Ahem [I'm sorry. I forgot. I didn't mean to. I did. I never. I must recant]: in all my eagerness to evolve and grow, to move beyond the strictures of old structures, I didn't mention the slogan on Humpty's gift certificates: Come Taste the Fun! Nor did I cover their breakfast or dessert menu, but for those omissions I plead comic expediency (A fantasic plea. The next time you're in court, try it out: "Sample-Criminal, you are charged with wanton murder and grocery abuse". "Your honour, I plead comic expediency with a side of cheese toast").
A BRACE OF CONEYS
Many thanks to Tolkien for once again recirculating this phrase into the language. The phrase stuck with me like a bad pop song when I was a kid, and now that I've seen 'Towers Bad and Good' it's back in my head. So from now on, when you're feeling peckish, ask your spouse to pop down to the Safeway and pick up a brace of coneys for stewing. And some nice taters.
THINGS I'VE SAID THAT ELICIT INCREDULOUS RESPONSES
The word 'Ouija' was dreamed up by Parker Brothers, and is nothing more than the French and German words for 'yes' stuck together. The incredulous responses were well-deserved, since I was wrong. Charles Kennard, founder of the Kennard Novelty Company, first called his 'talking board' a Ouija board in the mistaken belief that the word meant Egyptian for good luck. Both the word and its meaning were communicated to him on a Ouija board. Which only gives further evidence that the spiritual world is full of assholes.
It's not pronounced 'wee-jee'. I accept any amount of argument over the origins of the word, but this 'wee-jee' thing is pure sing-song butchery. Since when is a final 'a' rolled out to an 'ee'? Wee-jee. Pass me the bong and let's talk to the dead, Jethro.
I'm thirty one years old. I must have nice skin, because my bald head and my thick stubble never clue people in to my real age. Both my wife and I look so ridiculously young, in fact, that The Lotus and I got kicked out of the local casino a couple of years ago, when I was twenty-nine and she was twenty-eight. I'd never been in a casino before, so I didn't know what to expect when a man in a black T-shirt-and-suit getup carrying a walkie-talkie approached us. "Hey folks," he began. "How you doing tonight?" In the movies I'd seen, the man in the T-shirt suit and walkie-talkie doesn't come up to you until much later, when you've won too many hands at blackjack. So I imagined that he was there to tell us about the shows and the drink specials. Nope.
I don't and have never had a driver's license. This one usually gets the jaw-drop. No one that I have met can let this one go. You don't drive? Why didn't you get your license? How do you survive without a car (and considering what this winter's been like, I've been asking myself the same questions)? I have a variety of answers, some flippant and some nothing more than justifications. Sometimes I say: I'm lazy. Sometimes I say: My spirit is in permanent revolt against the automobile. Sometimes I say: Can I get a ride to the Blockbuster? My favourite response came several years ago when I took a part-time job at the Sears Catalogue call-in centre. My training buddy, a fresh-faced guy in pressed Dockers from the car-dependent bedroom community Emerald Park, gave me a wondering look and said, "But - what if you have to go to Moose Jaw?" "Training buddy," I said, "I will never have to go to Moose Jaw".
And the biggest incredulous response getter of them all: I have never been to the United States. The oddest thing is that people out here in the Prairies are more amazed by this than the people I grew up with in the Maritimes. On the south shore of Nova Scotia I was reasonably close to the very best that America has to offer: New England, the Eastern Seaboard... hell, I was reasonably close to New York. Out here, I'm six hours drive from Minot, North Dakota, home of sporting goods factory outlet stores and probably a clear view of Wyoming.
