The Funny Things In Life

Valerie J. Steimle

Whenever someone asks me to tell them about my life, I like to tell funny stories. They are more entertaining than regular stories and it makes my life seem more interesting. So when I sat down to write today, I thought about some of those funny stories.

For example, before we moved into the house where we live now (13 years ago) we lived in an old farm house farther south which no longer exists. We were waiting to move into the house we were building so it was very temporary and several interesting things happened to us there. I was very pregnant with child number seven and we were homeschooling the four oldest children.

One morning we woke up to find six pigs in our front yard. Now mind you this was a farming community but our house was situated on a very busy highway, so we were afraid the pigs would get run over. We all ran outside and chased them towards the back. We noticed they weren’t adult sized pigs. They weren’t piglet sized either. That left only one conclusion: they were teenaged pigs and they didn’t want to be caught. No matter what we did, they got away from us. My older four children enjoyed the pig rodeo for a while but were left frustrated because we were not successful in catching them. We used a fish casting net and they ran right through it. We tried a trail of my very tasty bread rolls to the fenced area but that didn’t work either. They didn’t like them. (Imagine that) We tried to trap them in a pit but they ran out. My children came up with the idea of hiding in the bushes and barking like dogs to scare them into the pen area but again that didn’t work. They just merrily wondered around looking for something to do. So we reported the lost pigs to the amused police department and went to Walmart. When we returned, the farmer of the pigs had somehow followed their trail to our house and was able to pen them into the fenced area awaiting their return home.

Another funny experience in that house happened when I was quietly sitting in the living room by myself watching a little TV at night when two mice appeared. We had been catching them left and right in traps because the house sat in the middle of a field and was not in the best of conditions. I think the total mice caught before we moved out of there were 23. Anyway, these two mice were just standing in the middle of the living room and I kept quiet and watched. They stood on their hind legs and started waving their fore legs around as if they were dancing with each other. I was the only one that saw this, so naturally no one believes it ever happened, but I know it did. It has been the family joke ever since.

Before we left that house my 12 year old daughter was accidentally locked in the bathroom and could not get out. The door was stuck shut. An air balloon landed in our backyard and an ultra light airplane crash landed in the front yard. And finally, we found a huge corn snake in the broom closet which was killed with a sand wedge golf club by the oldest town policeman they could find.

The funny things in life………it’s what keeps us from getting bored.