The Curse
April 19, 2007
Hello Possums. As you know, my oldest daughter is occasionally haphazard and can be careless, bordering on clumsy. There have been numerous occasions where her carelessness or absent-mindedness has caused a family disaster.
For example when we were on a holiday with a group of other families at Queenscliffe and the kids were lining up to get their dinner, plates in hands, Kathleen filled her plate then turned around quickly without an awareness of all of the other children crowding around to get their food, and clonked her littlest sister squarely in the eye with the edge of her plate. Poor Sally’s eye puffed up. She had a purple and red shiner for about a week after it.
I cringe when delicate or sloppy things are entrusted to her at setting-the-table time. But these days, if she makes a mistake and breaks a bowl or spills the pasta, I contain my generally spontaneous verbal barrage of how clumsy she is and how she should be more careful and how she should concentrate on what she’s doing.
WHY? you ask? Why should a mother withhold her tongue to chastise a child who is OLD ENOUGH and who should really CONCENTRATE ON WHAT SHE’S DOING?
Well, Possums, it is because of THE CURSE!
We began to notice a pattern in our family. Every time I told Kathleen off, within the next five or ten minutes, I would do something WORSE! For example, after telling her off for spilling her drink all over the plate of chicken on the table, I opened the fridge and a container of beetroot fell out onto the floor upside down. We noted this occurrence, and gradually realized that things like this happened more often than not, until it was so uncanny that we decided that there must be a curse in operation.
The curse has been a well-known phenomenon in our family for years, but recently we realized that it applied to other people, and not just to me. It happened to her father recently. He did something stupid immediately after telling Kathleen off, and all four girls shouted in unison “Dad, its the curse!”.
Now whenever anyone looks sideways at Kathleen, she or one of the other children issue a warning before we have the chance to respond critically: “Remember THE CURSE!”.
Hmm..the curse. Thought you were referring to *the monthly* until you involved your dad. Lol. But you mean instant karma.
But in my experience, there is a connection between *the monthly* and clumsiness because I am the clumsiest ever person during my period. So much so that my family call it clumsy week.
Hmmm, interesting. You must be pretty clumsy for your family to notice a difference, oh dear! But, I don’t think it is the monthly curse, because Kat was like this way before she got hers.
Yes, instant karma, like the John Lennon song!