Conversation Between Him And Me

Him: My sister-In-law is staying with us for a few days. 

Me: Is that good news or bad news? 

Him: I enjoy her …….. 

Me: … for the first hour and a half? 

Him: Right. When I visit relatives overnight I always stay at a motel. I like my privacy and expect others do, too. 

Me – That’s because you didn’t have any pajama parties as a kid. 

Him: I didn’t even have any pajamas. 

Me: Now they call them sleepovers. In our day I can hear mother saying, “I never heard of such a thing.” Besides we were so poor…,.. 

Him: How poor were you? 

Me: We were so poor I slept on the kitchen chair. 

Him: Who had chairs? The floors was too good for you? 

Me: We rented out the floor to pay the rent. I lived on the fire escape. 

Him; I was raised on day-old bread and dented cans and thought everyone was. I miss fire escapes. 

Me: I’d go out there and pick up the hockey games from Montreal …. except they were in French. 

Him: The window with the fire escape was the most important thing about our apartment… cross ventilation. My mother didn't mind the four story walk-up, no incinerator, but it had to have cross-ventilation. 

Me: Right. My mother had a love/hate relationship with air. There were two kinds of air; the dreaded draft that caused all disease and fresh air that cured it. 

Him: We must have had the same mother. 

Me: Wisdom traveled well in those days