Murphy’s Law is my family’s motto. I am pretty sure that when my ancestors built their castle in Scotland in the year 1205, their coat of arms over the front door said, “If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong with us.”
Disasters run in our family. You, my faithful readers, are quite aware of this…my articles are full of interesting and ironic events that color our lives. When my sons were going to be married, I warned their fiancées about our rotten luck. The fact that they married my sons anyway says a lot about their characters. They are awesome young women.
As far back as I can remember, unusual catastrophes have plagued my family. Here is another one.
For some bizarre reason, my father, who was a Baptist pastor, and my mother bought a small pool table. It wasn’t a legal sized billiard table; it was several feet smaller but still a lot of fun.
We put it in what could be termed loosely as our “den”. I really think it served as a study before we moved there. The room was about 12 feet by 9 feet, so the small pool table took up most of the space in the middle of the room.
My fiancé had the best time playing pool with my dad. Both of them considered themselves “professionals” and fantastic pool players.
They weren’t.
But my mother was.
Now, my petit mother who never said or did an evil thing in her life fell in love with the pool table. When none of us were home, I have my suspicions that she practiced. So one night my fiancé and dad were playing a rather vicious game of billiards. They were neck and neck when mom walked in the room and watched for a minute. When she vowed to play and beat the winner, both men stopped and fell over laughing.
An hour later, they weren’t laughing. My mom had beaten my father and sunk most of her balls on the pool table, and he hadn’t even had a chance to play. When the game was over, my chagrinned dad had to admit that my mom was the best player. But my fiancé thought her win was just lucky. So she agreed to play him, too.
Now, this is where it gets funny.
They began to play and sink most of the balls on the table, and just as my mom was about to hit the winning ball and sink it in the corner pocket, she shoved the pool cue so hard that her hand slammed up against the pool table.
Howling, she jumped around holding her hand that was swelling quickly. Dad rushed her to the hospital for x-rays which showed that she had fractured her hand.
Of course, the doctors and nurses wanted to know how it happened and were quite shocked when she announced that she had broken it on the pool table after beating everyone in the room.
A nurse raised her eyebrows and stared at my mom. “Aren’t you the pastor’s wife?”
Mom, embarrassed, nodded, then asked, “When can I get the bandaging off so I can finish the game?”
At church the following Sunday, there were a lot of shocked looks at my mom and even more snickers at my dad who had to admit publicly that my mom was a pool shark.
Oddly enough, it was just a few short months later that dad sold the pool table and turned the den into another bedroom.
I wonder why?
