Knocked Around

     

Uncle Earl and Aunt Norma 1954

  When my Aunt Norma was in high school, she took secretarial classes, and upon graduation, she worked in an office in downtown Buffalo until the birth of her first child, my cousin, Morgan. There is the classic story that we all love to share of the time Aunt Norma was about nine months pregnant with Morgan and walking across Main Street during her lunch break one day. A car came racing around the corner and honked for Norma to get out of his way – as he passed her he yelled out the window, “hey Lady! You can get knocked down too, you know!” She thought that was so funny!

        Well Aunt Norma and Uncle Earl lived in East Aurora and when their youngest child was no longer a baby, Norma decided to look for work outside the house. She got a job at Fisher Price working the assembly line on the second shift. Every time there was a job opening in the main office, Aunt Norma applied for the position and eventually she got to work as a secretary in the office on the normal day shift.

Uncle Earl told a story one night about a time when Norma was still on the second shift. She and her co-workers clocked out around 11:30 and they asked her to go out with them. Aunt Norma called her husband on the phone to ask him to join them. The phone woke him up, and when his wife told him why she called, he said that he would be right there. I’m sure there was more to this story – obviously Uncle Earl was going to tell us about something that had happened when they were out – probably about one of the co-workers. But I interrupted the story when he said Norma had woken him up and he agreed to go out with her. “Wait a second! You were awakened by the phone and asked if you wanted to go out, and you said yes?”

He looked at me a little surprised, and he calmly explained, “When someone you love makes a reasonable request that is easily fulfilled, I have no problem with going along with it.” And then he told the rest of his story while I pondered this revelation – there are some things more important than sleep, and it is okay to do those things for someone you love!”

The other remembrance I have about Aunt Norma that affected me profoundly took place probably years earlier than the Fisher Price incident. The family was over visiting one day, and Norma started talking about how she had gotten a speeding ticket. She said she had to go to court and the judge asked her, “How do you plead?” and Aunt Norma said, “Guilty, Judge.” She was very dramatic about all this, but again I interrupted at this point, “You said you were guilty?!?” You see, as a child of a lot of television, all that had come into my pea brain was that you never plead guilty to anything! Heck, there is no story if you plead guilty! But Norma was there to say that night that she was guilty and the truth was what you were supposed to tell and that was her story.

Now, as a somewhat more mature person, I know there are times when you plead guilty and times when you don’t, and the time I got my own speeding ticket, I had no problem with paying the fine. Also, sleep is highly over-rated – sometimes we are way too tired to do anything, and other times, it is more than reasonable to do things for the ones we love. These lessons might have been figured out eventually even if I had not learned them from Uncle Earl and Aunt Norma – but I’m glad to have heard the stories from them!

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