The Naked Truth.....by AR

One of my favorite family memories was a "that's what I said, but that's not what I meant" incident with our son, Scott.

Our friend, Brenda, has beautiful, pink flowers that are part of the amaryllis family, called naked ladies, growing in front of her country home and partially up her driveway. Early one morning Brenda heard a car stop in front of her house, she heard low voices, then a few minutes later the car drove away. She thought nothing of it until she discovered that about a third of her naked ladies had been cut and taken away. Someone had stolen her flowers! Later in the morning she was talking to a neighbor, who had also had some flowers stolen out of her yard, and the neighbor encouraged Brenda to telephone the sheriff. When the sheriff arrived he said there have been a rash of flower burglaries in this end of the county and the flower vendors in San Francisco had already been notified. The thieves probably wouldn't be caught because no one could positively identify their flowers. The situation puzzled Brenda, "why anyone would steal her flowers?", until she did a little research and found that the vendors in San Francisco were paying $3 a stem for her naked lady flowers. Brenda figured the thieves must have seen her, or heard her dog barking, as she wandered around her garden early that morning, but that they'd be back because there were still a lot of these naked lady flowers blooming along side of the road. She took a bottle of nail polish and marked everyone of her naked ladies, so she could identify them if the thieves returned. 

 

Then early the next morning, she sat in a chair where she could see the road, and her precious naked ladies, with a loaded shotgun, that she was going to shoot into the air to scare off the thieves. The dog was kept in the house, so he wouldn't bark and scare off the thieves. Brenda waited with a nice hot cup of tea. She was giddy with anticipation. Nothing happened. It was now later in the morning than when she had heard the thieves arrive yesterday. Still, nothing happened. It would only take a minute to heat up another cup of tea, so she went into the house, leaving the door open so she could hear if anybody drove up, went to the bathroom, make her tea, walked out the side door .... and she heard the thieves. Thankfully the gun was way on the other side of the house, next to the lawn chair. Brenda's only course of action was to scurry down the driveway, yelling obscenities at the thieves, who quickly hopped into their car, along with Brenda's flowers and drove away. The only description she had was "it was a white car."

No make, no model, no license plate number. It was a clean get-away. Brenda was so mad ... but she had marked all of her flowers with nail polish. So, she calls the sheriff's office again and reports the theft, and explained that she could now identify her flowers.

This is a story that needs to be shared. One, because it's Brenda. Two, because it's funny and lastly because it's such a strange thing to steal. You see these pink naked ladies everywhere during the late summer. So, I relate the story to my husband, who has no idea what these flowers look like. The next day,we had gone into town with our son, Scott. Coming home, Scott is driving, I'm in the front seat, and we're making a left-hand turn onto a busy road, and while we're stopped waiting for traffic, I'm looking around. Scott starts to make the left-hand turn when I loudly declare to my husband in the backseat, "Oh my gosh, look at all those naked ladies over there!!" Scott reacted immediately, turning the car right, looking for real live human naked ladies. Scott hadn't heard the naked ladies flower story. Scott was really disappointed (and we were now going in the wrong direction.)

These are not naked ladies--I think they are day lilies? but that's another story.

 

I think of Scott every time I see naked lady flowers. I even took a picture of them for the front of his upcoming birthday card. Everybody should have naked ladies on their birthday, especially young men. It's our duty as mothers to educate them (with a little embarrassment thrown in.)

Thanks for sharing, AR!!