The Baboon Congress

When in Rome …

104 Comments

Today is my birthday and as a special treat to myself (and you), all this week I’m proud to present a string of Trail Baboon Guest Bloggers! A group so congenial and talented should (and will) regularly share the space here at the top of the entry. If you’d like to have your name put on the list for future guest blog opportunities, drop me a line at connelly.dale@gmail.com.

Guest Blog by Steve from Saint Paul

In the 1960s my parents had the extraordinary luck of purchasing an inexpensive shoreline property in a posh area of Lake Minnetonka. Their bargain little cottage looked silly, stuck as it was between two haughty estates. The property on the north was particularly grand. That compound included a mansion, guest house, servants’ dormitory, two utility sheds and a five-car garage.

The guest home, which sat just north of my parents’ fence, was occupied each summer by four fun-loving folks I will call the “Hopkins family.” Their one great accomplishment in life was to choose their ancestors well. They were distant heirs of a robber baron who had accumulated a fortune back before this country had an income tax. The Hopkins family inherited more money than they could have spent in a lifetime of serious dissipation. That wasn’t going to happen, as they weren’t serious about anything, even dissipation.

As a young college student just being introduced to great art and important ideas, I wanted to look down my nose at the Hopkins family. But I couldn’t. While they had the intellectual heft of fruit bats, somehow they made being superficial look great. They were as innocent and irresistible as a basket full of puppies.

When I was home from college on summer break, I could hardly take my eyes off our neighbors. The two barefoot teenaged girls wore swimsuits every day, and the older girl was as pretty as a model. And yet what fascinated me was the spectacle of four people who could make a fulltime job of goofing around.

Ernest Hemmingway is supposed to have said, “The rich are not like you or me. They have more money.” I concluded that the very rich are also different because they might be a little drunker than you or me. My mother once told Mrs. Hopkins that she was getting creaky with age and finding it harder to get going in the morning. “That’s no problem, sweetie,” said Mrs. Hopkins with her deep, smoker’s voice. “I just have a cigarette and two bloody Marys and I’m good to go.”

I was watching the next-door gang one night when their party became more boisterous than usual. The four of them got into a shoving match at the end of their dock. After sneaking behind their father, the girls bounced him into the lake in his street clothes. All four, including the soggy victim, howled with glee at this. A few nights later, they did the very same thing.

One day the Hopkins family invited me over for supper. I was delighted to accept. This would be my first contact with extremely wealthy folks, and I meant to study them like a young anthropologist. Having just read Fitzgerald’s classic novel, I thought of myself as Nick Carraway observing the decadent glitterati of the The Great Gatsby.

It was a pleasant late summer evening. The cooks from “the big house” prepared a tasty meal that we ate in a screened porch overlooking the lake. As usual, everyone was in bubbly high spirits.

Just before dusk we were horsing around at the end of the dock when I suddenly got a clear, blinding vision of what was required. This was the moment when I was supposed to throw Mr. Hopkins in the lake. That was what these people did. That was obviously what they expected me, their honored guest, to do. I’m not an aggressive guy, and yet I didn’t want to let this family down after they had been so nice to me.

I scooped up Mr. Hopkins, which was easy because he was a little guy. After spinning in a circle like a shot putter I pitched him high and far out over the lake. I hadn’t known I could do that, and I was impressed with myself. He really flew.

Mr. Hopkins was still high in the air, his arms and legs windmilling, when I realized how badly I had screwed up. My first clue was the look of terror on his face. It occurred to me (too late, too late!) that Mr. Hopkins didn’t usually go in the drink wearing alligator shoes, prescription glasses, a cashmere sweater and that massive gold Rolex. A silent pall fell over the party as Mr. Hopkins came up spitting lake water and began dog-paddling for shore. Back on the dock, the anxious way he examined his sodden wallet and money clip was my clue that he probably left them in the house on those evenings when he anticipated that the girls would push him in the lake. My unprovoked attack had surprised him almost as much as it shocked me.

These folks had rules for their games, I concluded ruefully, rules that I in my colossal ignorance had violated.

