Following Funny: A Collection of Stories About Seeing Life With a Sense of Humor

By Peggy Welter

Following Funny is about seeing life with a sense of humor. Humor is everywhere and Peggy finds it as often as possible. She writes about shopping trips, vacations, where she's from and her jobs. There doesn't seem to be anything she doesn't write about. The main target of her humor is herself, she has learned to laugh at her thoughts, actions and antics and shares them in her stories.


Peggy has an outlook on life that includes finding humor on a daily basis, even when it doesn't always seem appropriate. She brings a fresh perspective to family, friends, work and life in general with her stories, anecdotes and tidbits. Traveling is a passion which brings her in contact with all walks of life and all types of funny. She currently resides in Superior, WI.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Apr 19, 2013
• ISBN: 9781626757066

Book preview

What Came First, the Chicken or the Egg?

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The Youngest Sibling

I was thinking about kids the other day. No, not having kids (what a tragedy that would have been) but kids in general. How it’s so different being a kid now than when I was young. This made me reflect on where and how I grew up. Where? A town the size of a postage stamp in Minnesota. How? In a family where I was the youngest by 8, 9, 12 and 13 years to my 3 brothers and 1 sister.

First and foremost, being born into a family that was already very established made me the odd kid out. It also made me the pain in the tush for the ‘babysitters’ (also known as my siblings). Babysitting for them must have been like having a limb cut off because they did everything in their power to make the experience miserable for me. Here’s a list of things that I had to go through while they were babysitting:

Getting 6 stitches in my forehead because my brothers put me in a fabric box, cut a hole for the face and arms and chased me around the yard until I fell. I was six so the box didn’t allow me to put my hands down when I fell. Foreheads sure bleed a lot.

Learning to ride bike on a 10-speed dressed in shoulder pads and a helmet. Hang on Peg, you’re doing great!

Sitting in the wagon with freshly trapped dead gophers. They would threaten to tell Mom if I cried.

Being the ante at a poker game to see who had to change my diaper (I only heard about this one, I obviously don’t remember).

Being the spotter on the snowmobile, sitting backwards, falling off and getting run over by the toboggan with several of their friends on it. They had a tough time finding me buried in the snow.

Sitting on the cold floor of the sauna because my sister wouldn’t let me sit on the bench. Not pleasant, it’s pretty cool down there.

Crashing my mom and dad’s car at the ripe old age of 4. Yup, completely totaled it.

Calling the operator (yes we actually had operators back then) at 5 because I thought I was home alone.

Can you imagine the stories they haven’t told me about? Each time we’re all together I learn something new; perhaps someday I will have the whole story. Perhaps then it will make sense how I turned out. You’re right; it will probably never make sense.

For those of you wondering, I was not an ‘accident’ or a ‘whoops’. My mom wanted 2 more and couldn’t have any more after me. I always tell her you just can’t follow perfection. I then laugh hysterically. She does not.

The Youngest Sibling II

When my babysitters got old and moved out of the house or stopped paying attention to me, I was on my own. Not literally on my own, only child on my own. I was on my own with no one to blame but myself for the following:

Standing up in second grade for show and tell and announcing to the class I was going to marry the kid behind me. Needless to say, the poor kid was shocked at the news.

Drinking beer with my cousin at my sister’s wedding.

Going in the ditch within sight of our house after Dad said don’t go in the ditch when I left for work. Murphy‘s Law at work again.

Getting picked up from a party by my parents because I was late getting home. My mom was in her bathrobe when she came into the house and asked where I was. I was never late again.

Getting caught having a party while my parents were in Las Vegas because the furnace went out….completely not my fault.

Getting caught with boys over while I was babysitting….twice. Once attempting to hide them in the basement, looking back that was a REALLY bad idea. My brothers are now friends with one of the guys, comes up quite often.

Delivering papers straight from the car by rolling down the window, sitting on the door and hanging on while shoving them into the paper boxes. We would see how fast she could drive and I could still do it. Lucky I didn’t lose a limb.

