MAMA PONDER ON HER BEST BEHAVIOR

 

One day while I was at my computer workin' on an appraisal, I heard the sweetest softest voice ask, "Don, are you busy?"  That voice sounded so tender and so polite a stick of Land O' Lakes butter wouldn't have melted between those lips.  What made me suspicious however, was it sounded for all the world like Mama Ponder.

I told the owner of that sweet voice that I wasn't busy, why did she ask?  I suspected we had company and 'cause I was preoccupied, I hadn't heard them enter the house.  "Would you please come in here a minute?", the sweet voice asked.  I knew it couldn't be Mama Ponder.  She hadn't used the 'nice' word when speakin' to me since I married Dorey a couple of years earlier.  My curiosity finally got the best of me and besides I have always found it difficult, if not impossible, to ignore someone in need.  I got up and walked towards the voice.  It sounded to me like it was comin' from Mama Ponder's bedroom so that's where I headed.  And that's when I saw that it really was Mama Ponder.

I also saw why Mama Ponder was talkin' sooooo sweet to me.  She was layin' prone on top of her bed with her right upper arm trapped between the headboard and the thick heavy old timey mattress.  An electrical wall outlet was behind the headboard and Mama Ponder had been tryin' to unplug a bedside lamp and when she changed position, that huge mattress popt right back up and trapped her arm.   After I finally stopped laughin', I got Mom loose from that mean ole bed.   I would have dug out my camera and got a photo of that, but I knew I had just used the last roll of film on that darn appraisal.

Boy if we just had a video camera we could have made a $100,000 on the Funniest Home Video show that came out a few years after that.  I should have left that ole rascal where she was, but soft hearted me turned her loose on the world ag'in.  That was the first and the last 'please' and 'thank you' that I got from Mama Ponder and that happened way back in 1984 or 1985.

Don "Brer Bear" Valentine
2000

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