My inspiration for this post came from my dear, longtime blogging friend, Debbie @ Musings by an ND Domer's Mom, who is not only a gifted...
Right before I wrote this post I called my mother in Florida to asked her the details, because I wanted this story to be absolutely accurate. And also, because after you read it I didn’t want you to say, “Oh Ron, you silly man, you made this up didn’t you?”
Let me start by saying that my mother is smart, intuitive, humorous, a wonderful conversationalist, and just a really great human being. She loves and respects animals and nature with all her heart, so that just goes to show you how great she is.
However……
She can sometimes be a smidgen absentminded.
My father use to always refer to her as Lucy from the TV show I Love Lucy, because he never knew if he was going to walk in from work one day and discover one of his children accidentally thrown inside the washing machine with their clothes on.
Oh, and another great thing about my mother is that she’s an excellent cook.
Well, that is….as long as she notices the difference between a cooking product and an oven cleaner.
Exhibit A
Exhibit B
I was already living in NYC at the time, so I was saved from this little accident.
Thank god and baby jesus.
It all started when my mother came home from grocery shopping one day and inadvertently placed a new can of Easy-Off Oven Cleaner in the kitchen cabinet above the stove where she normally kept the Pam Cooking Spray. And placed a new can of Pam in the kitchen cabinet below the sink where she normally kept the Easy-Off.
On that same day she decided to make pork chops for dinner, so before she closed the oven door she gave the seasoned chops a hearty spray with Pam to help brown them.
Throughout the afternoon before my father and brother came home, she kept smelling oven cleaner permeating air, but assumed the odor was coming from a slight burn-off residue that was left from her oven cleaning earlier that week. So, she really didn’t give it anymore thought.
As my father and brother sat down for dinner that night, she placed a pork chop on each of their plates.
Naturally, they began to eat.
My mother, being someone who likes to tidy up the kitchen before she sits down to eat dinner, began putting certain things away. And as she was placing the can of Pam back into the cabinet, she suddenly noticed the front label.
Easy-Off (she froze)
She slowly turned around and looked at my father, saying, “ Um, Frank….how do those pork chops taste?
He replied with a full mouth, “GREAT hun….never tasted better.”
“Well, please don’t eat any more and try not to get too upset when I tell you this, but I’ve done a terrible thing….
Epilogue: Miraculously, my father and brother never got sick or even dropped dead from the poisonous pork chops. However, from that moment on my father quit his job and stayed home and cooked the meals, while my mother got a lucrative job cleaning ovens.
Okay, I admit it….I made up that last sentence.
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