I was never invited back to finish my anthropological studies.

Have you ever tried too hard to fit in? Have you done something silly because you wanted to please people you didn’t know well?

104 thoughts on “When in Rome …”

    1. Happy Birthday, Dale! Forty is such a cool age, or I think it was; it is hard to remember that far back. When you hit 50 you get hit with the letter to join AARP, and nothing is the same after that. Have a great birthday and a fabulous decade.

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    2. Indeed – Happy Birthday Dale! Shall we all take a moment at, say, 8:55 to sing the “chairs and tables all over the yard” birthday song?…

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    3. Dale, this is true. This blog has definitely been a gift to me.

      Thanks so much for doing this. I miss your presence on the radio so much, but this is a wonderful new experience.

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  2. Happy Birthday Dale. I celebrated my 57th birthday by completing my 29th annual Twin Cities Marathon yesterday.

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    3. well done and welcome steven. 57 is about the timing of the prime of miss jean brodie. i think there is something to be said for enjoying the prime at whatever age you are. with a marathon under your belt you are on the way.

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  3. Good morning to all,

    I’m on the run this morning and can’t quickly think of any thing as far out of line as what you did, Steve. That is quite a story. I do remember being invited to dinner at a friend’s house and taking the last extra helping of meat off the plate when it was passed around for seconds. I got some strange looks, but really didn’t know what I had done. Latter my friend told me that his parents consider it bad manners to take the last serving available for any one who wanted seconds. This was not a problem for my friend who thought it was funny that I had violated the family rule about taking seconds.

    Happy birthday to Dale and I hope you have fun on your week off from blogging.

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  5. Rise and Shine Babooners:

    It’s hard to type while I’m laughing so hard! What a funny story.

    Yes, I’ve tried too hard. In my freshman year of college I met my Dream Guy (or the 18 y.o. version of Dream Guy) and dated him that entire year. I was ga-ga over him. He was incredibly handsome; he had money; he had charm. He just was not all that smart, but, oh well. He was in college! His family was well-to-do with a silo business from another small town in Iowa. When I was invited to dinner with him for Easter, I went, very excited about meeting the family. I pitched into the discussion of World War II and “that idiot FDR” mentioning that I had read “Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” and that I thought Hitler really was crazy and FDR had done the right thing. The room went silent, then the smirking began.

    It was a room full of drunk Republicans who did not read much. Innocent old me, raised by sober, Democratic parents who read books and who liked FDR, and who encouraged intelligent discussion, could not understand what had happened until much, much later.

    We broke up a couple of months later. I didn’t see that coming either.

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    1. I hope you know, Jacque and others, that my single act of violence was not in character. Heck, I managed to get through that book club meeting yesterday without throwing anyone out of one of Sherilee’s windows.

      You wouldn’t have been happy being an Iowa Silo Queen, Jacque! I used to dream about finding a woman who was beautiful but not very smart, but I have a hunch the charm wears thin after a short time. It is sort of like computers. We get all excited about the hardware, but it is the software we really relate to most intensively.

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  7. happy birthday dale. enjoy the day enjoy the week. steve that s a great story. jim and jacque too. i am afraid i cant come up with one to match you. i will noodle on it and check back. off to fix a broken sewer system today. oh boy

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  8. Greetings! Great story, Steve. I remember when I was getting to know Jim’s family in the early part of our marriage. His family plays cards — serious cards. Bridge, Cribbage, Hearts, etc. Games that require paying attention, thinking and strategy. My family did other stuff and played Fish, Rummy and Crazy Eights — fun games.

    I dutifully learned and played the games, and dreaded being partner with Jim’s father who is a serious, competitive card player. Bridge with its bidding, trumping and strategy is still a total mystery to me. Being partner to Russ in cribbage, I would be chatting and throwing cards without paying much attention. If I threw an inappropriate card, I would hear it from my father-in-law, in a way that let me know I done wrong without actually yelling at me. Hated playing cards.

    But now I can play cribbage competently. I’m so sorry I missed the BBC yesterday. We continued moving all day through the evening. Ugh. But now it’s done. Have a great day everybody!

