When I was 10 months pregnant with my son I called Mother and told her I was bored.

I couldn’t drive, and figured she’d come up with something fun to do the way she did when I was little. Instead, she suggested I get a scouring pad and clean the bottoms of all my pots and pans.

That idea had never crossed my mind back then, and still doesn’t, but she’d tried to help so I whined some more.

“My feet are so swollen that I can’t stand over the sink that long,” I said.

“Have you been eating dill pickles again?”

“Yes, but …” and then I started to cry. It turned into one of those no one loves me, and I’m going to go eat worms, big ones, little ones, well, you get the idea. I was bawling.

She took off work, got to my house about 30 minutes later, and we went for a drive.

It was a good thing they didn’t have seat belts back then because the 60 pounds I’d put on with the baby was all in my belly.

We didn’t drive far, and soon she pulled into a neighborhood grocery store.

That’s when I panicked.

“I can’t go in there!”

“Sure, you can, honey,” she said. “It will do you some good to walk a little.”

“But not here,” I said, then explained I’d had an accident in there the week before.

She was full of questions, and I told her there was an elderly lady in front of me at the checkout line who was taking a lot of time. I’d thought I had time, but when I placed the gallon jar of pickles on the counter I still thought I could hold it, but my bladder had other ideas.

“I was mortified,” I told Momma, “but I wanted those pickles, and finally paid for them, and made it to the car. That’s when I started laughing uncontrollably, and put my head on the steering wheel.”

I told her then when a man got into his car next to me he thought I was crying, said he saw me in the store, and offered to help me.

That’s when Momma started laughing, and I laughed way too hard.

We continued to laugh when we got home, then ate our ice cream.

Before Momma left she opened up her purse and said, “This is in case you get bored later.”

It was a pack of steel wool for my pots and pans.

Fortunately, I had an eight pound, four ounce baby boy the next night, and wasn’t bored for years. I also try to avoid grocery lines when there’s someone older in front of me. And that keeps getting harder to do.