The Good, The Bad, The Bumbles

They’re average - like any family, anywhere. The adults work, the kids go to school. The dog goes in the backyard. They come home each day, cook dinner, walk said dog - same as it ever was.

But this family, the Bumbles, have a certain . . . hmmm . . . quality, shall we say? which sets them apart.

If they had a family crest, it would be the banana peel just waiting for the right Bumble to come along.

Their family motto could read “Have you seen my glasses?”  which are perched like a tiara atop their head.

On a good day, they only lock their keys in the car. But on a so-so day, Mr. Bumble, for example, would have an important meeting in the morning. He’d shower, shave, finally get his collar buttoned. He’d stride to the car, happy to be ahead of schedule, open the door and fling his briefcase onto the passenger seat.

At least, that would be his intent. To fling. The briefcase, however, would have different ideas. It takes a sudden sharp left and continues at record velocity directly into the windshield. There’s a crash. A shatter. Cracks quickly thread throughout the glass.  Mr. Bumble has to drive to the meeting with his head out the window, arriving late, red-faced and with his hair in spikes.

Mrs. Bumble, when she hears of Mr. Bumble’s shattering experience, laughs, forgetting the lesson “He who laughs last”. Several days will pass before it’s her turn.

She, too, has a critical meeting that morning. She, too, spends an hour getting ready to conquer. She leaves the house with head held high, closing the interior mud room door behind her. It locks automatically. She moves to the front door which can be locked on the inside with a key. She herself locked that very door just the night before and the key is still hanging in the kitchen. She cannot go back. She cannot go out.

Mrs. Bumble spends five hours in the mud room listening to her cell phone ring. Most likely it’s the irate client calling since she’s effectively stood him up. Mrs. Bumble cannot answer the phone because it, like the key, is in the kitchen.

The mud room where she's self-imprisoned has two doors - both locked. There are lots of windows (so the whole world can see her) and it has a radiator. She sits on the radiator watching out the windows at the world passing her by. When the mailman comes along, she explains her predicament and begs him to call Mr. Bumble. The mailman makes the call but it goes straight to voicemail. Unfortunately the mailman (who cannot, by this time, keep a straight face) has to leave. It’s written in their code, he explains - “Neither rain, nor snow, nor Bumbles locked in mudrooms shall keep us from our appointed rounds.”

Mrs. Bumble remains in lockdown until Bumble Girl gets home from school with her own key. It’s close to five before Bumble Girl arrives because she stays after school as part of the math team. B-Girl’s a math whiz which often leaves both Mr. and Mrs. Bumble wondering if she was switched at birth. They are secretly overjoyed, however, to have one family member with mathematical skill. This proves especially helpful when the Bumble's find their bank account is overdrawn. "How can we be overdrawn? We still have checks left,” they reason.

Meanwhile, the family dog, Bumble Bea, has her work cut out for her each and every day. The Bumble’s acquired Miss Bumble Bea at the pound when she was just a wee pup. At the time, they were told “The dog is a Shepherd mix.” At no time were they told “The dog is a Shepherd/Satan mix.”

 Bumble Bea tackles her yard work with all the enthusiasm of demolition team on methamphetymines. While Mrs. Bumble is imprisoned in the mud room, Bumble Bea systematically eats the backyard fence. Included in the overall debris pattern are lawn chairs, a garden hose and any carefully cultivated, coddled and expensive flowering bush.

The above account is all in a typical Bumble week. Perhaps you recognize these people as your neighbors. Or friends.

Or us.  Because WE are the Bumbles - a family going from one pratfall to another. And we know for certain that our gene pool is large; that there are plenty of other Bumbles out there. Like our distant cousin, the carpet layer, who finished a day of laying wall-to-wall carpet. He took a break and patted his shirt pocket for his cigarettes. They weren’t there. Then he saw a cigarette-box-sized lump in the middle of the carpeting. So he took his hammer and flattened the lump.

As he was leaving the house, he found his cigarettes on a windowsill. At the same time, he heard the youngest son in the family with new wall-to-wall carpeting calling - “Mom, have you seen my hamster!?”

That, my friends, is a Bumble. We are everywhere. Send us some of your own Bumble moments and we’ll record them in our Big Book of Bumble. In fact, we should all get together for a family reunion. We’ll bring dessert. How does banana cream pie sound?

In the meantime, stay tuned for our next adventure. “The Bumbles Go To Barcelona.”