Mom's butt-whack had ignited trapped methane that'd been abuilding through the day's gluttony. It delivered a handful of reality so foul that it's a wonder she didn't walk off and leave me. I'd soiled her loving hand and my shorts below were beyond salvage.

Passersby laughed. A kind woman stopped to offer spare Kleenex, which Mom used to wipe her brow, her hands, my butt.

She sacrifices a day's pay from waitress job for us, and this is her reward. Instead of resting as her kids play in the neighborhood, she takes us on a

rare family outing on a sweltering day. Managing three young kids on the

road, she must've been dead-tired even before my outburst.

My vivid memory ends here.

Somehow she found water for washing but jettisoned my shorts and BVDs.

It's at this point that sister Barbara's memory of that day becomes

indelible: Mom made Barb remove her panties so shameless Frankie

could wear them on the long bus trip home.

Barb fumed at being naked beneath her short, gingham dress. I

was too young to care whose panties I wore.

Fate wasn't done with us. Barb, ever prone to motion sickness, became nauseous on the ride home. She was barfing audibly out of the moving

bus' window when its driver stopped and ousted the ragamuffin Duffys.

We waited twenty minutes for the next bus and returned home without further incident.

Just another soiled chapter from Woes of Working Moms.

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