I’m not afraid of much, Dear Readers.
Spiders don’t scare me. Clowns don’t scare me. Medical procedures don’t scare me. (Heck, I’ve even been known to get major surgery while totally sound asleep!)
I am, however, afraid of needles. Not the kind that give you shots. No. I’m afraid of the needles at the end of sewing machines.
Boy oh boy does my sewing suck!
You see, I’m a horrible sewer. (No, no not the kind of sewer than needs Roto-Rooter, I mean the kind of sewer who sews — but I’d probably be a horrible sewer too now that I think about it.)
Oh how I wish I could sew! If I could sew, I would sew myself a killer wardrobe where everything I made would make me appear 15 pounds thinner, 20 years younger and upwards of 50 I. Q. points smarter.
It’s not like I haven’t tried to sew
Once, when my daughter was seven, she had a little friend over while I was sewing myself a pair of pants. I had just finished sewing in the elastic waistband and was feeling rather proud of myself when my daughter’s seven-year-0ld friend glanced over from across the room and innocently asked me why I was sewing a waistband in the bottom of one pant leg.
I quickly pulled the pants out from under the needle, held them up and sure enough the little brat was right.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not a complete idiot just an unfinished one.
I suspect my sewing problem stems from my inability to be able to correctly distinguish right from left. Oh sure, I can tell right from left — trouble is I’m only correct 50 percent of the time.
Frankly, I don’t understand people who can differentiate between right from left easily. And it seems like these Left-from- Right Geniuses like to flaunt their god-given talent in the face of those poor souls, such as myself, who consider themselves rather intelligent, overall, if you don’t count a major dumb streak punctuated by pockets of stupidity here and there.
My engineer-husband, 37, takes great delight in vexing me about my dyslexic tendencies:
37: Honey, can you hand me my pocket protector? It’s in the right-hand desk drawer.
Me: Okay, sure. Wait . . . it’s not in here.
37: Yes it is.
Me: No it’s not.
37: That’s because you need to look on the right desk drawer instead of the left desk drawer.
Me: But I am looking in the left drawer and it’s not in here!
37: No, I didn’t mean YOUR right, I meant MY right which would make it YOUR left. So YOUR left is actually MY right so you need to look in the other drawer than the one you’re looking in.
Me: Oh get your own *#@!# pocket protector!
Or let’s say 37 is giving me directions to someone’s house over the phone:
Me: What side of the street is their house on?
37: Well that depends. Are you going east or west?
Me: East or west? How would I know? Just tell me what side of the street it’s on!
37: It’s on the RIGHT side of the street.
Me: Ok, great, thanks.
37: If . . . .
Me: If what?
37: If you’re heading east, that is.
Me: I don’t know what direction I’m heading.
37: Well that’s easy to tell. If your going East, the shopping center will be on your left.
Me: It’s not on my left.
37: Not YOUR left! MY left!
It’s times like this when I want to get out my sewing machine and sew an elastic waistband into 37’s shirt collar. Then slowly tighten it to MY left HIS right MY East and HIS West.
You’ll have to excuse me now, Dear Readers, I have some sewing to do.
Until next time . . . I love you