I’m actually laughing as I write this, relishing in the thought that everyone has a list like this. Not all the lists are the same but similar nonetheless. Dumb things we do growing up make us who we are today. The most important part…..being able to laugh about it.

Small Towns

I received an email about growing up in small towns. I have no idea where the list originated but I thought it was a good start to give you an idea of how I grew up.

You can name everyone you graduated with. - I can still remember some birthdays of my 50 classmates.

You know what 4-H / FFA / FHA mean. - We were in trouble if we didn’t; most of the kids I grew up with were farm kids. I wasn’t a farm kid but pretended to be during the summer months.

You went to parties at a pasture, barn, gravel pit, river bank or in the middle of a dirt road. - Our parties were also at abandoned houses, in a field across the county line, a house where the parents were gone for the weekend or a lake.

You used to ‘drag’ or ‘cruise’ Main Street after Saturday or Sunday night church. - Our Main Street was about 3 blocks long with the school taking up one block, we mostly cruised the gravel roads out of town.

It was cool to date somebody from the neighboring town. - It may have been cool but the rest of us bitched about it.

The whole school went to the same party after graduation. - This was located across the county line, for some reason we thought we would never be caught there. We must have been under the impression the other counties didn’t have police officers.

You didn’t give directions by street names but rather by references. Turn by Nelson’s house, go 2 blocks to Anderson’s, and it’s four houses left of the track field. - I still give directions like this.

The golf course had 9 holes. - Our golf course had nine holes but it was located in a sheep pasture, still is I think, we couldn’t forget to close the gate after tee off or we got in trouble and would be chasing sheep down the road.

You couldn’t help but date a friend’s ex-boyfriend / girlfriend. - Hopefully not at the same time as your friend, oddly enough that happened occasionally, even in a small town.

Your car stayed filthy because of the dirt roads, and you will never own a dark vehicle for this reason. - This is how your parents knew where you had been with their vehicles, they checked out the dirt, grass or mud and it’s placement on, in or under the car.

Anyone you wanted could be found at the local gas station, the ice cream shop, pool hall or bar. - Ours was the bar or the bowling alley.

You saw at least one friend a week driving a tractor through town or one of your friends driving a grain truck to school on occasion. - Tractors, 3-wheelers and farm trucks with hay in them were a staple in our school’s parking lot.

The coach suggested you work for a farmer or haul hay for the summer to get stronger. - The coach worked for a farmer in the summer or was the farmer!

When you decided to walk somewhere, 5 people would pull over and ask if you wanted a ride. - Two of them were driving something other than a car or a truck.

Your teachers called you by your older siblings’ names. - They also held grudges because of your older siblings.

You could charge at any local store or write checks without an ID. - You could buy cigarettes with a note from your parents.

You’ve peed in a wheat field/cornfield/hayfield/barn lot. - On a gravel road, in someone’s yard or behind the car your friends were in.

You probably started driving a tractor to plow/disc/etc. by the time you were 10 years old. - I learned how to drive a stick by ‘borrowing’ my dad’s tuck when my parents were out of town, shhhh, don’t tell my dad.

Most people went by a nickname. - Some still don’t know real names after all these years. Our family has a Bud, Dot, Fat, Babe, Doob, Munchie and Egs, and that’s just for starters.

The guys kept their guns in the car/truck so they could go hunting after school. - This happened all the time and sometimes they even kept the guns in their lockers. No one worried about anyone going on a shooting spree; it was a way of life.

Eight out of ten high school boys could tune a car’s engine; and four out of ten could rebuild that engine. - They always had the proper items in their trucks to jump a vehicle, pull a vehicle out of the ditch or duct tape the proper hose together under the hood to get the car going.

You wave at everyone, mostly because you know them; at least that’s how it was when I lived there. These days, you may not know them but you wave anyway. I see this in a lot of small towns I visit.

You walk into the local VFW, bar or bowling alley and people stop and stare, then you hear someone whisper, That’s Bud’s youngest. Then the rest murmur their agreements and go back to doing whatever it was they were doing (lots of times it’s playing cribbage and drinking coffee).

