Family Folklore

Morning weigh-in (Monday): 174#, 11% BF

 

A Thanksgiving Interlude: We were at Anne's mom's house for Thanksgiving, and over dessert conversation one of her teenage nephews was admonished by his mother, who thought he was about to say a bad word -- she wouldn't say what bad word was about to be uttered, so we tried to guess, using hints:

 

Guesser #1: Hmmmm... Starts with "B?"

Guesser #2: Hmmmm... And rhymes with "witch?"

 

Then five-year-old Brian, who was learning about rhymes in kindergarten, put two and two together and announced into a lull in the conversation: "Bitch!"

 

He had no idea what it meant or even if it was a word, it was just a lucky guess...

 

The room exploded variously into either laughter or consternation, upsetting Brian, and he ran from the room -- he was fine again in a minute, and will no doubt be repeating his discovery today on the playground, but I'm also sure he'll be hearing about this Thanksgiving well into middle age.

 

"The Itch:" We visited my parents Sunday, and somehow the conversation came around to the unusual nicknames endemic to my dad's childhood. (He, as the younger brother of "Shorty," was cursed with the moniker "Little Shorty.") My dad ran off a few names ("Ole Salty" Murphy, etc), and then brought up Teddy Bentbelly, the long-suffering usher at the ancient, and decidedly downscale, local movie theater in his old neighborhood -- it had a real name, but the local kids called it "The Itch" because it was so dirty that if you leaned your head back onto the chair you'd get lice or scabies or something. I remember hearing stories about "The Itch" when I was a kid... my dad told one Sunday about the ticket lady, who also doubled as a sort of babysitter for the youngest kids: instead of taking them to the bathroom, she would pass a sort of chamber pot along the aisle for all the kids to use.

 

A Quote From My Hero: "Invention is the mother of necessity." -- Thorstein Veblen, courtesy of Google's Quote of the Day.

 

Yesterday was yoga, then dinner at Anne's followed by more playing with the laptop, my new toy, er, I mean, necessity. Still fiddling with the "WEP Passphrase" issue, but I also uploaded the rest of our New England vacation photos. Check them out, yo.

 

Tonight is the gym, followed by a trip to Porter's.