Last night as she was anxiously engaging in her homework (uh... again, not from me) she was filling out a get to know you type survey and it was a lot of fun to help her with that.
One of the questions - Name 3 things that you're afraid of. Her response? How my brothers smell when they get home from football practice, My Brothers armpits, and poisonous snakes.
Another question - Tell about something funny that you
did. Her response - Drew some pickles on a piece of paper and used the paper to save my place on the couch. Well let me tell you - we all fell about laughing at that one. Wait - don't tell me you're not laughing? Really? Could it be that you don't have the backstory? Well, in the mode of Dr. D:A couple of years ago, I took my boys to see the latest Bourne movie on premier day. We got to the theater kind of late and had some trouble finding a spot where we could all sit together. We finally found a spot on the 2nd row and moved over to the center. Q said - "Dad, there's something in this chair." I looked, and sure enough someone had left a half eaten pickle - one of those huge deli variety pickles that they sell at the movie theaters... tucked inside a napkin and wedged into the cup holder of the arm rest.
Never one to be afraid of pickles, I gingerly grasped the napkin and chucked the pickle under the seats for those lucky theater workers to clean later. Just as I was letting go of the happy bundle, I hear a rather loud, angry voice yelling something on the order of "What do you think you're doing?". And this twentysomething young man is getting in my face about why I threw his pickle on the ground. He was really heated about the whole thing and I apologized to him and told him I was sorry, and that I had assumed that someone from a previous showing had left it there and it hadn't been cleaned up.
Well - not good enough for him - he was really mad and was getting more angry. So I quip "Well in my experience it's not customary for a pickle to save someone's seat", and then people around us started to chime in saying things like "Dude, you need to calm down.", "Get over it - it was a pickle" and the like. Well - he went from angry to embarrassed in about 2 seconds. And that's when I started to feel bad for the kid. He mumbled something about how that pickle was the only thing he could afford and that he was sorry for losing his temper etc. I offered to buy him a new pickle, or anything else he wanted from the snack bar, but he'd moved from embarrassed to mortified and didn't want to talk to me anymore - the problem was that there were so few open seats in the theater now, that he had to sit just 3 seats down from us.
I tried a couple more times to get him to allow me to buy him something to replace the pickle, but he pulled his hat down over his face a bit and said he was fine, and asked me just to drop it. So I decided it was best just to honor his wish, and let it go.
Just then, one of the guys in the group behind us said "Hey, I'm going to run get a drink, save my place." to his buddy - to which the buddy replied, "Sure, I'll just put a pickle here on your seat."
Everyone around us laughed - except me and this poor young kid.
He got up and left, and I'm assuming found somewhere else to sit in the theater.
Today the story is oft told in our family, and we generally laugh about it - but I confess I still feel badly for that young man, and wish I could go back and make things better.
That said - I laughed right along with the rest of them when BG decided to choose the pickle drawings place saver as her funny thing. Because it truly was funny my friends - it truly was.
Respectfully,
- jake
