Monday, August 18, 2008

Raining Paint, Fisher Price, and Silver Dishes

One of my daughters-in-law was complaining to me the other day. It seems that an upstairs neighbor’s child had spilled paint from their open porch to hers, below. This is of course an occupational hazard of living in multi-storied child-friendly buildings. Naturally, she went to complain. Eventually the upstairs mom sent her son down to clean up.
Now when my kids were small, I put a plastic mesh over our front window-bars, just to prevent this type of thing. After all, we are on the third floor, and even a small item thrown out to the sidewalk below could be lethal (literally!) if it would hit someone. In addition, a three floors drop usually does not bode well for the toy, either, unless it is raggedy Ann. Even a sturdy Fisher-Price “record player” expired after being tossed down the three floors height of the stairwell. (That incident was followed by our putting up mesh on the stairway rail as well.)
Of course, mesh is only partially effective. I remember the irate countenance of my downstairs neighbor as she protested the spilling of an entire bottle of wine on her newly-cleaned window tressim (blinds). I went to investigate (this was years ago), and found the four-year-old culprit in the act. (Where, where, oh WHERE do they get these ideas from????). Said culprit being too young to wipe up properly, I had to go down and do the cleansing.
Since we removed the mesh in the living room, only one item has been tossed out. One day, inexplicitly, when she was about ten, Ricki tossed out a silver dish (which we had received from Ricki’s married siblings). At least it didn’t hit anyone. The thing is, we didn’t notice its disappearance at once, and when we did, half of the 2-part dish was gone The half that some lucky finder found was useful in its own right, but the part left is not. So I added this to my list of “things to tell the investigator” if they ever want to lower Ricki’s percentage of “Disability payment” to less than the present amount. What else could I do?

2 comments:

frumhouse said...

Those close knit balcony apartments fascinate me. My favorite is seeing a long line, from large to small, of tztzit drying off the railings. Also, seeing the little plastic scooters hanging off the inside rails, waiting to be ridden by a crop of kids.

I love the picture on your blog header.

rickismom said...

The picture on the blog header is from the Rocky Mountains (no, not Israel). My parents live near there (now) and it is the incredible views of nature in the mountains that I saw as a child that helped me come to the realization that there must have been a Creator.