The Very Clean Teapot
Some years ago my wife and I went away for the weekend; my mother stayed at the house and minded the kids while we were away. Not long after we returned we noticed that the inside of our teapot, which was normally tea stained almost black, was now gleaming white. My mother had a tendency to be ‘helpful’ in unwanted ways and we were rather annoyed that she’d cleaned the teapot, as we quite liked it how it was. Some time later, It came out in conversation that there was more to the cleaning of the teapot than we had imagined.When the subject came up, my mother was all too eager to describe the ingenuity she had demonstrated; her pride in which was apparent in her tone of voice. It was my mother’s practice to soak her false teeth in bleach overnight, and, seeing an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone, she cleverly used the teapot as the receptacle in which to do it. By the time we eventually heard this story we had, of course, made numerous cups of tea in that teapot and the implications were very quick to strike us both, but, to our credit, we somehow managed not to let our faces betray our true feelings about her thoughtful deed.
Comments (50)
Is it not genetic?