I can still walk into the local cafe, walk straight to the kitchen and hug the owners. I graduated high school with both of them. See the previous bullet point for the reactions I get from the patrons.

We didn’t have locks on the doors to our house and the keys were always left in the car and the truck. I have noticed it’s a little different now, the keys to the car are buried in the closet in one of Mom’s coat pockets but the truck keys are in the ignition. When I was a kid if we went out of town we locked the front door by putting a butter knife between the door and the frame and went out the back door. Of course we had to leave that open because we didn’t have a key for that door either.

If you’re out walking, people stop and ask you if you need a ride, stop to say hi or honk on their way by, sometimes all three. Unless of course it was after I got off work and REALLY wanted a ride, then Murphy’s Law kicked in and no one stopped, they only honked and waved.

Grades 7 through 12 were known as high school. With only 300 people in the school I knew pretty much everyone. 7th graders have no business hanging out with seniors; we started getting in trouble way too young.

I took my bike to the pool many days in the summer. My Mom would finally call the pool if I wasn’t home by 6:00 PM. I had been gone since before noon but she didn’t have to worry, we knew everyone who worked there.

You can see the water tower from everywhere in town.

The only stoplight was removed because there wasn’t enough traffic. This happened when I was fairly young. I barely remember the lights.

The neighbors bring your pets, or your children, home when they wander over. No cops called, no social services or dog pound involved. Sometimes the neighbors even fed the dogs or kids before bringing them home.

If I would have chosen to have children I would have wanted them to grow up having similar memories.

Pot Pies

Have you ever hated something so much the mere mention of it makes you want to throw up? Well, I feel that way about pot pies. It actually hurts my fingertips to type those words but I’m hoping this works as therapy. I also hope that I can type this story without actually throwing up. You know, face your fears, right?

This complete hatred began when I was a child. We used to have pot pies pretty often. Now, once a month would have been often to me but it seems like we had them ALL the time. I can never remember a time, not even the first time, that I actually liked the taste, the look or the feel of a pot pie. I’m fairly sure the first moment I poked through that crust and unveiled the sea of gravy with meat (I use that term loosely) and vegetables was when this lifelong hatred began. I’m not sure if it’s because of this I don’t eat gravy, cooked peas or cooked carrots. I don’t even put gravy on my mashed potatoes. But I digress.

Mom would send me down to the freezer to pick my poison and one was no better than the other. I remember the nightmare of opening the freezer and seeing those square boxes staring at me. I feel like that was all that was in the freezer. Even when I had to go get something else from the freezer I had to rifle through the layer of pot pies to get to it, nothing like ruining an appetite.

When the pot pie was finally baked I would stare at it, poke at it and swirl it around while eating very little of it. Like most parents mine wanted me to clean my plate, or in this case my crust filled disaster, because there were starving children all over the world. Well, more than once I volunteered to send my pot pies to those poor starving children, even though I knew in my heart of hearts they wouldn’t eat them either. My opinion wasn’t usually received well.

When I didn’t eat my entire pot pie, the rest of it was saved for the next time I said I was hungry. I’m not sure how any of you feel about pot pies but the only thing worse than a freshly baked pot pie is a heated up half eaten pot pie. The chunks of crust laying soggy in the juice some would call gravy. I just threw up in my mouth a little while typing that. I believe there were times that a pot pie lasted me several snacks/meals.

Jump ahead to 2005, my hatred for pot pies still alive and well. A friend and I would grocery shop together every Sunday. Whoever was done first would wait for the other one and help her bag her groceries and homeward bound we would go. We had a system, it was good.

This particular day we were in the checkout at about the same time, her slightly ahead of me a few lanes over. I was paying no attention to anything other than bagging my groceries, until…………I spotted the groceries of the man behind me coming down the adjacent conveyor belt. Every single item on that belt was a pot pie. My knee-jerk reaction was to lose whatever I had in my system; I kept it in and looked up to see what sort of animal would be buying so many pot pies. I then spotted that he had an entire basket full of pot pies. Nothing but pot pies! She was still scanning them.

