Bless my poor sister Tracey's little ole pea-picking heart!

My middle sister, Tracey, is a different sort, to say the least. She is nothing at all like me and certainly not like our mother. For years, when we were kids, I would tell her that she was adopted and that one day her real parents would come begging at the door for my parents to return her.

Now she says that this has traumatized her all these years and that is the reason she does some of the things she does. Now, dinginess runs in our family (if you remember my stories about my mother's sister, Judy). So Tracey acting like a blond is no big surprise.

I guess maybe she wasn't adopted after all, she acts just like the rest of my family - but I digress.

The one good thing Tracey inherited was her love for tradition and invoking memories. We get this from Granny I suppose. Tracey is constantly trying to instill in her young child with a sense of family.
The other day, Tracey and her seven-year-old daughter were in the grocery store.

Now just what Tracey was doing in a grocery store is totally beyond me since she can't cook (and I have told her so on numerous occasions). But grocery shopping she was.
She suddenly stopped dead in her tracks as she spotted the old "Jiffy Pop" popcorn.

Ecstatic, Tracey purchased a few and then explained to her daughter on the ride home the joys of popping popcorn on the stove. Now, Tracey doesn't remember Granny pouring the kernels out in a saucepan with some oil and popping it the truly old fashioned way, but then she is several years younger then I am.

Tracey could hardly contain herself as she practically threw the groceries in the pantry and then pulled the stool up close to the stove for Fallon's first lesson in popcorn.

Now, it was hard for Tracey to make her daughter understand that popcorn didn't always come from the pouch in the microwave and that it used to take far longer than 2 1/2 minutes on high.
In amazement Fallon watched her mother remove the cardboard cover, heat the burner and then begin shaking the aluminum container across the burner.

Tracey held a huge satisfied grin on her face as the aluminum foil began to bulge ever so slightly and the sizzle of hot kernels began to fill the room. Unfortunately things aren't made like the used to be because as Tracey was shaking the tin plate back and forth the handle came loose in her hand.

Amazed and never one to improvise she stared at the bulging tin plate as it continued to grow.
In a quandary, Tracey continued to stare as the foil busted open and popcorn, scorched black from over cooking began to spring into the air like missiles.

She quickly grabbed her daughter and laid flat against the floor as the sound of popcorn missiles permeated the room coupled with the billowing smoke of scorched popcorn. Tracey felt like she was in a war zone until it finally dawned on her to push the plate to the counter and open a window.

As Fallon began picking up the blackened kernels she looked at her mother with a satisfied grin on her young visage and said, "Thanks Mom, I didn't know ya'll played with your food growing up."

That's one memory that won't be forgotten.