Common as sense

If becoming a mum has done anything for me it’s certainly improved my common sense. This may be because before I make any mumsy decisions I tend to “research the crap” out of them first. And as for any non mumsy decisions, well they are few and far between these past 18 months. So maybe it would be fun for me to enlighten you to my ditsy past. I’m not one of those girls that acts stupid because she thinks it makes her look cute. I’ll be the first to tell you how intelligent I actually am. Alls that I’m lacking is some common sense. “Don’t be silly!” people say, “you have lots of common sense”. Oh really! Let’s see what you think in a few minutes then shall we. 

Now I was easily 25 and over and had been driving around 4 years when I discovered rather amazingly that miles per hour (or mph) actually means how many miles you will do in an hour at that speed! I mean I still can’t comprehend it now. It actually means something. It’s not just a measurement for measurements sake. It can be used to calculate how long it will take to get somewhere depending on what speed you drive! Now having discovered this marvellous piece of knowledge, I rushed to share it will those around me, and you won’t be surprised to know that this wasn’t only a revelation to myself. So perhaps I am forgiven in the common sense stakes here. 

Before I had George I used to work in pharmacy. During our training years and college days, myself and my two, now very good friends for life, were released from college early one day. Realising this meant returning to work, we quickly talked ourselves out of it. By the time we travelled the hour home to change into suitable work attire, had lunch, travelled to work? It would be home time. No, let’s come up with a full proof story on what we want work to think happened. So we were released from college a few hours later than the truth and decided we needed to have a lunch break by which point the rest of the real story meant that we actually wouldn’t make it to work until after closing. So we all agreed that we would tell everyone we got released at said time and went to have lunch. My friend suggested we say we went to “Greggs” for a sandwich and then headed for home. “But I had a sausage roll” I piped up.  “What?!” My friends replied, still in the early days of us all get acquainted with each other. “Yeah”, I continued “I’ll say I had a sausage roll, coz there’s no way I would go to Greggs and not have a sausage roll, it’s got to be believable!”. Chuckling as I type this. I honestly can’t lie so to me I had to imagine it as if it were the truth. Absolutely bewildered, my friends could not get their heads around my declaration and to this day they have referred to me as “Trig”. This got round at work and I was soon being pranked with requests to remove labels from boxes, as I attempted to I eventually learned they were printed on. It was good fun though and as soon as I realised my own lack of common sense, I often found it as funny as everyone else. My husband also takes great pleasure when we are out in saying to me “drink up Trig, we’re leaving!” 

Now the piece de resistance as I like to think, although the tales are a plenty, happened in my early twenties when I was living at home with mum and my number two dad. I had a landline phone in my bedroom at the time. It hung nicely on a nail in the wall, until one day it didn’t. I hated to leave things looking unfinished. It just added to the mental to do list that I carried around in my head. Master of improvising that I am, and lacking the motivation to go downstairs and get the hammer, I grabbed the most solid and sturdy thing to hand, my deodarent can. Yes that’s right, for the more savvy readers amongst you, I had just picked up a pressurised aerosol can with the intention of using it to hammer a nail into the wall! A few seconds later and there was a strange hissing sound. It took me a few moments but I soon realised that the hissing was coming from the, now pierced, aerosol can. In a complete panic with the impression that this was now going to explode in my hand, I ran down the stairs screaming at my mum. Her response to my hysteria was to tell me to “throw it out the front door”, in an attempt to just get the potential bloody bomb out of the house. Flinging it out the front door, I watched as it rolled under mums car. Doh! Mum assured me it was fine and before you knew it the panic subsided and the drama was over. That wasn’t before I realised that the fingers on the hand that I had been holding the can in, were now frozen together from the pressurised air that had been released from the can. Ten minutes with my hand in a sink full of warm water and no harm was done and I had learnt a very valuable lesson. 

Of course there are many, many, many more tales I could share, but this is a blog, not a book so I shall have to leave it there for the time being. 

Until next time……