Who Does That???

Though we had moved out a year or so earlier, Crystal, Carma and I would always come home for Sunday dinner. On one such Sunday I watched eleven year old Stacey, who had just finished her meal, walk up to my dad. She wiped her mouth on his shirt and walked away. Who does that???? The answer to that is simple: only a Campbell.

The "Bad Drink"

When I was sixteen my mother received a call from my little sister Katey’s Primary teacher, Sister Wood. Katey, only five at the time, had divulged some interesting information during Primary and it had caused her a great deal of concern. In Sunday their lesson was on the Word of Wisdom. They came to the point where they started talking about “bad drinks,” at which point Katey helpfully piped up,

“My sister Crystal drinks bad drinks all the time. Sometimes she tries to get us to drink it too.”

Sister Wood was shocked. Could this be true? If it was, parents had to be notified right away. Not only was I drinking, I was offering it to a five year old. It couldn’t really get much worse than that.

My mom, however, wasn’t as quick to believe the story, but the fact that it had been brought up at all suggested that some further investigation was needed. The first witness called to the stand: the accuser, Katey.

“Did you tell Sister Wood that Crystal was drinking a ‘bad drink?’”

“Yes,” said Katey. “And she tried to get me to drink some, too.”

“What was it that she tried to get you to drink?”

“Pepsi,” Katey said simply. “She was drinking caffANE.” (This was how the triplets pronounced the ingredient that they had been warned against. I find it interesting that it sounds alarmingly like the word ‘profane.’ To them, it was!) “She asked me if I wanted to try it when we told her she shouldn’t be drinking it.”

Now, the truth of the matter had come out, and Katey wasn’t lying. A few days earlier somebody had loaded the vending machine wrong and when I hit the button for Sprite, a Pepsi came out. I was a little disgruntled at first—if I was going to be drinking caffeine, Coke would have been my first choice—but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I still had plenty left over when I came home from school, when the triplets spied the half-empty bottle in my stuff.

“You shouldn’t be drinking that,” a chorus of well-trained voices sounded. “It has caffANE!”

To be funny--and to hear three squealed protests--I waved the bottle in front of them and said, "Do you want some? C'mon, you should try it, it's goooo-ooood!"

Maybe I shouldn't have teased them, but it was funny how well my parents "no caffeine" rule had sunk in, even at five years old. I should consider myself lucky. Should this tidbit of juicy misinformation have gotten into less kind hands, I may have earned myself quite the reputation. Because I drink "bad drinks" everyday. All the time. Just not that kind.

Eight Lives

It was a typical bus ride on the way to Clearfield High School until I saw a sad pile of mashed black fur clinging to the road. I was horrified. Melody loved that cat. Smokey had been a Christmas present the year before, and ever since she hand-picked the tiny black kitten from the Ogden animal shelter she had adored him. His previous owners had him declawed and as a result he didn’t venture outdoors very often. I was surprised that he wandered several blocks from home to meet his fate on a busy road, but that hazy shade of black fur was unmistakable. As soon as I got off the bus, I headed for the pay phone to tell my mom the bad news. Through the rest of the school day I worried how my seven year old sister was going to react to the death of her beloved pet.

My parents had the same concern as they scraped Smokey’s mangled remains off the asphalt and placed him in a cardboard box. When they got home, they decided to leave his left his leftovers in the car until they had time to soften the blow for Melody. Mournfully they opened the door and stepped into the house and called out Melody’s name, but before she had time to answer, Smokey greeted my parents at the top of the stairs. He was alive! Thanks to my phone call, Mom and Dad had performed a free public service and cleaned someone else’s cat off the road, but at least they didn’t have to break their daughter’s heart. Years later, two questions still remain. Whose cat was it? And most importantly, does the incident deduct one of Smokey’s nine lives?

A Reasonable Request

I bought my first car—a weary old ’91 T-bird—the summer of 2002. It had had a rough life, but any respite it might have had by coming into my possession was quickly derailed when, on its second day under my ownership, I pulled too close around a corner and ended up with a massive dent in the passenger side door (I was pulling it into the mechanic’s garage to have its emissions and inspections done, no less). Luckily, my boyfriend of a year, Keaton, was adept at car maintenance, and he viewed the minor mishap as an opportunity to upgrade the peeling silver paint to something a little less…homely. Over the next several weeks we picked the paint color and began making the preparations to give my sad little vehicle a much needed facelift.

About this same time, my Grandpa Campbell’s temple recommend expired. Normally this wouldn’t be such a big deal, but there was a temple session coming up that my parents wanted to attend, and no time to get his recommend renewed before that day arrived. When it did, they could only find one explanation for why they were getting ready to go without taking him with them. The reason? They told him he hadn’t had a bath, and they didn’t have time to help him take one. He couldn’t really argue, so they left without incident.

For me, this same sunny Saturday had become an opportunity for Keaton and me to get down to business, and in my family’s ample driveway we began to undertake the task of sanding the peeling paint from my T-bird in preparation for its makeover. My parents were long gone, and though my siblings were swarming the house, we had the driveway to ourselves. It was a pleasant afternoon. We parked beneath the tree at the top of the driveway, right at the end of the walk leading to the front door. We were busily chatting--Keaton was working on the drivers side, while I took the passenger--when the door of the house slowly swung open and Grandpa hobbled out. We were accustomed to his habits, he spent most of the day walking a circuit around the inside of the house, and sometimes in his wanderings he would include a jaunt down the front sidewalk and back. But this time his movements seemed more purposeful. I watched with curiosity as he shuffled slowly to my boyfriend's side and said something to him in a very low voice. Keaton's face suddenly took on a peculiar look of confusion and surprise--and perhaps a dash of horror.

"Well..." Grandpa said, then continued his amble back into the house.

"What was that?" I asked Keaton. "What did he say to you?"

The shell-shocked expression had not faded from his face. "Your grandpa just asked me to give him a bath. He said it wasn't a woman's job." He paused. "You're not going to make me do it, are you?"

I laughed and laughed and laughed.

Needless to say, Grandpa passed the rest of that day unbathed. And four years later, I married the boy who might have been willing to give himself up to the ultimate test of devotion to his girlfriend.

Which is, of course, bathing her eighty year old grandfather. An entirely reasonable request.

The Project

The last couple of days have been dismal and rainy, and yesterday at work there was nothing to do because the bad weather usually scares even the most determined bank customers away. My coworkers and I began to talk about our families, and I began to tell stories about mine...and anybody who knows my family has an idea of what kinds of stories we can tell. Eventually I began to tell stories about my late Grandpa Campbell, who in his aging years became quite the interesting protagonist in a wealth of family stories. After laughing myself to tears upon relating some of the most memorable (his exhoration to my then-boyfriend Keaton to give him a bath, the safety pin episode, etc.) I decided that it was about time that we all pooled our memories together. So I started this second blog in hopes we can capture some of those moments.

-Crystal-