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    1. Missed you Joanne. We had a fun, wide-ranging, spirited discussion and bonded a bit. Next time! December 11, Steve’s house. For Who the Bell Tolls.

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      1. Will try to get some notes up later today or tomorrow on the BBC site. Someone else is going to have to summarize what happened after I left on my sojourn to get a new tool bench (which was successful – now I just have to put it together).

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    2. Joanne, my inlaws were a little like that about cards, and I finally just refused to play 500 in that setting. Husband and I play cribbage frequently, and I can now hold my own there…

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  9. Happy birthday, Dale, and Joanne as well! I gave up on fitting in so long ago I can’t think of a story to share, and when I’m around people I don’t know well I’m very quiet until I feel safe. Of course, if I don’t see those people for some time, I have to go through the whole routine of warming up to them again, although it gets shorter each time. It must have taken a year for me to reliably identify my now-friend C. in a group–in my defense, she strongly resembled someone I can’t stand, and even their voices are similar.

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    1. CG – I’m like you… spent years being proud of “marching to a different drummer” (I even had this poster in my room in high school). These days I get my kicks by continuing to not care too much what other people think, which drives the teenager crazy!

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  10. 53 years ago, the Soviet Union launched the first satellite into space , and your parents launched you into life. It is also my birthday. My parents used to joke that some kids born on that day got space themed names like Satellite or Sputnik.
    So Happy Birthday to another Sputnik baby, Dale!
    Lefty

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      1. Sometime we should do survey to see how high is the % of southpaws in this group. Bet it is well above the normal 10%. So, you can guess, I am both gauche and sinister.

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  11. Fitting in has always been an issue for me, in the sense that I have never “fit in” and I never will. Too tall, only child, too independent, too shy. I never really fit in with my small town schoolmates, as my mother was a teacher, and that set me apart like nothing else could. Later on in High School I was too interested in getting good grades and getting out of town, and that set me apart. I lacked the sophistication of many of the highly urban students I went to college with. Now I live I a small community in which my profession keeps me apart from many of the folks here since either I or my husband have treated many of them and/or their relatives. Mind you, I’m not complaining. The view from outside, looking in, can be pretty interesting. I am also blessed in the sense that I have a wonderful husband who never wanted to fit in his group either, so we are happily on the outside together.

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    1. That was one of the things we talked about at the book club yesterday, Renee: fitting in. We noted that virtually all great writers (and, really, most interesting people) didn’t fit in during junior high or high school. That sense of apartness, of being on the outside looking in, is central to helping many of us really see society and our lives in more depth.

      I’ve been impressed by how often people who seem bright and accomplished will confess to having felt terribly isolated as a teen. Those can be tricky years.

      Something we wondered about in our discussion yesterday: today’s kids live in a more complex social structure, with more possible groups to identify with, so does that remove the old stigma and sense of loneliness about not fitting in?

      Thanks for the comments

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      1. In 25 years of sinning in the secondary, to borrow a line from my principal, I can tell you that almost no one in junior high, and to almost the same degree senior high, feels they fit in.

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      2. Dang, sounds like I missed an interesting part of the conversation. I would say, having gone to a high school in the 80s that had a group for almost everyone to fit into, and observing second hand some of the high schoolers of today, I think there is more acceptance – but it is not universal. There will always be some kids who will get picked on for something it seems. My nephew had to deal with some kind of nasty racism his freshman year of high school (thankfully there was a great guidance counselor he could turn to for help and support). Also, if you have been watching the news lately, you will see that being GLBT is still a rough row to hoe – better at some schools than others, but not a walk in the park. Some schools and communities can be quite open and accepting (like my inner city high school that had a bit of everything and everyone – nerds, jocks, kids in wheelchairs, teen moms, orchestra geeks, punks, all colors of the rainbow, and several non-English native languages), some are not. Not yet.

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      3. Anna — your comment bring up the topic of bullying. It is all over the MSNBC pages these days. Bullying is now a cause like sexual harassment was a few decades ago. By some counts, 75% of today’s kids have been bullied.

