Yours Fell

Yours Fell

Most families have a cache of stories that live on and are passed from generation to generation. Often the legends are embellished and there is a fine line between truth and fiction. In the end a brother may turn to a sister and say,

“What are you talking about? It didn’t happen that way!”

I’m not certain if my daughter has a better memory than my son or if she is simply more creative. He swears that she makes up stories, especially the ones that portray him in a less than perfect light.

When my father was alive, he was the family story teller. We would all begin laughing far in advance of the punch line and that would start fits of laughter in Grandpa. Sometimes he would have to take four or five passes at the ending before he could get it out. One day my son said to my daughter,

“Are you laughing at the story or are you laughing at Grandpa?”

The best loved tales were the ones about my father’s brothers and sisters and the tricks they played on one another.

"Remember the time Jack hooked the buggy up to the horse wrong?” he would ask. “When I tried to stop the buggy it would run into the back of the horse and she would take off again at a gallop. Grace fell off the back and she was holding Ruth.”

It was inconceivable to the children that their very proper old aunties and uncles could do such things.

“Did Jack hook the buggy up wrong on purpose?” the kids would ask.

The tradition of story telling keeps a family’s history alive and I love being linked to the past by colorful threads of truth and half truths.

There is a saying in my family that has become a private joke. It is the direct result of a story my daughter loves to tell about her brother. He has absolutely no recollection of the incident. 'Yours fell' is always said tongue in cheek and the unenlightened are often at a loss to make any sense of it.

“I don’t get it.” people say to those of us snickering.

Taken out of context it makes no sense. For example, all the mistakes that happen in the kitchen like burnt toast and misshapen muffins are usually explained by 'Yours fell'. Of course that’s part of the game. The stranger the fit, the funnier it seems to us. Once when a concierge apologized for not having a seat on the bus for my uncle, my aunt turned to him and said,

“Yours fell.”

The concierge didn’t understand but he was relieved that my uncle was laughing.

Meaghan tells the story best because there is a taste of revenge in her voice as well as a smile on her face. Aaron in turn sheepishly says,

“Here she goes again. I don’t know where she gets this stuff!”

This is how I remember the story. My husband and I took the children on an outing to a local fair. It was a ferociously hot afternoon.

“Can we have ice-cream? Meaghan asked.

“I want a Coke, I don’t want ice-cream.” replied an irritable Aaron.

My husband handed over some money to Aaron and pointed out a booth where he could get two ice-cream cones. The coke was vetoed. Meaghan stayed to watch a clown blowing up balloons. We didn’t pay attention to the fact that Aaron had been gone for some time.

"Where is Aaron?" Meaghan asked.

We couldn’t see him at the booth so my husband went in search of her brother.

"Where are they mommy? Are they lost?"

It always seems like an eternity when a child goes missing but it couldn’t have been more than five minutes when Aaron and his father returned. Meaghan eyed Aaron who was nonchalantly licking a strawberry ice cream that was melting copiously down his wrist. There was only one ice-cream.  Meaghan asked the obvious,

“Where’s mine?”

Aaron has always been a person of few words. Lengthy explanations have never been his style.

“Yours fell”, he said.