Burying the lead

In journalism school, one of the first things you learn is how a poorly-worded, compound sentence can bury the lead. Sometimes, we're guilty of that in our everyday conversations. My mother, who I will concede is not a journalist, does this. We talk several times a day and, on more than one occasion, the conversation has gone like this:
"So I'm just waiting in the car for your dad while he picks up some things at Home Depot," she'll start offhandedly.
"Yeah? What's he buying now?"
"A ceiling fan and some sheet rock."

This isn't surprising as my father is a jack of all trades and counts builder as one of his areas of expertise. He suffers from the worst kind of do-it-yourselferism, the type where you think you can do everything better and cheaper than others. As a result, he often falls into the trap of "cutting out the middle man" and purchasing supplies for his contractors on his own. Despite being burned by shady roofers, electricians, plumbers, my dad still miscalculates that he's one step ahead of the unscrupulous labor he chooses to hire. We've tried explaining it's no coincidence that entire stoves and refrigerators in his properties turn up missing when he employs ex-cons. He bristles at our unfair accusations.

"If no one will hire them then how they'll contribute to society?" he valiantly insists.
"But, Dad...they were the only ones with a ke-"
"I'll NOT LISTEN!" he shouts and storms off. That's another thing my dad does. He combines the wrong words to make contractions. Instead of "I won't" it's "I'll not" and "you'll not." "You'll not sit babies!" Yeah, I wasn't even allowed to babysit. And you wonder why I have issues.
But I digress. Back to the conversation with my mother.

"Yeah? What's he buying now?"
"A ceiling fan and some sheet rock." (we didn't repeat ourselves, this is called a "recap")
"What for?"
"Oh, didn't I tell you?" I can hear my mother's nail file stop. "The electrician fell through the ceiling." Here's another one.

One of my dear friends who works at Children's Hospital in New Orleans was recently made privy to my blog. Here's the reaction I got via email:
hey am on call....dealing with alot of dead/dying kids....and have had a rough day to say the least...i had a few minutes to eat and just read your blog...or parts of it.....THANK YOU for making me laugh....i laughed out loud!!!!!! :) you need to write a book and become a millionnaire :) !!!!!!!!!!!!!!(lots of exclamations)Conjulations!!!!!!!!!

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the Academy... But, seriously, the fact that my follies are fuel for laughter on days like the one my friend described above makes HPG's humiliating discovery and the unexpected outing all worth it.