Broomsticks and memories

I was at my mom's house the other day and leaning against her kitchen door was a broom that they use in Vietnam. It's basically a bunch of rushes bundled together without much of a handle so you have to bend over double to use it.


Let's not even talk about what the hell my mom was doing with it when she's got all the top of the line brooms, mops and swifters at her house. I love her but sometimes that woman just baffles me.

The reason I'm actually writing about this is it reminded me of an "incident" that happened when I was in Vietnam back in 2004. Tammi and I had spent several days in my grandma's village, which up until then had only seen one whitie (my brother-in-law who had visited the year before). This was well before the little hotel with Shirtless Ron was built (that's a whole other story) so we stayed at my grandma's house. It was about three in the morning when Tammi shook me awake and told me she heard rustling on the floor and wanted me to go investigate!!! Finally realizing that I wasn't going to get any sleep unless I did something, I bravely got out of bed and ran into the kitchen to grab anything handy (in this case, said broom). I then spent about half an hour poking around our suitcases and bags on the ground to look for the rogue rat. Let me clarify here that rats in Vietnam vary in sizes from small dog to large skunk. After my seriously half-hearted attempt (I didn't REALLY want to find it!) I finally gave up and crawled back into bed and told Tammi to stick a pillow over her head so she wouldn't hear it anymore.

Good times on the road!!!