elo and i have been together for 20 years.  thought we knew all of each other’s stories.  yesterday morning she was struggling to scrub a frying pan and i asked her if she wanted me to “do a lois” on it.  my mom was lois.

lois got mad at dad in the middle of using the frying pan and she came charging to the back door and threw it off the porch into the snow, with whatever was still in it.  it lay there in the snowbank until it was warm enough one day and i grabbed it up and put it in the trash.

later my dad was teasing her about it and she started slamming it around, making the fire lots bigger.  my dad started backing up out of the way and i didn’t realize until it was almost too late that a flaming frying pan was coming our way.

if i were a better wordsmith this would have conveyed high drama, but in another way the everydayness of this was the point of it for elaine.  i laughed and laughed as i was surprised that she hadn’t heard the frying pan story, either from me or my brothers.  the story kind of showcased mom’s volatile nature and maybe a little of the old man’s cruel streak.

most of a week and i still have the shivers.  if i drown in a bathtub, it is the natural consequences of being “unreasonably relaxed” in there.  if i am “face down” in a bathtub then elaine has snapped.

to be fair, the old man started more than one fire.  he put metal in the microwave, more than once.