Momma Bear Part 2

I have mentioned in the past that I grew up protecting my shy quiet twin, and after her post of last week, you might be a little confused, since shy and quiet doesn’t seem to coincide with a momma bear personality, but I can attest they do.

The first hint I had of this side of my twin was in our early teens. At the time, we had several cats of various ages and sizes and one day Konnie got mad at one our bigger cats that kept attacking her kitten.

At the time, I was heading toward our front door to enter the house, when suddenly the door flew open banging against the metal siding of the trailer and the offending cat in question went sailing past my head while from inside came a rather loudly pronounced swear word. And I wasn’t the only neighborhood kid staring, stunned. One of the boys nearby turned to me and asked, “Was that Konnie?”

I answered, “It wasn’t me,” which only added to the oddity of the event, you see, me swearing in anger was pretty common back then, but to this day it’s the only time I’ve heard Konnie swear.

Though it isn’t the only time I’ve seen her lose her temper. The next time was in our late teens and the victim was the oldest of our brothers. He deserved it, but instead of helping, I decided I was safer to let her have at it. Meek and mild Konnie is scary when she’s that mad!

And I found that very confusing, since I’m known for flying off the handle. Back in our early teens, one of my tirades was a fairly regular thing, generally about once a month.

In fact, I knew my husband was the perfect man for me when he took one of my tirades all in stride – before we were married. He didn’t run and hide, but he didn’t try to stop me, he just calmly waited until I took a break then he’d ask me if I was finished, feeling better, or whatever fit the situation, which did get annoying sometimes, but then so did his approach to unsatisfactory service. Instead of voicing a complaint, he just never returned to that establishment. My opinion was they can’t improve if you don’t tell them what they did wrong, but sometimes that isn’t needed.

A case in point is an incidence, which happened while he was stationed at Great Lakes. We decided to go out and found a local branch of a national chain. The host seated us and a couple minutes later seated a family of four not too far away from us.

And we waited. A few minutes later, a waiter approached the family and took their order, passing right by us without stopping. After he’d served the family their drinks, I stopped him and informed him no one had taken our order yet. He informed me we weren’t his table and that he’d tell our waitress and we waited some more.

When that family of four got their meal, Tom announced he’d had it and we left. Which is when I learned maybe Tom’s way did work, as we left the parking lot I spotted the manager storm out the back of the building and start to berate a waitress having a smoke break, and I learned to calm down.

Of course, I also don’t have anyone who needs my protection anymore. I think that helps.