THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, December 8, 1995 TAG: 9512070151
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 07 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Over Easy
SOURCE: Jo-Ann Clegg
LENGTH: Medium: 96 lines
Whenever a holiday is in the offing I think of our former neighbors.
Tom and Roseanna were their first names. Their last name was not Klutz, but it probably should have been.
It was fate that brought Tom and Roseanna together. They met when Roseanna, singing along to a lively version of ``Silver Bells,'' bounced off a curb and into Tom's car leaving a three-foot long dent and a lot of broken glass.
That was on a busy highway at 5:30 one early December evening more than 30 years ago. It was a case of love at first sight. Make that almost first sight.
Tom jumped out of his car yelling; Roseanna sat in hers, crying. When Tom suddenly became quiet and Roseanna's sobs had diminished to occasional sniffles they finally took a long look at each other. ``When I saw all the Band-Aids on her fingers and all the rusting dents in her car, I knew she was the woman for me,'' Tom once told us.
``He had lots of dents, too,'' Roseanna added, ``and his left arm was in a cast.''
The Klutzes had indeed found each other.
Despite serious objections from Roseanna's father (``My grandkids won't have a chance with a couple of klutzes like that,'' he moaned), the two were married and began raising a family.
Rarely have Tom and Roseanna been free of casts, splints or bandages since, but it is in the area of holiday mishaps that the two really outdo themselves.
After their October wedding and a honeymoon highlighted by a motor-bike accident in Bermuda, they invited both families to their small apartment for Thanksgiving.
On the holiday eve, Roseanna, an accomplished seamstress, was busy pressing the silk draperies she had made for the large picture window in the living room. That was when things started going wrong.
Instead of steam, a big slug of rusty water shot out of the iron onto the fabric leaving a large brownish stain.
Roseanna, startled, jumped back and knocked over the ironing board. The iron, which finally got up a full head of steam, landed on her bare foot.
The next day she served dinner with her instep swathed in a bandage. Tom, who had thrown his back out trying to rescue her, followed behind in a pain-killer induced stupor.
``Maybe I shouldn't plan on grandkids at all,'' her father sighed.
But by the following Easter, the Klutzes had moved to a little house in the suburbs and the first of their offspring was on the way.
``You know,'' Tom had said to Roseanna, ``what this house really needs is a deck. I think I'll build one.'' Roseanna agreed but her father, a devout gentleman from the old country, quickly offered up a prayer that his daughter would not be widowed before the birth of her first child.
His fears were well-founded. The Klutzes' little house was built on the side of a steep hill. In order to add a deck, Tom would be working a full story above the ground.
All went well until he took the day off to finish the job. At 2 that afternoon, just as Roseanna's father arrived to check on the progress, Tom ran into trouble.
While nailing the last few planks of the flooring, his ladder fell away from under him. Tom quickly got a grip on the deck, but his hand was between the plank and the beam he had been trying to nail it to.
His yells for help sent Roseanna and her father running out to see what the problem was. As their feet hit the plank it was forced first upward, then downward, shoving the nail Tom had been pounding into his hand. He was left trapped, flapping wildly in midair.
``He's crucifying himself and me,'' the father muttered as he trudged to the back yard and righted the ladder while Roseanna pried the plank from the top of Tom's hand.
Rescue complete, Roseanna's father drove them both to the emergency room where Tom was treated for contusions and a puncture wound and Roseanna had several deeply embedded splinters removed.
It was the following Christmas when Tom really outdid himself. By that time the Klutzes were the proud parents of a 2-week-old son and the owners of a pair of addle-brained beagles named Terpsichore and Bubba.
Tom's one wish for Christmas was for an electric carving knife. Roseanna's father, wanting to grant the Christmas wish of the man who had given him such a fine grandson, presented him with one.
With predictable results.
When the inevitable happened, Roseanna wrapped the bloody stump of Tom's thumb in bath towels and everybody piled into the old man's car for the trip to the hospital.
Everybody, that is, except for Terp and Bubba who were left behind with the turkey and all the trimmings.
Hours later, after Tom's thumb had been rebuilt, the family returned to find the dining room table empty of food and a pair of beagles moaning in pain on the living room floor.
While Roseanna put the heavily sedated Tom to bed, her mother combed the Yellow Pages for emergency veterinary services and her father, after calling out for pizza delivery, offered up yet another prayer that his grandson would live to grow up despite the parents to whom he had been entrusted. by CNB