Been a little while...
and I thought I might break the silence with what I feel are a couple of humorous anecdotes.
From my road trip to NVA over the Labor Day weekend:
The journey from Cincinnati to Northern Virginia, a stone's throw from DC, in fact, is about a ten hour trip. I spent near the entirety of the trip seated behind mamaursula, our Hoke Colbum for the trek. Which makes me Jessica Tandy. Win. At one point, somewhere in West Virginia (a place for which the incest jokes flow like wine from Dionysus's decanter), I drifted for a short amount of time and, upon waking, instigated the following interaction...
Me: Are we in Maryland yet?
mamaursula: Nope. Still in West Virginny. Why? Want to see your family?
Me: Pssh. Who has time for an orgy?
Classic. And classy. Because that's how we roll. Then, speaking of rolls, there was Friday. Friday I was working over at the 'Greens, churning out the photos of other people's lives when our Village Idiot, I call him Annie because of how feminine he sounds on the pager system, approached me. I usually continue working while Annie speaks because if I don't distract myself, I tend to get a little bit... high school? He's kind of the poster child for outlawing home schooling. But anyway, there I was: printing pictures and Annie walks up, arms folded, and he stands there for a few seconds. I can see out the corner of my eye that he's giving me the stern face as he waits for me to acknowledge him, which I grudgingly do because I know that he won't go away otherwise.
"Yes?" I say.
At this point what he meant to say was something along the lines of, "There's a lady out here looking for white chocolate. I don't know if we carry it or where it would be if we do. Do you know? And if you do, could you tell me, or, when you get a second, show her where it is?"
Instead, he pointed at me and said in a very clear and matter-of-fact voice, "White chocolate."
How could I resist? How, I ask you!! I stop what I'm doing, lean against the printer and respond, "Yes. I don't know who told you, but yes."
Yesterday:
I was at my aunt's house visiting the family. This is the aunt that was married to my fire fighter uncle that died about two years ago. While there, she mentioned that she and my cousin Missy "took Paul to the fire house." I didn't think much of this, they probably took a photo of him over for a wall or whatever...
No. Not a photo. As it turns out, he had posed for some pictures when his township did a salute to local heroes. He was one of a handful of people in the community that were made in to life sized cardboard cutouts! So when she says she took him to the fire house, she means it! They left him propped up in the restroom. One of the guys opened the door, which tripped the motion sensor to turn the lights on, and he nearly shit his pants. Paul made the rounds to every room in the fire house. Someone even left him laying in one female fire fighter's bed.
Well... it turns out that having him around the place made some of the guys more than a little uncomfortable, so Janet picked him up and brought him home. When we finished laughing and wiped the resulting tears from our eyes, I thanked her. I told her that I not only have a story I can tell for weeks now, but that when I do tell it, people are going to look at me and say, "So it's not just you... It's your whole damn family!"
"... Yup."
From my road trip to NVA over the Labor Day weekend:
The journey from Cincinnati to Northern Virginia, a stone's throw from DC, in fact, is about a ten hour trip. I spent near the entirety of the trip seated behind mamaursula, our Hoke Colbum for the trek. Which makes me Jessica Tandy. Win. At one point, somewhere in West Virginia (a place for which the incest jokes flow like wine from Dionysus's decanter), I drifted for a short amount of time and, upon waking, instigated the following interaction...
Me: Are we in Maryland yet?
mamaursula: Nope. Still in West Virginny. Why? Want to see your family?
Me: Pssh. Who has time for an orgy?
Classic. And classy. Because that's how we roll. Then, speaking of rolls, there was Friday. Friday I was working over at the 'Greens, churning out the photos of other people's lives when our Village Idiot, I call him Annie because of how feminine he sounds on the pager system, approached me. I usually continue working while Annie speaks because if I don't distract myself, I tend to get a little bit... high school? He's kind of the poster child for outlawing home schooling. But anyway, there I was: printing pictures and Annie walks up, arms folded, and he stands there for a few seconds. I can see out the corner of my eye that he's giving me the stern face as he waits for me to acknowledge him, which I grudgingly do because I know that he won't go away otherwise.
"Yes?" I say.
At this point what he meant to say was something along the lines of, "There's a lady out here looking for white chocolate. I don't know if we carry it or where it would be if we do. Do you know? And if you do, could you tell me, or, when you get a second, show her where it is?"
Instead, he pointed at me and said in a very clear and matter-of-fact voice, "White chocolate."
How could I resist? How, I ask you!! I stop what I'm doing, lean against the printer and respond, "Yes. I don't know who told you, but yes."
Yesterday:
I was at my aunt's house visiting the family. This is the aunt that was married to my fire fighter uncle that died about two years ago. While there, she mentioned that she and my cousin Missy "took Paul to the fire house." I didn't think much of this, they probably took a photo of him over for a wall or whatever...
No. Not a photo. As it turns out, he had posed for some pictures when his township did a salute to local heroes. He was one of a handful of people in the community that were made in to life sized cardboard cutouts! So when she says she took him to the fire house, she means it! They left him propped up in the restroom. One of the guys opened the door, which tripped the motion sensor to turn the lights on, and he nearly shit his pants. Paul made the rounds to every room in the fire house. Someone even left him laying in one female fire fighter's bed.
Well... it turns out that having him around the place made some of the guys more than a little uncomfortable, so Janet picked him up and brought him home. When we finished laughing and wiped the resulting tears from our eyes, I thanked her. I told her that I not only have a story I can tell for weeks now, but that when I do tell it, people are going to look at me and say, "So it's not just you... It's your whole damn family!"
"... Yup."