Michael D. Davis.

I tend to be a bit loquacious at times, but I get it honest. However, there is something unfortunate that comes with being so talkative, and that is contracting the ol’ foot-in-mouth disease. Those times when your mouth moves a little faster than your brain, and suddenly you’ve said something you wish you hadn’t, oh yeah.

We are all guilty of it to different degrees. I can’t stand awkward silences so I end up filling them with awkward chatter which gets me into different awkward situations. Today, I was on the phone with customer service, and I was waiting for my Ma to retrieve something that the customer service lady needed. The silence on the phone was deafening. I wasn’t on hold, that would have been better. No, we were just two people on different ends of the country holding phones up to our ears saying nothing. Maybe the customer service lady was playing solitaire on her computer and she didn’t mind the silence, but I was dying. So, I took the only fact I knew, the company was based in California and broke the silence. I said, “California, huh, ya near those fires?” She said, “No,” and the awkward silence returned as quickly as it had left.

My Ma definitely knows how to talk. Any place, in any situation, she can strike up some conversation or have some remark. At times it is both amazing and confounding. She is also the perfect example of a person with foot-in-mouth disease because she has had some woozies over the years. I have two examples of this for you today.

I’ll start with the most recent incident. This happened over the weekend while my Ma was at her job. She is a cook and the stove was on the fritz. For weeks the pilot light has been going out. So, there were some maintenance men there working on it. Eventually, they come to a point where they have to try re-lighting the pilot light. One of the workers pulls out a lighter. The lighter was like a camping lighter, but longer. And Ma, who of course had been talking to them said, “Oh, you got a big long one.” This was inevitably met with giggles.

My second example here today has become a bit of a legend within the Davis household. It is one of those stories that has been retold countless times. This takes place a couple of decades ago, I was but a chubby-cheeked boy at the time. My Father worked for the City of Toledo in the public works department and one day there was a pig downtown. I don’t know if they know how or why such a thing came to occur, but the way it has been told to me is just one day there was this pig running around Toledo. I also don’t know how it became their job, but it was my Father and his coworkers who were enlisted to wrangle the animal. After what you can assume was probably something from a Three Stooges skit, they got the animal and took it down to the city shop.

Now, the day after the hog rustling, my Ma was going to work. Before she went to work Ma stopped off, like many do in the morning, at the gas station. Ma grabbed her stuff and ended up in line behind someone she knew. It’s Tama-Toledo, that’s not surprising, everyone knows everyone and what’s going on. This person just happened to be a local police officer. Making conversation while waiting in line, Ma thought she’d mention the previous day’s events that she was sure he was aware of. Ma said, “How’s the pig today?”

I have and will continue to say stupid things without thinking which will then land me in awkward and weird situations, but I feel assured that no matter how bad it gets, it won’t be as bad as saying, “How’s the pig today?” to a cop.