MOM FOR THE WIN

My sister Julie named her first bike "Crotch Biter" ...for obvious reasons.  She was about four or so when she learned how to ride a bike. She took to it pretty well, she only rode out into traffic once, so all things considered, that's pretty good.

We had a neighbor, named Betsy. Betsy has become infamous among my my family's friends for the various escapes she has gotten into.

Betsy saw Julie having a little too much fun, and came out to tell her that she was calling the police because Julie was riding her bike on the sidewalks too fast.  Julie, being four years old, was understandably freaked out, and ran home to our mother. Julie ran into the house screaming that the "fuzz was out to get her."

My mother instantly knew what was going on, as she has had many run ins with Betsy herself. She kindly told my sister that she hoped that the police did come out, because she would like to tell them about all the various crap Betsy had done to our family and others on the block, and that no, Julie was not going to jail.

When my parents first moved into the house, my mother was taking out the garbage, and ran into Betsy. She thought Betsy was a nice friendly neighbor. Then Betsy told her about how when the previous owner of our house died, Betsy and her family entered the house and took all the meat out of his freezer, seeing as how he had no use for it anymore.

This little tid bit set off the "Freak Alarm" in my mother's head, and my mother politely tried to go back into the house. Betsy tried to follow after. My mother again tried to politely say that she had things to do, again, Betsy tried to come into the house. My mother ended up abandoning all politeness and shoving her out of the house and locking the door, after a couple more attempts.

And Betsy wasn't the only one in her family that had a screw loose. She had a daughter and a son. I will get to the son in another post, because he is a piece of work.

My brother and my favorite winter activity was packing snow tightly against one side of our front steps, and then going sledding down them. We lived in Chicago - a flat, midwestern city. There were literally no hills to be had in our neighborhood. So, being ingenious little children that we were, we figured out how to make our own snow hill for sledding.

Betsy's daughter (who was a teenager at the time, when we were roughly six and seven) was walking by as we were sledding. She remarked that we must think we are so clever but she and her friends had done this sledding trick way before us.  We replied that she must think she is so clever even though she probably wasn't the kid who invented it, and if she did, she should have patented it, but I guess you're not that clever. (See, we were little snarky asses even then!)

She went home and told her mother, and Betsy promptly came on over to give us the what for. My brother and I had to keep from peeing our snowsuits from laughter. Betsy was literally the only adult we were NOT afraid of getting yelled at by. Part of it was even as children we could tell she was an idiot, and the other part was listening to my mother describe her as "that IDIOT" (high emphasis on the idiot part, as though she is YELLING it.) when describing Betsy to my father.

My mother happened to get home at the time Betsy was yelling at us, and my mother, with baby Julie in one arm and a gallon of milk in the other, walks up to the scene. This is what I remember of that day:

Betsy: Your bratty children told my daughter she wasn't clever enough to patent a SNOW idea! Can you believe that!

Mom: Did she patent it?

Betsy (obviously confused): Well no...

Mom: Well, that would make my children correct, wouldn't it? Come on kids, back in the house. Oh and Betsy, never talk to my children again.

MOM FOR THE WIN. Whenever it came to Betsy, no matter what we did, we always knew our mother would have our backs.

This post has obviously been brought to you by Enna, as Julie was probably too preoccupied with all the snow, seeing as she was only one at the time.