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      4. The recent bullying incidents being reported is partly what I was thinking of. I have a friend who teaches in the Anoka-Henn school district, where this is a hot topic right now. Imagine being a teacher in a district where the official policy is to be “neutral” with regard to GLBT issues and you have a kid coming to you, because he/she knows you’re “out,” to seek counsel and essentially you can say nothing. Because if you say too much that may be supportive you may break the “neutral” official stance.

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      5. I make it a rule to never trust anyone who thinks high school was the best period in their life. Those were the people who made my life miserable; besides, we’re even less likely to have anything in common now. I gather that now there are more subgroups than just the jocks-stoners-geeks of our high school days, so it’s easier to find your own kind, but that the pressure to date and be sexual (and the right kind of sexual) is brutal. Now that I think of it, I was the most out student at my school, which is saying almost nothing. Wow, I’d forgotten how scared I was…Thank Goddess for college!

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  12. What immediately comes to mind, in part after Jacque’s tale of the Dream Boyfriend was a visit I made to visit a boy I had a ginormous crush on when I was about 18. We had met through mutual friends and he lived in Madison – so I took the 5 hour bus ride to visit him for a weekend (after assurances on his part to my mother that I would be in a separate bedroom during my visit, yes Mrs. Bliss, she will be fine). He was a nice Jewish boy, and I was a nice Lutheran girl. So far, so good. Did I mention that his parents kept kosher? Yeah. I was vaguely aware of what this might mean, but not really – none of my Jewish friends in high school kept kosher, so I was not aware of the full implications (just that I wouldn’t get bacon for breakfast – no biggie, wasn’t a fan of bacon anyway). So, sitting down to a lovely, and slightly more formal dinner than I was accustomed to with my dairy loving family, imagine the looks of disbelief when I asked for a glass of milk with my dinner…and then it dawned on me what separate dishes were all about…I turned beet red. And then got a short lesson on kosher. The long distance relationship didn’t last, but it was a lovely weekend.

    Since then I have been very careful about dinner invitations, checking on meal or food restrictions of my dinner companions as best I can ahead of time, and waiting to see what others at the table do if I am unsure of the procedure. (After an incident in England where I was admonished for using my filet knife to butter my bread, I have also become a collector of etiquette books…).

    Thanks for the fun and well written start to my day Steve! Love the “as innocent and irresistible as a basket full of puppies” phrase.

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  13. ’63 went off to U of Chi from a sheltered life in NE MN, never exposed to arts in any form, thought I was smart. Then there I was surrounded by the very bright and a genius or two, who had grown up with a much richer life in terms of arts, travel, education, and usually money too. Met so many sorts of people I had known before, especially Jews, who are a large % of the students at U of Chi, a la “When Harry Met Sally.” My parents were very anti-semetic but I just had no opinion despite that. Somehow in all that I fit in better there than I ever had before, especially when I found my niche. While I did not grauate from there, it was the life-changing experience of my life. Even became a Christian there (was raised by atheists) in part from how wonderful I found Jewish culture and so many of the Jewish friends I made. So I sort of fit in by not fitting in where nobody really fit and and we all fit in because none of us fit and thus learned not to care if we really did or not fit in.

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  14. My home is being appraised at this very moment. I thought I’d dash off a quick summary of my high school’s social groups. We had just four, and one was fuzzy. One group was the Jocks. Enough said. There were no girls teams then. These guys got all the attention and had first rights to the prettiest girls. Then there were the Brains. A college town, Ames (IA) had a lot of sons and daughters of profs. Then there were the Hoods, the tough kids who turned up their collars and smoked and swore. I didn’t realize it then, but they tended to be farm kids or kids from lower-middle class backgrounds. That was it. Then there was this fuzzy group of “popular kids” at the top. Some were Jocks. If you were a girl, to make it into that precious top ring you had to be beautiful or at least cute with a vivacious personality.

