A BUM STORY WITH A MORAL

I have a funny friend. I am going to call her "Mrs. Bird" because someone once said of her, "She's so dingy that if she were a bird she would fly into a window." She's not really "dingy." It's a game she plays with the world. She's really bright and her funniness enriches my life.

Mrs Bird came to see me tonight. She sat with me for an hour and told me stories. She's a great story teller and all of her outrageous stories are true. For the rest of us life happens in black and white and sometimes not even "talkies," but for Mrs. Bird life happens in 3-D.

One of the stories she told me was about a bout of diarrhea she had last week. She plays the piano for the Primary every other week and she was was supposed to play last week. Her tummy was still rumbling at noon and church starts at 1:00. She had taken Pepto Bismo for two days and thought that surely there wasn't anything left inside but, just in case, she made herself a little pad of absorbent fabric and put it--well, she put it--ah--in her--well, she put it in her crack-part.

She told her husband what she had done--she discusses EVERYTHING with her husband.

He said, "How are you going to keep your--ah--the, ah--well, you know, how are you going to keep it from falling out?"

"You're going to tape me shut," she said and handed him the masking tape.

So he said, "Bend over," and he proceeded to tape across her bottom with strips of masking tape about every two inches. "There", he said. "That ought to hold you."

And it did. And then, after Sacrament meeting, when she got to Primary she found out it wasn't even her turn to play the piano and so she got all taped up for nothing.

The moral: Prepare for the worst and sometimes you are pleasantly surprised to find out you don't even need your bum taped.