When I think of most graduation parties, I think of cake, mixed nuts, signing a guest book and bringing a card with some money. Pretty standard fare for an open house. But when I think of my sister’s open house, I think of something all together different. Let’s just say the memory contains baked potatoes, a broken scent warmer and Emotion Storm Molly.

Here is proof that Molly does come through and we all band together to throw her a great graduation open house. A happy ending for everyone, but it was quite a trip to get there.

So anyone who knows Molly knows she has strong emotions. A lot of times that is a great thing because it means she loves hard and is fiercely loyal. But occasionally it will turn against you and in that time, you are in for a rough ride. So this time, it started because of a misunderstanding.

Apparently, Molly didn’t hear my parents when they said they wanted to wait to take pictures until the day after the graduation ceremony because then the whole family would be together. My parents and grandparents say that they told her they would leave right after the ceremony to beat some of the traffic. Molly says they never told her that.

So the next morning, my mom warned me that there might be trouble brewing. I brushed it off because there is always trouble brewing in my family.

When I got to the homestead, I was immediately put to work. We are an efficient group, so we started an assembly line to make baked potatoes to serve that day. My mom washed them, my grandma cut out any nasty parts, Andrew stabbed them, I patted them with salt, my dad wrapped them in tin foil, my brother put them in the roaster, and my grandpa supervised.

So as we were merrily chugging away, we tried to call Molly. She lived on her own and still hadn’t made her appearance that morning. She answered her phone long enough to say she wasn’t coming.

I tried to lighten the mood by being like “What do you mean you aren’t coming? It’s your grad party.”

That was not the right thing to say.

Now looking back I feel bad because more than being mad, Molly was upset and sad. She had watched all of her friends take cute family pictures right after the ceremony and because she hadn’t heard my parents, she was all alone.

So she held onto the sadness and let it fester overnight until Emotion Storm Molly was ready to rage.

So as the family made hundreds of baked potatoes for an open house that might not even happen, Molly pulled into the driveway in The Golden Nugget(her junker). As she walked in the door, I could tell we were already doomed. She unleashed. Andrew never really knows how to handle emotional displays, so I just whispered “Just keep your head down and make the damned baked potatoes.”

And he did.

After she let all of her feelings out, she stormed back out the door and The Golden Nugget carried her away. And at that point in time, we had no idea if she was coming back.

As the baked potatoes piled up, my mother volunteered to go talk to Molly and convince her to come to her own graduation open house.

My mom and sister did patch up their disagreement and Molly got herself all gussied up for the party. They gathered up the rest of the stuff for the party. My sister had pictures she wanted to bring along with a scent warmer my grandmother had given her for her birthday.

My mom called us and said everything was fine and that they would be back in 10 minutes. As party time ticked closer, we loaded all of the stuff in the car and wondered what in the world had happened to them.

An hour and a half later, they came running in the door, avoiding any and all questions about what happened to them. Apparently my sister didn’t want my grandma to know this:

After Molly calmed down, she started to carry her stuff to the car. She tripped over the curb and dropped the brand new scent warmer my grandmother had gotten for her. So my mom drove her to Wal-Mart and they scoured the store until they found an identical scent warmer.

So all in all, it was just another totally normal family activity in my life. And the six pictures in this post? I’m pretty sure these are all of the pictures we got of Molly in her gown. Whoops.