    What I understand is that the landscape is vastly more complex now. Gay/straight. Racial groups (we had an all-white school except for one African-American girl). Groups based on all kinds of hobby interests. Rich kids made up one of the groups in my daughter’s Junior High (they were the Preppies, the ones who wore designer clothes every minute of the day). My class, in the relatively innocent 1950s, had no group of Stoners (drug users).

    While I assume the more complex and inclusive social groupings make more kids feel welcome, I don’t know if it is a Good Thing.

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    1. Not sure either. But a key difference is that for you and me, Steve, age was a limiting factor. Senior boys dated freshman girls but that was the only interaction across that many grades. For the last 25 years kids match up, as you say by interests first. My son had friends across the whole span of four years all four years he was in senior high, which is still very common, except for may the jock crowd.

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  15. Another U of Chi experience, then maybe later I will tell about a faux pas or two, but bet not: I had a good Greek friend there, who was part of the large Greek community in Chicago. He invited me to dinner at his house. So similar to your Kosher story, Anna. But my story is right out of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.” When we went to the movie and they showed the dinner at the Greek house, I told my wife that I had lived that scene. But the thing about Greeks not quite clear in that movie unless you know it, is that Greeks like to parody themselves. Got my cheeks pinched several times, got asked rather intimate questions, ate lamb and several Greek dishes for the first time, which I have often had since. A German farm boy from rural MN could not have been farther from his element and beem made to feel more welcome by being shown how he did not fit in by being shown a people who love who they are and showing it off to the ignorant.

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  16. When I was 19 I was invited to meet my boyfriend’s family for the first time – dinner at his parents’ place. He had three siblings, and their spouses and children were there, so it was quite a crowd and some of us were seated at a folding card table. As my boyfriend’s mother was loading the table with plates of chicken and potatoes and gravy and such, one leg of the table suddenly collapsed. As fate would have it, it was the leg closest to me, and the table sort of settled in my lap and funneled everyone’s spilled beverages directly onto me.

    His mother was mortified and sputtering apologies, trying to right the table and sponge me off at the same time. I was aware that the gracious thing to do would be to come up with a funny line to toss off and put her at ease, but I also knew with certainty that I have never been the sort of person who can do that. I had nothing. All eyes were on me and I could feel my lip starting to quiver, and decided that the best I could hope for was not to burst into tears in front of everybody. So I excused myself and went to the bathroom to towel off and cried silently for two or three minutes. Then I composed myself and went back to the table, feeling ridiculous and damp. Hoping I didn’t look as if I’d been crying. Never could come up with anything to say except an unconvincing , “Oh, I’m fine…really…just fine…”

    Wouldn’t it be nice if one of those etiquette writers would publish a book of gracious things to say at every conceivable awkward social situation? I’d commit it to memory. I wonder what sort of line they could come up with for those who have just thrown their host into the lake. That might be a tricky one.

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    1. I never know what to say when I have just thrown my host in the lake wearing his Rolex. If I keep working at it, maybe I’ll find a good line. “If you had been a good witch, you would have floated!” Nawww. That’s worse, isn’t it?

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    3. my personal favorite when i witness something that has gone awry is to say “i hate it when that happens” such as “oh i mistook that look you were giving me for a throw my dad in the lake signal and i was mistakedn wasn’t i?….i hate it when that happens” when a person dumps their plate on the floor., instead of saying “oh thats too bad, im so sorry, i say simply “i hate it when that happens” its kind of a catch all.. table full of food in the lap, toilet paper stuck to the bottom of your shoe, big old chunk of food stuck in your nose… i hate it whan that happens.

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  17. If he had floated, then you would have had to burn him at the stake. That would have been really awkward.

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  18. The last time I went to a family holiday gathering I had a small incident demonstrate how alien I am. I knew I couldn’t trust the family to remember I was vegetarian, much less vegan, so I brought something to eat. I was sitting there eating my Thai yellow curry with tofu, and one of my young cousins pointed at my chopsticks and asked, “What are those things?” I’m afraid I let my surprise show–plenty of people can’t use them, but I couldn’t imagine not knowing what they were. Anyway, that was the year I decided to disappear from the awkward family holidays and have them with my friends instead (to everyone’s vast relief, no doubt!)

