My Parental Units

My parents are funny. I’ve got two stories from recent trips home.
One was before Thanksgiving. We were supposed to be looking for a particular gift for someone for Christmas on ebay, and we had decided to bid on it. Mom and Dad didn’t have any sort of account, though. Typically, that would be easy to remedy.

I got online with them and set the whole account up for Mom. They were both watching me, and I asked them for an idea for a username they could remember. This was frustrating because everything they came up with would so obviously be used: “lpierce,” “nicelady,” “mommy,” “me,” etc. I kept assuring them they needed something a little more memorable that no one else would have.

Eventually, Dad started coming up with silly ones, and Mom was not very happy with that idea, especially with “poopy.” Anyway, at some point, Dad suggested, “theyellowroseoftexas,” which was, unsurprisingly, already taken. He was staying in that line of thought and evidently then suggested, “My Wild Irish Rose,” another rose-themed folk song. I misheard him and hadn’t quite picked up on his line of thought. I thought what he’d said was just hilarious: instead of “My Wild Irish Rose,” I thought he’d said, “My Wild Orange Rose.”

Guess what, nobody else had claimed ‘mywildorangerose’ on ebay, so over Mom’s objections, that’s what I made her, and she was especially embarrassed when she bought something eventually. And me and Dad now call Mom our wild orange rose. It seems to fit her.

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Dad’s crazy, too.

He has dry skin, and so he’s always buying lotion to put on when he goes to bed. And he always buys the same thing that Mom hates: that old-fashioned Coco-Butter lotion. She’s always trying to get him to buy something more expensive and more manly smelling. This has gone on for years though.

Anyway, the other night I was down there visiting, and I kept laying on their bed while they were trying to head to bed (there was more company down, so I was going to eventually be in the living room floor). As the three of us were laying there pretty crushed, I kept smelling something pretty strong. I thought that Mom had bought some sort of waxy, coconut-flavored candle, and I really kept looking around for it. There wasn’t a place for a candle, though. I finally got up to go to my own bed, and I realized what that scented-candle smell was.

It was Dad, of course.

So I started making fun of him, of course, pointing out how he smelled like a scented candle. We all three laughed.

But then, Dad decided to defend himself. “I like the smell….It makes me hungry, like pie.”

He was mostly serious.

I never had a chance, did I?