Betwitched, Bothered, And Akilter

Whoa! Bear with me, will you, while I get my nerves under control. I've had a small fright. The exact same small fright I had last night. I'm having post-traumatic fright syndrome right now.

Mrs. Hillbilly Mom has a secret. That secret is a little phobia. Not so much a phobia as a bad case of nerves. The jitters. A nervous twitch. It's not like I have to drive across a live volcano crater toting nitroglycerin in glass jars in an old army Jeep with shot shocks. Nor do I have to act as security guard in a haunted sanitarium on the outskirts of town with no electricity. I don't even have to yank off my own Band-Aid from a hairy body part. Nope.

MRS. HILLBILLY MOM HAD TO OPEN A CAN OF BISCUITS!

I hate opening biscuit cans. First you have to peel off that shiny paper. Sometimes, the biscuits can't wait, and they pop open under my fingers. Get the defibrillator! Stat! If all the paper comes off with no explodage, then there is a quandary. Do I use a spoon to push on that line with arrows marked on the cardboard? It's hard to jab a round tube with a spoon while you have it at arm's length, your head turned away. Sometimes I do like my mom taught me, and whack that cardboard tube on the edge of the counter. It's the least of three evils. Horror of horrors, I have actually seen people squeeze their thumbs at that cardboard line!

I do not like the unexpected. There's no rhyme nor reason to when those cans go off. I remember reading about a lady sitting in a car in her driveway after doing the shopping on a hot day. She called the police to report that she had been shot in the head, and she could feel her brains oozing through her skull. Only it turned out to be a can of biscuits that exploded in her back seat, sticking dough to the back of her head. That may have been proven a hoax. I don't know. The pure horror of the hot biscuit bombardment is enough to keep me from investigating further.

Yeah. Mrs. Hillbilly Mom does not like surprises. Little Future Mrs. Hillbilly Mom did not like to crank the Jack-in-the-Box, either.