I am the mother of four and grandmother of six and I am glad that young men these days are looking towards God to guide their difficult paths.  As we all know, the world just continues to get exceedingly more grim and evil.  My husband always says, “If I had the whole world in my hand…then, I’d have to wash my hand.”  I think that is something we all would agree with.

My husband Paul has always been a “prayerful” man who loves to talk about things that most likely no one but God would know (i.e. Why the sky is blue, why we have to pay taxes, how Angela Lansbury doesn’t seem to age, how people with no arms can drive using only their feet, what the deal is with midgets and how they came about, why Canada doesn’t just give up and become part of the USA, why Pringles come in a canister and not in a bag like all the other chips, why no one has invented the flying car yet, and why the Chinese talk louder and faster than everyone else.

Paul continually surprises me with his ideas on how he thinks that he can score more bricks for his “cloud mansion” as he calls it.  In fact, one year I remember him waking up saying that he had had a dream that could change our lives for the better.  He said that in his dream he had met a man named “Centauri” and that this man knew the secret recipe for a potion that would make one invisible.  Paul said, “I know it sounds preposterous, but thinking about it now, I think that there is a chance it could work.”  I told him that he sounded like he was going crazy, but he just looked at me with a weird smirk on his face and said, “That’s exactly what Centauri told me you’d say.” 

After Paul explained the recipe to me in great detail, I decided that it wouldn’t hurt anything for Paul to try it out in his spare time.  After all, he did minor in Chemistry in college and has had dreams with people telling him to do things before.

The next day Paul went to the hardware store and bought a brand new wheelbarrow and some tools to mix everything with.  The next step was to acquire all the ingredients for the potion.  Most of the ingredients were simple cleaning products mixed with steak sauces and melted grape jolly ranchers.  Paul wouldn’t tell me what the most important secret ingredient was, but I did find out later that Paul had acquired it by trading some spare pinball machine parts to a couple of Libyans.

Finally the day came when Paul announced to the family that he had successfully completed the potion and that it was ready to be tested.  The kids were ecstatic and began fighting for the chance to be the first to try it out.  Paul explained to them that he would be the first to try it out and that if they didn’t stop fighting, he would pour some of the potion on all of their toys.

We all marched out into the backyard to watch Paul become invisible.  He told me to have the phone ready to call 911 if the potion somehow changed him into an animal instead of make him disappear.  The kids all gathered around the wheelbarrow and watched as Paul slowly placed his hand inside the potion.  As I got closer to the wheelbarrow full of potion, I noticed that it had a dark grayish color and smelled like a cross between pancakes and kitty litter. 

Paul’s face was beaming with excitement.  The kids were hanging on Paul’s every move.  Finally, it was time to take his hand out and show his invisibilities.  Paul counted down from three, yanked his hand out of the potion and held it up to the sky.  We all were a little confused when we all were still able to see Paul’s hand.  However, no one looked as confused and disappointed as Paul did.  He began making excuses about how he didn’t let the grape jolly ranchers melt all the way, and how he might have put too much “A1” in it.  His confusion quickly became anger and we all watched as he loudly and repeatedly cursed the Libyans, Centauri, the new wheelbarrow, Canada, his hand, Navajos, the Disney channel and the potion.  Paul’s cursing eventually brought the youngest kids to tears and I decided to take them back inside and try to calm and distract them.

The rest of the month was hard on our family.  Paul spent the next few weeknights in his shed trying to calculate what went wrong.  There was no consoling him; he just continued calling himself a failure and a good-for-nothing. 

Just when I thought the family couldn’t be more unhappy, the most amazing thing happened.  Paul went out to the shed one morning to find a pair of gloves and he noticed that the wheelbarrow was gone.  He was so excited that he ran inside and screamed, “It works and I’m a GENIOUS!”  Paul insisted that the potion inside the wheelbarrow had caused it to disappear.  I was astounded, as was the whole family, and Paul immediately began calling government officials, the Ed Sullivan show, Geneva Steel and all of his ex girlfriends from High School.

A few days later, our neighbor came by and dropped off the wheelbarrow that Paul said he could borrow two weeks prior.  Paul was crushed and so embarrassed that he took the wheelbarrow out back by the woodpile and beat it with a rake until both the rake and wheelbarrow were destroyed.  To make matters worse, a few weeks later Paul’s hand began to ache and the skin began to crack and bleed.  The doctor said, “It’s a good thing you came in today because had this gone untreated much longer, we would have had to amputate it.”  That is when Paul came up with the following saying, which he has quoted for the last 25 years:  “If I could make irony disappear, then THAT would be ironic!”