Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Back, And Alive

Trip detritus.

We stopped at a Dairy Queen in a small town east of Waco. The bathroom had one of those air dryers, and for the first time in years, I saw that someone had scratched graffiti onto its surface.

When I was a kid (centuries ago), it seemed like most bathrooms had some kind of dumbass graffiti--some were covered in it--but at some point, it went out of style.

Not here, though. So I carefully examined their work.

On the air dryer unit, it said "DIRECTIONS," but someone had scratched over the "D" and made the first "I" into an "E".

Oh, I see what you're doing there. You turned "DIRECTIONS" into "ERECTIONS."

Plus, they wrote "Chad + Keith" below "ERECTIONS." Now I really see the full scale of this comic assault--see, I think they're implying that "Chad and Keith" might be "gay." That is HI-LARIOUS.

With this kind of superlative, ironic comedy mind in town, I bet the local Video-Bait-BBQ store can't keep David Mamet VHS tapes in stock.

We were in the middle of nowhere on the way home (a different middle of nowhere) and I saw this sign as we entered the city limits of some tiny town: No Engine Brake By City Ordinance.

WTF?

I looked it up, and it's specifically referring to a "Jake Brake," which you can read about here, if you're so inclined.

We went to Krispy Kreme for breakfast Tuesday morning before we left Shreveport, and I noticed that the little paper hats they always have had French on them (which I've never seen before). This resulted in a long conversation about French, which Gloria knows reasonably well.

"I bet you didn't know that I could speak French," I said to Eli 8.3.

"No, because you can't," he said, laughing.

"I can," I said. "Enchanté, derrière," I said.

"Right," Eli said. "You made that up."

"I did not," I said. "That is an actual French phrase."

Eli turned to Gloria. "Mom, is it?"

Gloria started laughing. "It is," she said. "It means--" she started laughing again.

"--it means 'pleased to meet you, buttocks,' " I said.

Eli burst out laughing. Gasping, really. With eight-year-olds, buttocks are still golden.

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