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  19. HB, Dale and Linda A!

    Nice writine, Steve, and great stories Everyone! I’m always trying to fit in, part of that thing about not missing anything. But my mom also taught me to be different, which I also do, but am pretty self-conscious about it.

    Interesting how many of these tales happen around the dinner or the card table. First time I had dinner with Husband’s family, when he was just barely Boyfriend, as we all sat down I took it upon myself to go in and turn off the TV, as I had brought up to do at mealtime. I got back to the table to a sort of nervous silence, and learned later that in that family nobody but The Dad turned off the tv, especially if the news was on, which it was.

    Linda, love the idea of coming up, even way after the fact, with a punch line. Will have to work on that.

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    1. Oh, then there was that incident at a party maybe ten years ago or so, when I had been introduced to somebody’s friend who was named Brad, and trying to be witty, I said, “Do you have any tattoos, Brad?” but it fell flat. I guess it’s a sign of creeping fogeyhood when your pop culture references fail to amuse, only confuse.

      Maybe I’m better off not thinking of the funny punchline, if it’s only funny to me.

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      1. Is that from Rocky Horror? And if not, I don’t get it, speaking of fogeyhood.

        Thanks for the fudge recipe, can’t believe it’s that simple!

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  20. Sherrilee – would you be so good as to share your apple brown betty recipe? The apples at the farmers’ market are calling to me.

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    1. And Linda, do you have one for the fudge?, which made it home safely, but since it was still on the counter this morning, I ate it. Husband had his chance…

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      1. Makes a fine breakfast, as the peanut butter layer provides protein.

        The recipe is called Easy Peanut Butter Chocolate Fudge. (I love recipes whose titles begin with the word “Easy”.)

        1 10-ounce package peanut butter chips
        1 6-ounce package chocolate chips
        1 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk
        1/4 cup butter

        In large saucepan melt together the peanut butter chips, 1 cup of the condensed milk, and 2 tablespoons of the butter. Spread mixture into a wax-paper-lined 8 inch square pan. Then melt the chocolate chips with the remaining condensed milk and butter, and spread over the top. Chill two hours or until firm.

        If you like you can also add 1/2 cup chopped peanuts to the bottom layer.

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    2. Apple Brown Betty

      Ingredients
      2 cups torn up day old bread
      3 T butter
      Juice of one lemon
      ¼ c. apple cider
      2 lbs apples
      1/3 c. white sugar
      1/3 c. brown sugar
      1 tsp cinnamon
      ¼ tsp allspice
      ¼ tsp nutmeg
      ¼ tsp salt

      Melt the butter and then throw in the day old bread. Saute until it gets a little golden brown on the edges. Set aside. Cut up apples and combine with the lemon juice and apple cider. Set aside. Combine sugars, spices and salt and add to apple mixture. In buttered (or sprayed) 8 x 8 baking dish, layer half the apple mixture followed by half the bread crumb mixture. Then add the rest of the apples w/ the rest of the bread crumbs on top. Bake about an hour at 350° F. Let the brown betty sit for about ½ hour before serving or it will have to be served in bowls!

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  21. Oh, etiquette! My husband’s stepbrother married the daughter of a socially prominent newpaper publisher from one of our southern and coastal states, and let me tell you, the manners and mores of that wedding still haunt me. The women’s bathroom seemed to be the place for the hostess and her guests to replay all the social solepcisms and gaffs as well as critical comments about other guests. The wedding was held in a very small town near a paper mill. I remember overhearing one of the guests lamenting what she considered a horrible faux pas during a dinner conversation in which she commented on how awful the smell from the paper mill was. She did not realize that the person to whom she directed the remark owned the mill. As she said in her very thick and cultured southern accent “I didn’t know I was sittin’ right next to Mr. Smokestack!” It also was amazing how cultured and proper everyone was, but on such a superfical level. We attended a gathering in which friends and family members from each side were invited to get to know one another, and I was literally pounced on buy all these proper older women who wanted to know all the dirt on my husband’s family. They were so disappointed when I told them that the groom’s mother and stepfather married after the deaths of their respective spouses, and no, there weren’t any juicey divorces or scandals that were going to make the wedding festivities more interesting.