Panic! And I mean PANIC! The pot pies were coming toward me like a marching army of soldiers with their guns drawn. I began to sweat, first my palms, then my forehead, it started slowly and then quickly sped up. My heart was threatening to jump out of my chest. I started shoving groceries into bags at lightning speed. As my friend walked over to help she asked what is happening, why are you putting eggs on top of bread? With crazy eyes I looked at her and said we need to get the hell out of here, NOW. At this point the pot pies were stacking up at the end of the belt and the man buying them was paying. I didn’t dare look him in the eye for fear he had some sort of pot pie power I didn’t know about.

I was literally running out of the store with my cart and my half-assed bagged groceries to try to get some fresh air as my mouth had that watery ‘I’m going to throw up’ feeling. My friend was completely confused as to what my problem had been. We loaded our groceries and she continued to look at me like I was crazy. Finally in the car she asked what had happened. When I told her of my intense hatred of pot pies and the horrible situation that had just happened in the checkout lane she pretty much doubled over with laughter.

Writing this story did not work as therapy, in fact, I may hate them more now than I did before. I did manage to write this without throwing up though, which I would consider a major breakthrough.

Regrets

I really wonder if I have regrets because I’ve tried to live life without them. I did decide there are a few and I will share, or partially share.

Ruining a friendship where I had more fun in a few years than one could hope for in a lifetime. This may be one of my only ‘real’ regrets.

Not taking the chance and going ‘downtown’ Tijuana to party with the locals when I was there for a wedding. Yes, I said a wedding.

Not hitchhiking before it was as dangerous as it is now. I’d be out on the road today with my thumb out and a sign that says ‘Key West or Bust’.

That night with….oh wait…ummm…a couple of…..hmmmm…well, perhaps I’ll leave it at that.

Not going to concerts at Paisley Park when I was invited, how cool would that have been? I still haven’t seen Prince in concert.

Eating that potato salad even after it bugged my tummy the first time. Uff da.

Not going ‘parking’ enough as an adult. Good make out sessions are hard to find and a thing of the past.

Not taking voice lessons, although I’m the world’s greatest singer in the car, everywhere else I can’t carry a tune in a bucket.

Not laughing more. And I laugh a lot, sometimes even when I shouldn’t but I’d like to do it more.

Not starting a book sooner, I missed writing down A LOT of stuff.

It is my belief that you can’t live life with regrets, the choices we make form the person we become. There really is only one true regret in my list but if that wouldn’t have happened I wouldn’t be where I am today so all turned out well.

Cheers to no regrets and lots of laughs!

No Regrets

I wrote about regrets so I better talk about things I don’t regret. It’s only fair, right? This list could be a mile long but I will keep it to some highlights, and perhaps a couple lowlights.

Going to Bike Week and sleeping in the rental car for 3 nights. Two single girls, one rental car, a love of motorcycle racing and a camping spot at Spider’s Crazy Horse Campground and Saloon. Man what a blast.

College - all of it….even the rough parts.

Taking a chance and finding the guy at his gate who sat next to me on the plane and giving him my phone number.

A marriage…..oh, and a divorce. Is it bad that the divorce was the best part of the marriage?

Childhood in a small town.

Skinny dipping in the ocean with friends.

Both road trips to Cross Lake, Minnesota for bachelorette parties.

Driving to Florida - twice! Once to see the Daytona 500 for my first NASCAR race (it was the year Earnhardt was killed) and once with my best friend and her kids for vacation.

Being stranded at the Detroit airport overnight. We probably shouldn’t have picked up that random guy in the re-ticketing line but that made for a much better story.

Any trip to Madden’s, even the one that involved two brothers, a pirate shirt and a duffle bag full of condoms. That’s not as bad as it sounds!

Any job I’ve ever had, even the ones that weren’t so great.

Getting my mug shot taken, ugliest mug shot you’ve ever seen. I do regret I