Three Word Wednesday Live Theatre with Etta

This week’s words are:
Funny
Remember
Theatre

He had discovered that living with Etta was a lot like being on the Broadway stage. Each day let him witness a spontaneous theatre performance with Etta featured as the leading lady! This distant relative of Etta's, in a moment of unguarded affection, had come to love her. She, of course, drove him crazy but then so did his wife and children. Still he loved them all without reserve. Maybe he had a throw back gene...an 'Etta' gene floating around in his being somewhere.

Etta would often feel herself driven by some forgotten then remembered incident in her life. Acting on each impulse without a thought had always been her way. As she grew older she became less and less afraid of the swinging bridge that carried her away from those things that she could not tolerate. It was, at least for her, very normal and reassuring.

So she began her recycling frenzy once again. While they were at work one day, she canceled the garbage service to their home. We can only imagine their surprise when the dump truck drove past without stopping at their house on that Tuesday morning in January.

They sought the answer in the only place that seemed logical. Etta smiled that rye smile she had and stated her position on dumps. She had a plan, tried and true. Possibly brilliant she called it. If they put everything in recycling possible (and some that she knew they would not take that could be put in sacks marked FREE) they could eliminate most of their garbage. The whole family would take the remainder in a plastic bag with their lunch when they left the house and let someone else worry about it. She did not think it wrong to deposit their waste in someone else's can. She had, in her hazed view, done more than her share. They would spread the rest around. She also suggested a big compost hole in the back yard but his wife managed to find her voice...the dog she said leaving the sentence unfinished.

At first they stood in open mouthed amazement. Then they began to see the logic in it all. Funny, they went along with it...garbage taken to work and school, FREE bags left at the recycling station...and it did not strike them as unusual at all.

Could it be that Etta, after all these years, had found a place where she fit? Maybe, maybe. She had only begun to make her mark on this family, much like she had on the hidden family from all those years gone past.

b