Lucy Redux

Occasionally I worry that I’m channeling the ghost of Lucille Ball from a lost episode of “I Love Lucy.”

One Sunday my husband Jack and I had gone with our daughter and her family down to the Bosque River, to fish and enjoy nature. Jack had to travel to Austin from there, so I rode home with Jill, John and the boys.

Jack had entrusted me with putting his fishing poles away safely. When we got home, I leaned them against the porch bench until I could unlock the door. Jill, John and grandsons drove away.

A saving grace: that meant there were no witnesses.

Apparently I slipped into the “Lucy” dimension on the front porch as I waved goodbye. Because when I turned from the door to pick up the poles and carry them in, the treble hook on one came loose from its eyelet and snagged on the left leg of my jeans, down below my knee. I did a little hop-step into the house, holding both poles, and went on to the kitchen. I laid the poles on the table and put my left foot up on a chair seat and tried to unhook myself.

Now a treble hook is so named because it has THREE hooks. When you try to grab that sucker you’d better be careful. It sure wants to do its job, which is to hook something. My foot being up on the chair made things awkward, and I couldn’t extract the hook from the denim. I decided to take off the jeans to be able to get closer to the hook. Grabbing the pole that had hooked me, I took my foot off the chair to discover that before the hook snagged me, its line had wrapped around the line of the other rod. I couldn’t separate the poles.

Again holding both poles, I hobbled into the bedroom and kicked off my shoes. I couldn’t get the leg of my jeans down over my left foot no matter how hard I pulled. That’s when I discovered that the hook from the second pole had snagged my cotton sock. Its fibers were wrapped tightly around the prongs of the hook, never to let go.

Light bulb moment: I wouldn’t try to work the hook out, I’d just cut it out of the sock! Now I hop-stepped (holding both poles, snared now by hooks in both my jeans leg AND my sock) over to my desk, got my scissors and cut the hook out of the sock. I unwrapped the two lines, laid the poles down, took off my jeans, and was then able to get the other hook out of the jeans without tearing them. Put my jeans back on, threw away my ruined sock, hung both hooks carefully on their eyelets, and put the poles in the garage.

When Jack called me to tell me that he’d arrived in Austin, I said “You’ll never believe what happened to me,” and recounted the story. His first question was “Was there profanity involved?” “No,” I answered, “just a lot of laughing.” His second question was “Why didn’t you just cut the lines?”

Well, shoot. If I opened the dictionary to the word “chagrin,” would I see my picture there?

I had spent fifteen minutes getting myself untangled from two hooks on two poles, and it had never occurred to me to cut the lines. I couldn’t even claim to be trying to save Jack from having to re-tie the hooks. I just didn’t think of it.

As a kid watching those old “I Love Lucy” shows, even as I laughed at her antics I remember thinking “Nobody could be that stupid.”

Just call me Nobody.
(Dallas Morning News Neighbors 12-31-05)