Follow the Little Red Line
When Jenny was an intern in my days of Poo-Bah, we worked in an environment where the display of a sense of humor wasn't regarded like Bob Dylan's greatest hits at a Taliban convention.
In fact, taking the pursuit of this, at the time, new position a little too seriously, I blew an exploratory interview with someone who was assigned to find out if I would fit into the culture, i.e. not take things too seriously and know how to have a little fun.
But I did trot out my eclectic view of the world and Jenny once laughed and said:
"I love your sense of humor."
Boy, didn't I puff up a bit.
"It reminds me of my dad."
Exhale quickly. Look at forty being an eight iron shot away.
Ahem. Another story for another day.
So a few weeks ago we ventured back to Dixie where we ate great food, talked to nice people, walked along the beach in the still warm Atlantic, and almost bought an old gas station to turn it into a just off campus gourmet fast food, free wi-fi and good beer to the over 21 crowd joint. The estimated startup costs didn't work out since I don't think we can get that much if we sell the house, the cars, some lesser organs and the cats for medical experiments.
Travelling, they say, getting there is half the adventure. I say, getting there is most of the pain in the ass time sink before you can park yourself in front of a plate of fried oysters and cold beer to go "Ahh." Since we drove, I took a good look at the most obvious route and looked for alternatives since the most obvious route is the one the old man would have taken. You know, the one where you're free falling in the back seat of the car while he blazes along for sixteen straight hours calling "Damn the bladders, full speed ahead! We can make the beach by sunrise!"
I thought I'd take Thumper along the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel since she'd never seen it before and since I had fond memories of crossing it as a child; basking in the warm Virginia air and stopping on artificial islands to watch destroyers leave Norfolk for open waters.
That was then, this is now. When you're a kid, you don't get the gravity of 12 miles of causeway over open water. You think the weather is always warm and sunny and you're not driving through an advancing cold front with wind and buckets of rain. You don't understand that a car is a one and a half ton chunk of metal that has about as much buoyancy as a window sash weight.
I will say this: If you are in a car:
A car.
A land based transport device.
A car.
If you are in a car, thirty or so feet above a turbulent, pitching body of water, and you can see neither shore...
You're just asking for one or another kind of latent phobia to boil to the surface of your psyche.
Add to it all that, in the atlas, the road was designated as a four lane divided highway, young Randy McNally didn't bother to dig deeper and find out that that four lane divided highway ran through every podunk traffic light entitled town in Delaware, Maryland and Virginia. I believe my phrase was if the road sign had the word "Downtown" in it, we were heading the other way.
But we got there and we got back to find that neither Short Round and my mother, whom we had left alone together for the week, had found the hidden sharp objects and killed each other.
Although there may be some longer lasting psychological damage on Short Round when the subject of broccoli is raised.
But that is another story for another day.
Bunny on.
In fact, taking the pursuit of this, at the time, new position a little too seriously, I blew an exploratory interview with someone who was assigned to find out if I would fit into the culture, i.e. not take things too seriously and know how to have a little fun.
But I did trot out my eclectic view of the world and Jenny once laughed and said:
"I love your sense of humor."
Boy, didn't I puff up a bit.
"It reminds me of my dad."
Exhale quickly. Look at forty being an eight iron shot away.
Ahem. Another story for another day.
So a few weeks ago we ventured back to Dixie where we ate great food, talked to nice people, walked along the beach in the still warm Atlantic, and almost bought an old gas station to turn it into a just off campus gourmet fast food, free wi-fi and good beer to the over 21 crowd joint. The estimated startup costs didn't work out since I don't think we can get that much if we sell the house, the cars, some lesser organs and the cats for medical experiments.
Travelling, they say, getting there is half the adventure. I say, getting there is most of the pain in the ass time sink before you can park yourself in front of a plate of fried oysters and cold beer to go "Ahh." Since we drove, I took a good look at the most obvious route and looked for alternatives since the most obvious route is the one the old man would have taken. You know, the one where you're free falling in the back seat of the car while he blazes along for sixteen straight hours calling "Damn the bladders, full speed ahead! We can make the beach by sunrise!"
I thought I'd take Thumper along the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel since she'd never seen it before and since I had fond memories of crossing it as a child; basking in the warm Virginia air and stopping on artificial islands to watch destroyers leave Norfolk for open waters.
That was then, this is now. When you're a kid, you don't get the gravity of 12 miles of causeway over open water. You think the weather is always warm and sunny and you're not driving through an advancing cold front with wind and buckets of rain. You don't understand that a car is a one and a half ton chunk of metal that has about as much buoyancy as a window sash weight.
I will say this: If you are in a car:
A car.
A land based transport device.
A car.
If you are in a car, thirty or so feet above a turbulent, pitching body of water, and you can see neither shore...
You're just asking for one or another kind of latent phobia to boil to the surface of your psyche.
Add to it all that, in the atlas, the road was designated as a four lane divided highway, young Randy McNally didn't bother to dig deeper and find out that that four lane divided highway ran through every podunk traffic light entitled town in Delaware, Maryland and Virginia. I believe my phrase was if the road sign had the word "Downtown" in it, we were heading the other way.
But we got there and we got back to find that neither Short Round and my mother, whom we had left alone together for the week, had found the hidden sharp objects and killed each other.
Although there may be some longer lasting psychological damage on Short Round when the subject of broccoli is raised.
But that is another story for another day.
Bunny on.
posted by The Caustic Bunny at Monday, October 22, 2012
1 Comments:
isafneyzWhen I was a child, my Mom's baby sister lived in Niagara Falls and I was terrified of the trip to that city because of the Grand Island bridges one had to cross to get there. Because of that, I developed a slight phobia over certain types of bridges -especially high ones or the type with an open metal grate type span. I was almost 20 years old the first time I went to Ocean City, MD and crossed the Bay Bridge and found that old phobia was still with me. Height, long length, fast moving oncoming traffic and the only place to go to get out of the way -over the rails -was on my mind the whole way over and back on that bridge. Crazy those latent phobias that do still erupt from time to time, isn't it?
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