My mother never liked to use scientific words for "private" body parts. As a youngster, as soon as I learned the "correct" names for the anatomy I would insist on using those words but Mother would always cringe at hearing them and would say, "Do you have to say words like THAT?"One time I said, "Mother, it's much better than saying tallywhacker!"
One day we were talking about childhood accidents and my brother Kenny told about a medical questionnaire for the service and he said that he wrote that he had a scar on his scrotum from a zipper accident as a little boy. My mother shrieked and said, "You told them you had a scar DOWN THERE?" He laughed and said, "Mom, DOWN THERE just wasn't specific enough for the Air Force."
My sister-in-law took her baby boy to the doctor and asked him to check his tallywacker. The doctor said, "I've heard it called a lot of things, but never that!"
Mother loved Oprah and watched her every day and would always report about what Oprah had to say. I had only seen snippets of Oprah's show but after Mother died, I asked Les to tape Oprah as it was comforting to me to watch Mother's favorite. After Dr. Oz started appearing on the show, the first time I heard Oprah say "V-J-J", I was taking a drink of Coca Cola and I literally did a spit-take, coughing, choking, with liquid coming from my nose, and laughing, I thought, "Oh, that would have made Mother so happy to hear V-J-J for vagina!"
My brother had been having trouble snoring and his doctor recommended his going to a sleep clinic. The doctor's assistant was related to a family member's spouse.
As he was completing the paperwork with the doctor's assistant, she asked, "Have you remarried?" My brother answered, "No, why do you ask?" She responded, "I just wondered who was hearing you snoring?"
By asking such a personal question, the assistant immediately realized that she had committed a faux pas. She began apologizing profusely and my brother said he laughed and told her that if she didn't work out in that job she could always become a private detective.
At his next appointment the assistant apologized again and he told her that it was OK because he'd told about the exchange several times.
My mother was very pretty, but she hated to have her picture taken as do I and as do three of my brothers. I have only three photographs of her. The one shown was taken when she was 21 years old holding my brother Gary. She always laughed when she told me that she was married two years before she became pregnant and she thought she could not have any children; then she had eight children in 21 years. We were loved unconditionally.
Of all of us siblings, Gary looked the most like my mother, with his pretty skin, dark complexion, pretty teeth, black wavy hair and "snapping black eyes" (as my grandmother would say).
Oh, damn, I look like my father's sister. When I saw my aunt the last time, I turned to my brother and said, "Please tell me I don't look like her!" He answered, "You better start saving for the facelift!"
My mother--I'm going to phrase this politely--had a "prominent nose". One day when my brother Gary was about 10 years old he came home from school and said, "Boy, Mom, I thought you had a big nose until I saw Mrs. Greene's!" Mother said, "Well, I'm glad someone's is bigger than mine and Jimmy Durante's!"
My mother always looked young for her age and as my father was eleven years her senior, she was often mistaken as his daughter. When my father and mother came to my eighth grade graduation, one of my fellow students said, "I didn't know you had an older sister." I answered that I didn't. She then asked, "Who was that girl with your dad?" I answered that it was my mother and she asked, "Wow, she's pretty--what happened to you?"
A small group (Elizabeth, Kris, Dan, Jack, and I) were sitting around talking and the topic of difficult school subjects was mentioned and Dan immediately began telling about when he was in a Geometry class and he couldn't understand it. He ended his monologue by saying. "It was all Greek to me!"
In unison, Jack, Kris and I erupted in laughter and Jack exclaimed, "That's because it WAS Greek!", Dan asked what was so funny. Jack said, "It was a Greek who created Geometry: Pythagoras." Kris said, "No, it was Euclid; that's why it's Euclidian Geometry."
Jack mused aloud, "I think, therefore I am."
Kris answered, "But that's NOT Greek, it's Latin!" and then said, " You know, Cogito ergo sum."
I said, "But that was Rene Descartes; that's the Latin translation but it was originally in French: "Je pense donc je suis."
Jack said, "You two are just showing off now."
Dan said, "This is all still Greek to me too!"
A family member, who is a nurse, sent this to me.
LISTEN CAREFULLY
A man in the hospital, wearing an oxygen mask mumbled to a nurse:
"Nurse, are my testicles black?" The nurse lifted his gown and with one hand lifted his penis and with the other hand lifted his testicles. She looked carefully and said, "Everything is OK, sir."
The man took off his oxygen mask and said, very slowly, "Thanks for that; it was very lovely, but please listen carefully: ARE-MY-TEST-RESULTS-BACK?"
As a young woman, I used to ride to work with an older co-worker and every day I would hear about her myriad of problems during the rides to and from work. She suspected that her boyfriend was two-timing her and one day day she said, "Let's go see Rosie after work." I asked who that was and she said, "The fortune teller."
As I say, I'm always up for an "adventure" but I gained more than I expected.
When we went to Rosie's she told me to wait in the kitchen while she performed her "reading" in the living room with my co-worker. On the table in the kitchen was a chicken inside a cage. In my life, I had never seen such a filthy place. I was afraid to sit down and just stood, trying to eavesdrop on my friend's session. At my turn, Rosie sat in a chair and assumed what appeared to be a trance.
At that time I had never even had a date in my life, but during my session Rosie told me that I would be very healthy, meet a wonderful man, be happily married, live in two different houses, and that I would have a good life although I would have no children of my own but would be very influential in a number of children's lives.
In the car, we compared stories and Rosie had told my co-worker that her boyfriend was indeed cheating on her.
I laughed about the predictions, but two months later, I had a blind date with Gerald.
After Gerald and I were married, both he and I were working two jobs to save for the down payment on our house. I worked at Mead and Steele Data Processing and Gerald worked at International Harvester and at my cousin's gas station.
One evening, I was at the gas station waiting for Gerald to close up and he had lost the keys to the station. We frantically searched everywhere we could think of and Paul, a friend of Gerald's from work, dropped by to visit. Paul said, "I'll call Rosie." I screaked, "The fortune teller!" Gerald said, "I don't believe in that stuff." Paul went ahead and called Rosie. Rosie said that she could see the keys but they weren't inside the station but they weren't outside the station either. Gerald said, "That's crazy!" Rosie kept describing the location and she said that she could see bottles in boxes.
At that time there was a Coke machine outside the station and there were racks to hold the empty bottles.
Gerald went to look around the Coke machine and he found the keys; the keys were lodged in a metal protrusion on the foundation on the front window of the station, behind the boxes of empty bottles. Gerald had obviously dropped the keys there when he was filling the Coke machine.
They weren't INSIDE the station and they weren't OUTSIDE the station!
Although Rosie was impressive, I never visited her again, although my co-worker did. The information she received from Rosie propelled her to confront the situation with the cheating boyfriend.
That was 1968--50 years ago--and recently I met my co-worker and I mentioned Rosie. The co-worker said, "I shoulda listened to Rosie; instead I married the S.O.B!"
My mother never liked to use scientific words for "private" body parts. As a youngster, as soon as I learned the "correct" names for the anatomy I would insist on using those words but Mother would always cringe at hearing them and would say, "Do you have to say words like THAT?"One time I said, "Mother, it's much better than saying tallywhacker!" 
