Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Rewards of the Gullible

    I have always liked pudding. Any kind of pudding! All kinds of pudding! I would eat pudding three times a day if I could. Mom's baked rice pudding! Mom's bread pudding! What I wouldn't give to have them again. Buffets with puddings are heaven on earth.

   When I was a little kid, a little thievery of Mom's cookies took place on a regular basis. Many cookies were baked and Mom was extremely busy so the risk of being caught was minimal. Cakes with icing? Well a small finger in the icing would never be noticed. Licking the finger was perfect.

    So one day when I was about seven or eight, I came home from school and there was a large bread mixing pan in the porch and it had the most wonderful looking stuff in it. PUDDING! It was a huge bowl of pudding. Nobody would miss a little pudding from such a large amount as this? I dipped in the vast amount of pudding and eagerly looked forward to wonderful pudding taste. Oops! It didn't taste that good. It tasted funny. Well try some more. It was definitely not pudding.

    So I was most  disappointed about not finding a bonanza  of pudding.

    When I got in the house, I asked Mom and Dad what was in the porch. They smelled a rat. They asked me if I tasted it and I admitted I had. 

    It turns out that the huge bowl of goop was home made wall paper paste! In the old days you didn't buy wall paper paste at the store. You mixed up wall paper paste from a special recipe. Mom and Dad were going to put up some wall paper so they'd made the paste. It was in the porch to cool.

   Now this event became an often told family story. I remember it so well today because I heard it many times as I grew up.

   Have you ever heard the expression, "It tastes like wall paper paste?" I can tell how that statement originated.

    I'm sure gullibility has got many people into embarrassing situations. Are you one of those?