Mom Z. Gets Smacked with Physics

A few years ago, I ventured home to NJ for a weekend of leisure.

As I bounded up the front stoop, my mom greeted me and swung the front door wide open, ready to embrace me in one of her famous squishy, heart-warming hugs. The only difference was that this time, as I bounded up the step, I slowed my pace and cocked my head to the side. She stood staring at me blankly, unsure what had caused me to literally stop in my tracks.

My gentle, sweet, good-natured mother who never gets angry and very rarely engages in sarcasm (thanks, Dad, for that gift), stood at the threshold of our home with two very black eyes.

All at once, I was firing off questions — who did this? when did this happen? In a fit of rage at the traffic on 287, 78, or 22, did Dad lose it and lash out, pummeling you? Did someone attack you? Why hadn’t you mentioned this over phone calls the past few days?

In a look of sheer embarrassment, smiling meakly, my mom covered her face and said, “Oh that….I thought I told you.” To which I responded, “No Mom, you failed to mention anything about two GIANT black eyes! What happened?”

Then she explained she had been trying to replace a perch in one of her birdhouses (my parents are addicted — the older they get the more lawn ornaments and birdhouses they own). Once she found the perfect diameter of branch, she needed to shorten the branch. And rather than use a saw to cut the branch on my dad’s workbench, my mom used a saw to cut the branch….across the bottom of a canoe that was resting on a pair of sawhorses. The sawhorses were not at either end of the canoe, but instead, near the center. Much like a see-saw.

Once my mom sawed through the branch, the canoe (which she had been pressing all her weight on) then bucked up, and hit her in the face.

I would like to say that I asked about her condition and if she was alright, but let’s face it. That’s not how I work.

Instead, I laughed SO HARD, I was bent at the waist, holding onto the door frame of the house trying to catch my breath.

As I repeated, “You got hit….IN THE FACE….WITH A CANOE…” my mom concluded, “and you know what your (chemical engineering/fuel science/genius) brother said when I told him what happened? ‘Mom, it’s just basic physics.’”

I nearly wet my pants laughing so hard.