When a Southern Woman Rambles... by L. Avery Brown (nice books to read TXT) 📕

My parents were frantic trying to figure out what I’d done. And when I held up my hands, the stapler was still attached to my thumbs! I was bawling like a…well, like an 8 year old. And then my mother yelled at my father for having the stapler in the car. Then my father yelled at my mother for yelling at him about having the stapler in the car saying ‘how was I supposed to know she’d staple her fingers?’ But then they both yelled at my brother and sister because they thought it was really damn hilarious.

Once my siblings realized this was not the moment to push their luck, my parents had to deal with my poor thumbs. My father popped the lock on the bottom of the stapler to open it (so as to staple things onto a wall) and thank God, he saw that the staples didn’t ‘bend’ in my skin like they would have done around a few sheets of paper so they were just stuck in my flesh and didn’t have to be wiggled out or anything.

Oh, Lord, could you imagine trying to use one of those staple removers to yank out a staple from your kid’s thumbs? Gives me the willies just to imagine it!

After the staples were removed my thumbs started to bleed from the punctures…right onto my pretty polka dot sundress! My Daddy didn’t have anything in the car to stop the bleeding (which wasn’t really that bad but I kept crying and screaming “I need some boo-boo stickers!”) So my mother grabbed a couple of Kleenex out of her purse and wrapped them around my thumbs then my father went to the back of the car, got out the tool kit and found some silver duct tape. After a bit of good old fashioned ‘emergency lane’ doctoring my thumbs were taped (making it look like I’d had a nasty run in with a blender or something) and I was feeling a bit better. 

By the time we made it into the church my tears had dried but my thumbs still bore witness to the fact that something had happened aboard the USS Williams that Sunday morning. Needless to say, my Daddy and I didn’t play tic-tac-toe or dots or hangman. And then for some inane reason  I insisted we try to play ‘thumb war’. (No, actually I know why. I figured I had a unique ‘sympathy’ advantage being wounded and whatnot) 

However, I quickly realized it was a really dumb request. The only thing that made the day not so utterly horrible was when my Daddy whispered in my ear as the minister was giving his sermon “Don’t worry, Pumpkin, after church and lunch we’ll go to the Cabarrus Creamery and you can get a double scoop of fudge rippled ice cream.”

Because it's common knowledge that ice cream makes everything better.

L. Avery Brown, a former secondary level educator with an extensive background in US and European history, not only spent over a dozen years dedicated to teaching, special education, and curriculum development but she is also an accomplished orator and thespian in both standard theatre and musical theatre. Since stepping away from the education field in 2007, she has devoted her time to writing; something she's loved for as long as she can remember.

Professionally speaking, when Avery isn't busy working on her own projects, she is a literary liaison (helping her Indie Author friends and associates get everything ready for the big query so they don't feel like they're trying to move the world alone), a freelance editor, a manuscript evaluator, and -if she has time- she likes to review Indie Authored books.

Born and raised in 'The South', Avery, a Southern Belle by birth, currently resides in Austin, TX with her family.

To learn more about Avery, please visit her author's website www.laverybrown.com. Feel free to follow her on Twitter @LAveryBrown, too. 

Text: L. Avery Brown
Images: L. Avery Brown
Publication Date: 07-15-2013

All Rights Reserved

Dedication:
To my dear husband, with whom I like to giggle!