Healthier than WHAT?!

Hello my wayward companions!

After far too long an absence from the Blog-O-Sphere due to holiday obligations, travel, picking up a second job, and general miscellany, I am back in the blogging chair! And with a gem retrieved over half my life ago that was so profound in its hilarity that for years afterward neither my mother nor I could rarely even attempt to convey the tale due to the spasms of laughter which would overcome us at every opportunity, much to the amusement of any listener. (Who may still never fully understand the true hilarity of the situation). Nevertheless, I will try my best to convey it to you with the best of my ability.

Tonight's featured episode stars yours truly, my wonderful and ever-hilarious mother, and a cameo by a strangely terrified man, who is most likely irreparably scarred for life. All during what appeared, at first, to be nothing more than an ordinary shopping trip in a grocery store. But first, some back history.

My family has always been a bit... boisterous in public. We are somewhat acclimated to looks of annoyance, perturbation and sometimes borderline rage from fellow patrons in whichever establishment happens to fall victim...er... play HOST to our familial gatherings.

We can't help it. We feed off each other. The jokes become even more hilarious when accompanied by the crimson-hued countenances of my siblings. We expand the joke past common sense, common decency and occasionally, socially-acceptable boundaries. In public. So yes, we are used to getting looks of frustration from random strangers, but rarely terror.

That was all about to change.

To the best of my recollections, my mother and I entered the grocery store, both tired from our week, and me needing luncheable foods for routine high school sustenance.

Well, as previously mentioned, I talk. A lot. But when I'm tired and spaced out, when I have a lot on my mind, if there's something shiny, or if you ask me a question to which the answer isn't immediately upon my tongue, I tend to trail off and not answer a question. (To be clear, however, I do not, typically mumble).

We passed a display near the entrance to the store when we first set upon our circuitous route of the store... and apparently I read the display sign aloud rather than to myself, but apparently just loud enough that my mother caught part of the phrase.

We were well into the produce and I was thinking how precarious it must be for the produce stockers to stack shiny Red Delicious apples into such neat and wax-coated pyramids, when *apparently* out of nowhere my mom looks at me and asks "Healthier than what?"

I blinked at her.

"Healthier than what?" I echoed back, mind clean as a freshly Windexed whiteboard. (No one knows what a chalkboard is anymore...)

She blinked back, puzzled, and slowly pushed the cart past the heaps of produce to the canned goods. "What?" she asks back?

I had no clue.

Enter stage left, a man fastidiously sorting through cans of baked beans, or possibly black beans. Could've been navy beans. Definitely not white beans. I would've remembered.

I looked at my mother, entirely befuddled. "What are you talking about?" I queried.

"Healthier than what." she supplies, as though that were the answer, which it most definitively was not.

The man gave us a cautious glance as we advanced, hurriedly placed his canned goods into his metal cart and skittered away.

We proceeded through the aisles, carrying on our conversation.

"No, mom.... I'm ASKING you. Healthier than what?"

"What?"

"You said, healthier than what!"

"No, YOU said healthier than what. What is?"

She places items into the cart, brows knitting. "What?" She asks me, exasperated.

"What is healthier than WHAT!?" I shoot back, annoyed.

"That's what I'm asking you!" she turns face-on. "What is?!"

"Mom! THAT is what I'm asking you! WHAT is healthier than WHAT? That's what I'm asking!"

In the bread aisle, we again encounter said jittery man, eyeing us with growing concern, shooting us nervous glances as our voices begin to escalate in true Abbott & Costello fashion re-enacting our version "Who's on first" skit, though more heatedly (though less physical violence) due to my mounting frustration with my mother answering my question with a question.

"WHAT is HEALTHIER than WHAT?"

"Yes, that's exactly right!"

"WHAT! That doesn't make any sense!"

"What doesn't?"

"You said 'Healthier than what' so I replied 'What?' and you said 'What' so I said "Healthier than what?' and you said 'Yes!' That isn't an answer. So I'm asking you, WHAT it is healthier than?"

Infuriatingly, Mom says "Exactly!"

The man's eyes have grown wide, I believe his hands may have trembled and his face paled. A second time he fled from us, throwing anxiety-filled glances over his shoulder as he rounded the endcap of stuffing boxes.

Distracted by this man's apparent activation of his fight or flight response, and opting for the latter option, I forgot my line of interrogation temporarily.

Silence.

A rattling cart wheel.

My mother sighs.

I ponder a man frightened enough to run away from a mother and her teenage daughter doing some grocery shopping.

We near the registers.

We pass by a display. I gasp noisily and grab my mother's arm. She jumps.

"HEALTHIER THAN WHAT!!!!!!!" I yell, in characteristic over-reaction. She looks at me as though I've truly cracked this time.

Desperate to explain, I holler, "Hi-C is healthier than the leading boxed juice brand! It's on the sign over there!"

My mother and I gaze at each other momentarily in amused comprehension of our entire conversation and then the hysterical laughter bubbles up from inside me replacing the earlier frustration. I have a remarkably loud (and, often noted, contagious laugh). My laughter pours out of me. I gasp for air, muttering between peals of laughter "Healthier than WHAT!" and my mother inevitably joins me, our laughter growing the longer we go on. We near a checkout lane, and almost beyond comprehension, there stands the man.

In our line.

With eyes big as dinner plates.

Our poor terrified man who looks as though he's become a caged rat trapped behind the rotund lady in front of him who is taking her glorious time laboriously writing a check, and behind him in line, the two of us, guffawing and still repeating our mantra to each other through convulsions of giggles "Healthier than what!?" cackling like deranged maniacs. Which he obviously thought we were prior even to our outburst.

He panics, squeezes past the ample woman writing her check with all the care of a monk illuminating the calligraphy on a medieval sheepskin parchment. He fled, abandoning his purchases, cart and all left stranded in the checkout lane, racing for the door as though the unholy hounds of Hell were nipping at his heels.

Screeching with laughter, my mother and I are literally wiping tears away as we push his cart out of the way while the checker inquires, rather reticently, "Did you find everything okay today?"

I am holding my aching ribs, face nearly purple, my mother is barely able to contain herself, wiping eyes and nose with a tissue that she unearths from the depths of her purse as she says "Oh yes, we found out what it was healthier than!" Our laughter rings anew. Other customers are staring at us. The checker's mouth is half-opened, and incomprehension rests in her eyes.

To this day, I smile writing this post. Perhaps nobody can truly understand and it's a situational humor story only, but if my retelling of our hilarity didn't tickle your funny bone, perhaps the Abbott & Costello version will enlighten you to the true enormity of the confusion we were experiencing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Watf8_Rf58s
(However, my Mom is MUCH better looking. And shorter. And my voice is a little lower... and I pluck my moustache.)
---------------------------
P.S. - even today, I innocently texted my Mom "What?" in reply to a text I didn't understand from her (a sequence of numbers - remarkably cryptic and no discernible code to unravel the encryption. Turns out it was less exciting than my imagination concocted and she was trying to call someone and mistakenly entered and sent the text from her message screen. I blame Dan Brown and reading Lost Symbol too many times.)

However, in true Mom fashion to my query of "What?" she replied "Healthier than what?" and wrote "I couldn't resist that reply." HA! Yep, it's STILL funny, at least to us!

Which was even more striking because today in my shower, where I do all of my deep thinking, which is why, consequently, I need a MUCH larger hot water heater - and why is it called a hot water heater anyway? You don't have to HEAT hot water... you heat cold, or perhaps lukewarm water. A room-temperature water heater....) ANYWAY, in my shower I was just contemplating how best to write a blog post about "Healthier than What!" So there you have it.