Wallpapering With a Friend

I have a friend who I seldom see anymore, but we hung out a fair amount when we were raising our children. This is sad because she is one of the funnest people I know. When we get together, we laugh. A lot. We will call her Mable.­ One of our episodes revolved around hanging a wallpaper border in her dining room.­ You probably had to be there to appreciate it properly, but it was pretty comical – especially when you get two laughers together. It began at the beginning of the project, when I saw the look on her face (which was seriously humorous) as we stood looking at the border of the ceiling. She said, "I forgot we were both so short." That was the first laugh that set us off on a rollercoaster of hilarity. For instance, it took us at least as much time to find an appropriate number of things, tables, and ladders, to climb onto in order to reach the top of the wall, as it did to finish the job. Once we had found the right equipment, we preceded carefully.­ We rather thought we were doing quite well until I stepped onto the ladder, which happened to be a folding scaffold and/or ladder, and promptly went to the floor.­ More laughter. (After seeing that I was not hurt.) The half of the wall we had just covered was immediately bare.­ (What can you do but laugh at this moment?) Quickly, we managed to put it back up before the glue could dry and finished the wall taking turns applying wallpaper and getting down and pushing the table and piano bench (in lieu of the ladder which we decided not to use again).­ It was one of those episodes that someone would likely have said, "Why didn’t I record this?" (We could have easily competed with Lucy Arnez in an I Love Lucy episode that day.) The rest of the room went faster and with no real mishaps.­ Mable didn't get nearly as wet at that point as she did with the first wall when we had realized the paper wasn't entirely wet, so she had to hold the pan up so I could carefully wet the paper without pulling down what we already had up. Upon conclusion, the room looked great and reminded me of the first time I had wallpapered with a different friend.­ This other friend had nothing to put water in to wet the wallpaper, so we had to trot from her kitchen sink to the living room – dripping all the way (fortunately is was a very small house – yes, we were young and foolish, but we sure had fun).­ Lucky for us she only wanted one wall done, or we would have landed flat on our backs before we were done; the floor got pretty wet as we traversed the rooms. Amazing how much fun you can make of a chore with someone to do it with. And Mable’s parting shot? She laughingly wanted to know who would let us loose in their house to wallpaper...scary thought!