Writing your life story is an opportunity like no other to look back on and share funny moments.

A 90-year-old client and I shared many laughs over this memory of hers:

“Ever since I can remember, my mother raised chickens. I used to play with them when I was a girl. When I got tired of my brothers when we lived at the Lisman Place, I’d go out and sit on the roost and talk to Mom’s speckled Dominickers and Rhode Island Reds.

“Sometimes I’d sit in a chicken nest — a tub with straw in it — and pretend I WAS a chicken. I’d see them walk by sometimes when I was sitting there. I wondered what they thought.”

A woman who spent her career working in an insurance office recalled:

“One of our teenage drivers had audio equipment stolen from his vehicle. A disc player, speakers and amplifying equipment were missing. The driver also reported a ‘sub’ stolen.

“I know next to nothing about this kind of equipment, and mistakenly thought the driver was reporting a stolen submarine sandwich! By the grace of God, I figured out something called a sub woofer was stolen, not a sandwich.”

I’m working with a woman in her mid-70s who remembers the first time she got in the driver’s seat of the family car. Her mom and dad were away from home and she decided to back the car out of the garage. The car hit the water faucet and knocked it off the house!

Since her dad was a plumber, the family had extra parts in the garage. One of her brothers installed a new faucet, but they had to rub it with oil to make it look old. They touched up the paint on the car.

Their dad could tell what they had done, but he kept their secret and their mom never knew.

#writing