A Lucy and Ethel Moment

 

When I was growing up my mother loved to watch the “I Love Lucy” show. It cracked her up when Lucy and Ethel would get themselves into some crazy predicament. I remember sitting on the couch beside her as we watched their comical antics, both of us laughing to the point of tears. It is one, among many, of my favorite memories of my mom.  Even though she passed away in 1993 I can still hear the sound of her laughing at Lucy and Ethel.  It just so happens that my best friend, Colleen, who lives in San Antonio, is also a big “I Love Lucy” fan.  And so it is probably no surprise that over the years we have dubbed some of our crazy times together as “Lucy and Ethel Moments”.

I was reminded of one of those moments recently when my friend, Jules, who blogs at The Wonderer, published a post that included some funny stories about herself.  (Check out her post here – you will crack up)  All of that to lead up to telling you about the time my friend and I maced ourselves.

My best friend, Colleen, lives in San Antonio, TX.  We usually manage to get together once or twice a year for a few days.  A few years ago I was in San Antonio for a visit.  One evening, after dinner, we relaxed on her patio, drank some wine and talked (talking with each other is one of our favorite things to do when we get together). 

At that time she lived in an apartment that backed up to some undeveloped land that looked like a small forest and was home to a lot of wildlife.  I use the term “wildlife” loosely as the animals were used to being fed by their human neighbors and were not afraid to get up close and personal.  It was really pretty cool the way the deer and squirrels would come right up to you. 

Anyway, there we were, sitting on the patio and here comes an armadillo – or maybe it was a possum – I really can’t remember which one it was now – coming right toward us.  Whatever it was, I remember it was ugly and was making a little grunting noise. We jumped up and started shooing it away.  It moved back a few feet, stopped for a minute or so and then headed back towards us.  Like I said, the wildlife there wasn’t afraid of humans and thought of humans as a source of food.  After a couple of times of shooing the animal away it became more bold.  It began to almost act aggressive and we were a little nervous, wondering if we should just move inside. Colleen said not to worry that if the animal got aggressive she had some mace on her key ring that was sitting on a small table beside her.  I asked her if she had ever used it and she said no and that prompted her to point it off in a direction away from us and away from the animal and spray a little to see if it worked.  It worked and we went back to talking and keeping an eye out to make sure our little friend didn’t sneak back up on the patio.

A few minutes later, my throat started feeling scratchy and felt like it might be closing up AND I started coughing.  I told Colleen what I was feeling and almost at the same time we noticed that there was an A/C unit sitting near the area she had sprayed the mace and realized that it had probably blown the mace back in our direction.  We were already sort of in that giggling mode that you can get to when you have been a little spooked about something (the wildlife) and we started to get tickled and freaked out at the same time. We started asking each other questions about whether we should call 911 because of the mace and we began to imagine how the call would go… 

911 Operator:  “Hello, this is 911, what’s your emergency.”

Me and Colleen: ”We were on the patio and we were afraid of an armadillo that is practically tame because it was sniffing around the patio to see if we had some food and we tested our mace by spraying it where an A/C unit was running and the mace blew back in our direction and well, we ended up macing ourselves.  Our throat is scratchy and feels like it is swelling up.  What should we do?”

911 Operator: “I’m not sure what you should do but I definitely think you need some help.”

We were ROFLOL.  We took our chances and never called 911 and we were okay.  Well, at least we were not harmed by the small dose of mace – whether we were okay or not was up for debate.

Anytime we are together and hear anything about mace we look at each other and start laughing uncontrollably.  It is definitely one of our favorite “Lucy and Ethel moments” ever. 

What about you?  Got any funny stories about yourself or you and a friend that you want to share?