TV Exercies & Cathy & Me

My cousin Cathy and I were virtually sisters since we were only nine months apart in age and she a only child , while I might as well have been one also because my sisters were so much older then I . There fore , Cathy and I spent a lot of time together growing up . We got along as sisters do , sometime it was honey , as they say here , and sometimes we had a lot of crying onions , but for the most part we rubbed along well together .

We got into a lot of " adventures" that I am quite sure our mothers would have rather we hadn't but mostly we were good girls .In the summertime I would go stay at my cousins house with her since her grandmother lived next door to her and could keep a eagle eye out on us while our mothers worked .

My aunt used to have all over her house all these fragile glass knick knacks on every available surface and in the most dangerous places for two growing children to avoid breaking at all times .A complete disaster waiting to happen at any moment . They usually did, like the day we decided that we would do the exercises we saw on TV .

The TV was in the living room and so were all those dainty knock knacks of my aunts , all over the place . The man on the TV told us to get something , anything , that had some sort of weight to it and do arm lifts while holding the heavy objects in our hands . We tried the handy encyclopedias that Cathy had , but they were way too awkward to hold and lift at the same time . Then we tried pillows but they had no weight at all ! What to do ? By this time that man in TV had moved on to bigger and harder exercises and we were trying to catch up with him . He wanted us to run in place , fast ! We tried but kept bumping into the coffee table and knocking over those little thing a ma bobs of my aunts .Well ,that wouldn't do at all .He moved on to a really tricky exercise now .... we had to lift something heavy over our heads and swing our arms around in the air .Oh boy !

I can't remember who's idea it was to fill the plastic bags up with the ice cubes but it seemed like a good idea at the time , you know what I mean ? So , here we are , in a tight confined space , with things that break real easily , swinging plastic bags full of ice cubes , with gusto at that and laughing the whole time because it was sooo fun !Whoosh , whoosh , whoosh , around and around we swung our little arms with total abandon giggling and having a ball doing our exercises with the man on TV cheering us onward to do more .

We did . I personally think it was one too many whooshes that did it , although Cathy claimed later that it was the flimsy plastic bags that gave out , but what ever it was , the bags in our hands broke together at the same time .Ice cubes went flying like bats outta hell all over the place ! Up, up into the air , arching ever so lightly , then crashing , slamming into everything in it's way . A lamp teetered crazily on the end table . I made a dash for that and managed to stop the crash .The little glass knick knacks on the tables didn't make out so well . A little glass dog lost a leg , a clown was smashed into smithereens . My aunts favorite tea cup was broken in two .When we saw that , we KNEW we were dead !

We rushed around gathering up ice cubes and throwing them away into the kitchen sink to melt there harmlessly , while we tried to get all the broken glass cleaned up before my aunt came home from work . She would be home in one hour . We hide the broken glass in the trash bins out in the back yard .Swept the floor . Mopped up any water from melted ice cubes and broke out the GLUE ! My cousin was a whiz when it came to gluing things back together since she was always bumping into something and breaking it .Most of those things in the living room had already been broken at least once . We figured that if we could get everything glued back together BEFORE my aunt came home , well hey , she would never know !

So , here we were busy gluing stuff together, trying to get it to stick together , scared to death that we would get killed if my aunt ever found out . We had been given a warning already for breaking Cathy's bed the week before, by her , yes , really her , jumping up and down on it . That's another story , so anyway ,we were afraid and trying to hurry up get this all done before my aunt came home . We did , yeah !!! Just as we glued the last piece into place , my aunt drove up in the drive way .Phew , that was soo close !

Aunt Betty comes in and takes one look at our very nervous faces and asks us how our day went . She knew something was up but what it was she didn't know ... yet ! She probes us on our activities for the day even though she has called us off and on all day and had grandma look in on us too, she knows something is fishy .

She goes into the living room , which was reeking with glue ,turns to stare at us and asks us have we done anything ?Of course not we chimed in unison ! We were perfect little angels all day long . We just watched TV that's all nothing else . Hum she said , well how come I smell glue then ? Are you sure nothing got broken today ? OH NO !!! We assured her , nothing !She looks around closer this time and sees a ice cube we had missed in the race against time to clean up the mess peaking out from under the couch . OMG !!! She walks over , picks it up , looks at us again and says um hum !I thought Cathy and I were gonna faint right then and there ! She knew , oh yeah , she knew alright ! We were dead !So then she starts to touch things .Not saying a word while we stood holding our breaths hoping against all hope she wouldn't notice the glue oozing out from hair line creaks in her favorite tea cup she had on display on the book shelf behind her .

She finishes her look see and didn't thankfully notice anything amiss .That was a close call we were thinking when disaster struck . As Aunt Betty was walking out of the living room past the book shelf , the tea cup , being the last thing we glued and the least thing we glued together well , decided to come apart . It made a very small tinkling sound as it fell apart on to it's saucer .She heard that noise and turned to see it happen . She then turned to glare at us with a look on her face that was just scary !!!

We froze like deer in head lights . We were doomed ! What would she do ? My mother and my aunt never hit us in our entire lives . Would this be the first time ?Would we be grounded for life ? Even worse , would we have TV privileges taken away ?It was summertime and TV was a important part of summertime activities , remember what got us into this mess to begin with ? The TV exercise man .

She told us to go to our room we shared .She said she would come to talk to us after she had calmed down . We had to sit waiting for a half hour thinking all sorts of horrible things would happen to us while she cooled off in the other part of the house . Finally we knew what our fate would be .She came in , sat on the edge of the bed where we had been crying worriedly about our doomed life and told us for the next week we would have to spend all our time with grandma next door and do EVERYTHING she told us to do .

That was a fate worse than death because grandma hated little kids and especially us because we once scared her prise laying hen so badly that she stopped laying eggs for a week .I hated chickens because they would peck you when you tried to gather their eggs . Cathy hated the geese because they chased you when you went into their pen . And we knew that grandma knew this too and would make us do those things to get even with us . She did . We spent a miserable week under her very watchful eye . After that we NEVER did exercises in the house no matter what that man on TV told us to do !