usual, grins on our faces and sunburns on our shoulders. We could still feel the rocking of the boat if we closed our eyes. Mom asked if there were rocks in our suitcases. Of course there were, but only the most interesting ones I could find.

I'm sure when mom opened our bags that she was grateful that grandma helped with the laundry. She removed the dirty clothes for washing then moved to the more neatly folded clean articles. There were shirts for Jeff's drawer, a pair of shorts for mine, then....

Mom lifted an item of clothing totally alien to us all. As it rose, the white cotton square became slightly unfolded. We all stared, wondering what this was. It certainly didn't belong to my brother or myself. Mom unfolded it again, then again. As the exponential expansion ended, we realized exactly what we were faced with. GRANNY PANTIES!

Someone snickered. It may have been me. All three of us dissolved into giggles. A wicked gleam came into Mom's eyes and as Jeff and I stood unsuspecting, she suddenly brought the underwear down over his head!

I learned that day what screaming and laughing at the same time feels like as Jeff hurriedly removed the offending garment and tried to place on my head. I ran one way as Mom ran the other. It was, however, inevitable that each of us would suffer the ignominious fate of wearing Grandma's panties on our head. For the better part of an hour, alliances were forged and broken repeatedly as we ran through the house laughing so hard we almost cried. Eventually, the mission devolved into simply throwing the panties at each other until we all collapsed.

I'm not sure what happened to those panties, but I know three people who will never forget them.

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