Westover Family Memories

After Jessica’s post of Miller family memories, I felt that I had to share a few from the Westover side. In no particular order:

The time in Indiana when Sean drank lots of water, and ran around the house just to listen to it sloshing around in his belly.

Or the time that Sean drank all that water so that he would have to pee, thus providing the perfect excuse to leave in the middle of Sacrament Meeting. He may have over done it, because we were only halfway to church when he had to throw up.

The time Tom tried to claim “Nudeless Scientific” as a magazine during a heated game of Scattergories. When question on it, Tom insisted it was a real magazine. “It’s real! I saw Mom reading it at the doctor’s office!”

While we’re on the subject of Tom: Remember that time when he screamed “You son of a gun!” Sean and I laughed ourselves sick. When we told him that son of a gun wasn’t really a bad word, he got SO mad. “You don’t know what it means to me!” He then locked himself out on the deck while we kept laughing.

Sean and I would often hop the fence behind the house in Coeur d'Alene. We’d sneak into the neighbor’s garden and munch on their rhubarb. Little did we know that they were neo-Nazis. Like, legitimate skinheads, who liked things like crossbows. They shot our sliding glass door with a BB gun once.

That one time, in England, when Sean was afraid to touch the sheep.

Tom has often disappeared, only to be found playing games with old people. Once, it was checkers with the old guys at the library. Another time, he taught an Arab how to play Uno.

I remember playing t-ball one summer when I was 6. That was the same year we had gotten Sally (my dog), and we brought her with us to my t-ball game. In the eyes of a puppy, a wide open lawn filled with little boys running around and throwing a baseball must look like heaven. The first chance she got, she ran right out onto the field, and started chasing the ball as it was thrown from one player to another. At one point, a player actually had to jump, hurdler-style, over my dog.

Remember Dad’s mustache? I don’t think anything more needs to said about that. Seriously. Let’s just pretend that never happened.

Sometimes, when Mom describes the oddly interconnected relationships of friends and family (generally referred to as a “Family Knot”) she waves her hands and gestures a lot. One time, she was waving and gesticulating like she was coordinating airline traffic.

Once, Dad started singing the song “Mandrake Root” by Deep Purple, while Mom was drinking milk. She laughed, snorted the milk, and then experienced the “Snorkel and Spray” phenomenon. The next day, she had to go to the emergency room with pneumonia.

Mom wasn’t always the victim, though. Once, while on a road trip, the parents were in the front seats, and the kids in the back. We started pestering her for something to drink, because we were thirsty. Just poor, thirsty kids, stuck in the car on a long road trip. Apparently we pushed Mom just a bit too far, because she whipped her head around to face us and said, in a surprisingly raspy, menacing tone, “Oh, just suck on your spongy tongues!” We stopped bugging her pretty quick.

I remember when Dad found a small baby rabbit in our yard in Indiana. I adopted it as a pet, and named it Bunny Hopper. About a week later, I had to release little Bunny Hopper back into the wild. I still remember it. Immediately afterwards, I had to go to swimming lessons. I still don’t swim much.

I remember once trying to run away from home with Sean as my travel companion. Since we didn’t have suitcases, I had the bright idea that we should wear as much clothing as we could. Somehow, this led to us both being bundled up in sweaters and snowpants and (in Sean’s case) lederhosen. The layers were too much for Sean, and he curled up and fell asleep on the floor. My parents came in as I was trying to make my escape through a window.

I remember watching the awful movie “The Beast Master” on TV once with Dad. As a kid, I thought it was great, like Conan, with pet ferrets. Now I think it’s pretty strange... like Conan, but with ferrets. I once rented the movie after seeing the cover and getting nostalgic. Apparently they edited this one for TV. If you ever decide to rent this weird movie, be aware that even though it’s PG-13, there are boobs. So it’s actually Conan with ferrets and boobs.

Remember when I got stopped at airport security in Germany? The machine-gun toting guards had to pat me down and go over me with the metal detector wand. What was I smuggling? Nutella. Totally worth it.

After a dinner of Kentucky Fried Chicken, Mom kept all of the packaging. She cut out each and every image of Colonel Sanders, and then taped them in unexpected places in the bathroom. What’s that on the mirror? Col. Sanders. What’s that inside the cupboard door? The Colonel. Lifting the lid of the toilet? Bam! KFC! It was pretty surreal.

Whenever we’re about to leave for a trip, my Dad packs the car. Anyone who has witnessed this ritual knows to keep clear, because something about luggage turns my Dad into a grumpy dictatorial cranky-pants. He will begin to pack the car. Halfway through, he will UN-pack the car, grumble about people’s luggage, and then proceed to repack it. If you make the mistake of bringing him one last bag during this process, he will snarl at you like a mean dog, and then once again un-pack the car to start all over again. I guess I shouldn’t complain, because Jess tells me that I do the same thing.

The time when Tom and our cousin Matt were left unsupervised in the basement. Somehow, that ended with Matt standing on top of the entertainment unit, peeing off the edge, raining stinky terror on everything below. The parents were not amused.

Once, Sean and Tom were told that Corell dishes were unbreakable. They then proceeded to test this theory by dropping dishes off the second story deck onto the gravel path below. The theory was proven false.

Speaking of incorrect hypotheses, if someone says that hair does not burn, they are mistaken. If they try to prove it with their own hair, and a Bic lighter, they are severely mistaken. It’s possible that I was mistaken once, but it didn’t show too badly, and my hair grew back.