A VERY ANGRY WOMAN

Attending fifth grade in St. Stephens Catholic School was fun with my new friend I made, Terrance, he was in my class and after school we would have fun doing things together. We always were trying to stay out of trouble on a daily basis. Sometimes we would go to my house that was a few blocks away from the school or his house located directly across the street from the school and the church to play after school. We would go to my house a lot more often because of all my friends on my street. We had more than enough kids to play a pickup baseball game. We would play in empty parking lots after the company employees went home from work for the day. There were no baseball diamonds in the neighborhood, the ones that did exist and we could use were too far away for all of us to walk too. So, we had to settle for pickup games in empty parking lots or empty fields. We had to make the best of what was available.

One day after school, we decided to stop at Terrance's house and watch TV and play with his beagle dog Smokey. Merv Griffin was on the television as we played in his small living room of his mother’s cozy home. We were there playing for about an hour when we heard a lot of very loud screaming and commotion outside. We both ran to the door to see what was going on. We were both shocked by what we saw. There was a woman chasing what appeared to be her husband around a car with a broom. Around and around the car, they ran. The woman waving her broom trying to hit her husband with it, with lots of swearing and screaming. Since this was happening right across from the church and school, a woman who was also witnessing the event went to call the priest to stop this fight. The priest was in disbelief of what he heard the woman telling him. He quickly grabbed his jacket and left. The priest came running when he saw the woman chasing the man. The priest put his hands up in the air and shouted "STOP" at the lady, but the lady was so mad she started to chase the priest around the car too. Around and around the car went all three, now it was becoming a comical scene. Now almost every neighbor on the block was watching this strange event take place.

Finally, the lady must have been so tired out from chasing the man and the priest and completely out of breath. She finally stopped chasing and sat on the curb to try and recuperate. With all the neighbors watching and laughing the husband and the priest must have felt embarrassed. The three went to the sidewalk to talk. The priest looked a mess from running. All I could think of as a young ten-year-old boy was that all women must be crazy. Being a little boy and having a mother that could hit you with her shoe at twenty feet. I really believed it was true, now I felt traumatized, I thought to myself I never want to marry an angry woman. I always was very skeptical of angry woman growing up as a teenager and as a young adult since that day. From that early age until I was in my mid-fifties, I never once dated a woman with angry personalities, and I didn’t marry one. To this day, I have not been hit by a shoe or chased with a broom. It turns out not to be a crazy thing to do.