Remember Your Roots and Keep Them Colored

A stolen Suburban

By Trena Eiden
Posted 11/3/20

One day last year about this time, I was in the bank during a slow time of day, so the tellers and I had a chance to catch up on each other’s lives.

The chatter soon turned into a …

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Remember Your Roots and Keep Them Colored

A stolen Suburban

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One day last year about this time, I was in the bank during a slow time of day, so the tellers and I had a chance to catch up on each other’s lives.

The chatter soon turned into a discussion in regards to a Facebook post someone had placed from our county about a truck that had been pilfered. We naturally asked each other, who locked their cars at night to keep this exact thing from happening? One person said she always did whether day or night, while a gal on a ranch said she never did unless she goes to a big city. Most of these ladies agreed that they take their keys out, but a few said they didn’t, and they had never really thought or worried about it.

Obviously, unbeknownst to me, my brain kept this conversation stored in the back of my head. Of all the things I wish it would remember, it picks this? This! Really brain?

A few weeks after the bank chat, our daughter, Lunny, was home for a visit, and one lazy Saturday morning I was lying in bed thinking of what fresh hell to put Gar through. I’m joking, though he’d say, “Probably not.” No, I was musing on what to have for breakfast and decided on breakfast burritos for Lunny and her dad and me.

As I got all the ingredients out of the fridge, Lunny was on the couch in her jammies, doing something for work, and Gar was in the bathroom. I cracked the eggs in the pan then glanced over to the tortilla package and realized we only had one left. I sat my eggs off the burner and went to knock on the bathroom door and asked Gar if he’d go get some. Yes, he would. Good answer. Lunny heard me, and volunteered to go but I dismissed her offer, saying her dad was dressed so he’d go.

I went back to the kitchen and once again started prepping the meal and waited for Gar to come out of the bathroom ... and waited and waited and waited. Finally, exasperated — and here’s where ya’ll are gonna get a little judgy — I stomped to the bedroom, slid on some jeans, pulled a sweatshirt over my pajama top and, grabbing my wallet and keys, went out the door to my Durango.

I started pulling out of the driveway when I realized the Suburban was gone. I stopped and glanced over at the pickup. It was sitting there. My eyes cut back to where the Suburban should have been but wasn’t. Oh, my gosh! Someone had stolen the Suburban! I pulled back in the driveway, jumped out, ran up the steps into the house and, without knocking, burst open the bathroom door. Empty.

At some point, without me noticing, Gar had come out of the bathroom, closed the door and went to the store. Lunny watched me breathlessly barge into the bathroom then immediately step back out. With a puzzled look she asked, “What are you doing?” Before I could answer, Gar walked into the house. I questioned, “I’m guessing you had the Suburban?” Confused, Gar offered, “You said you needed tortillas.”

I babbled “I know, but I didn’t see you leave, and the bathroom door was closed, and you were taking so long I thought you were knitting a sweater, so I decided I’d go get the tortillas, but then I saw the Suburban was gone and thought it’d been stolen.”

Gar pursed his lips and Lunny spoke both their thoughts: “You’re a dork.”

Our grafted-in-daughter, Gelly, rewarded our 6-year-old grandson Romes, with an action figure he’d been wanting. He was so tickled that at bedtime he put a pillow in his trash can, laid the figure on it, covered it up with a paper towel for a blanket and positioned it on his bed by his pillow.

In the wee morning hours, at his mother’s bedside, she woke to him sobbing, “Mommy, we’ve been robbed! And my little guy is gone.” His mom took him back to his bed and as she drew back the covers, there was the toy figure, nestled in the sheets. Being flesh of my flesh, Romes looked at his mother and widening his eyes and wrinkling his forehead, said, “Oh.”

I always say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. One day our second son heard me and dryly replied, “Or the nut.”

Remember Your Roots and Keep Them Colored

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