The 8th Nerve

So strange but so true. The Man Date. Men really need to relax about that stuff.

If this doesn’t make you laugh, then you are not my friend.

My parents and my brother Nate came up to visit us this weekend. We took them up to see our new house, which we will move into in two weeks, COME HELL OR HIGH WATER. Then we went for a drive through the Lake Champlain Islands. The weather couldn’t have been more perfect. We had lunch at a park overlooking the lake, then continued on. Steve was driving, and Mom, Nate and I were wedged in the back seat. What followed is a phenomenon that I will call the “Back Seat Regression”. There is something about being wedged in the backseat between two people that makes you feel like a kid again. For example, I didn’t want the rest of my sandwich and was about to throw it out the window.

Steve: Don’t throw that out the window.

Me: The birds will eat it!

Steve: No, absolutely not.

Me: What am I supposed to do with it? The birds will eat it.

Steve: You’re not throwing that out the window.

Me: But I don’t wanna hold it anymore!

Steve: (stops the car, gets out, shuts the door)

Mom: (in a little voice) uh oh, he’s going to give her a spanking.

Everyone else in the car: (Uproarious laughter which abruptly stops as soon as Steve opens the back door).

Steve, however, refrained from physical methods of discipline and gave me a plastic bag instead. We continued on, all the way up to Isle la Motte to see St Anne’s shrine, a place none of us understand dedicated to a saint of we have no idea. There was an elaborate gold statue overlooking the lake, with a tall base with what appeared to be LOUDSPEAKERS attached to it (note: I DO NOT understand Catholicism). There was a small shelf and on it was a rosary and a lot of change along with folded dollar bills under a rock. The money was just sitting out there. I looked at it and there, shining in the sun, was an IOWA QUARTER. The only quarter missing to date from our Fifty State Commemorative Quarters 1999-2008 book. What I did next is, as a Catholic friend later confirmed, indeed sacrilegious and I will go to hell. I TOOK the Iowa quarter and I replaced it with TWO non-Iowa quarters. I was going to put just one back in but then Steve suggested, in an appalled tone, that I put another one in. So the second quarter was to avoid a spanking.

At any rate, besides endangering my soul, I had a very nice time with my family. Steve’s brother and his girlfriend were also in town and they came over Sunday night, which called for an evening of Molson Dry, Ben and Jerry’s and cartwheels. In that order.

I’ve said this many times before but I wish all of Steve and my family lived near each other.

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Apr 18th 2005Uncategorized