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  22. Terrific story, Renee! And a very special award to you for being the first person this year to toss out a word in casual conversation that I had to look up in the dictionary. I have a master’s degree and yet I didn’t know what a solecism was!

    My best buddy worked as an intern in a Cloquet clinic or hospital for two years. Cloquet just reeked in those days. So many people were economically dependent on the mills, though, that it was considered gauche to even mention the smell in public.

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      1. Slolipsism, the theory that only one’s own mind is certain to exist. Fun to play with and unfortunately quite unfalsifiable. A friend of mine, John Rezmerski, wrote a series of very funny Solipsist poems. I think they might have been published in his last collection “What Do I Know?” by Holy Cow Press.

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      2. Love John Rezmerski!
        I have spoken with him a few times and one of my favorites is his small book called, something to the effect, ‘What the Sheriff Saw but Didn’t Explain because No one Would Believe Him’? That’s not quite right… I’ll have to dig it out when I get home tonight. Very fun little pamphlet of a book with this great title.

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      3. John Rezmerski- Found the novella I was talking about. It’s called
        ‘THE SHERIFF NEXT DAY ANSWERS THE REPORTER’
        and it contains the lines,
        “And what I saw, you’d say, some people would say if I said it, is what a nut would say.”
        Also,
        “And I know enough to know when not to know is better than anything you might think you know. I know that.”

        Love it! Thank you John!

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  23. Afternoon-

    Happy Birthday Dale! Enjoy the week off–

    Thanks for the story Steve and everyone. A good group as usual.

    The BBC sounded like a good time.

    In situations where I’m not comfortable or don’t fit in I probably just sat quietly in the back and tried not to be noticed… at least for awhile. I did mostly enjoy high school. I remember mouthing off to the wrong people a few people and having to run for my life. Thank goodness for a certain other student who intimidated the chaser for picking on me even though I probably started it.
    I wonder if that’s why I so often have dreams of being in situations where I’ve insulted someone and am fighting for my life? Just had another of those last night; not sure what happen first but I was releasing a bunch of dogs and rescuing friends. Hmmm…? Therapy anyone?
    When I first met my wife’s family it was Thanksgiving and they came to see me in a show where I played a sort of Woody Allen character. I’m not sure they were very impressed with either me or my acting skills.. but it all turned out OK in the end… they liked me. They Really Liked Me!

    What I’ve learned is you just have to laugh it off when it happens… I have a habit of thinking I recognize someone who it really isn’t. And talking to them before I realize they’re not who I thought… ah well.

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    1. Glad it all turned out well, Ben. About the only thing I know about acting is if your audience really starts warming to you, the one thing you never say is: “You like me! You really like me!” It takes just seven words to deep-six a career.

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  25. My husband and I dated after each having been married before. His mother was DYING for us to GET MARRIED. My husband’s immediate family(parents and sibs) is famously without etiquette or charm of any kind, although I am very fond of some of the extended family. Early in the meal my late mother-in-piped up very loudly, “So, Jacque and Lou, when are YOU getting married?” All forks froze mid-air and a lengthy silence ensued.

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    1. Sounds like my brother-in-law might fit in well there…first time I met him, one of the first things he asked was whether or not I was sleeping with his brother. I politely demurred that it was not his business to be asking such things. (Miss Manners would have been proud of me – though it was a much easier question to rebuff than anything that might have been asked if a table with gravy and other liquids and collapsed upon me.)

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  26. Stepping in briefly…just to say Happy Birthday, Dale! Here’s to “40” more!

    The book club sounds delightful, wish I were closer to the action.

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  27. I wish I could participate in BBC too. Sounds like fun!

    Happy birthday, Dale! Have a fabulous week!

    Great story, Steve. You guys are all so funny today.

    This story still embarrasses me almost 20 years later. It’s hard for me to tell it, but here goes (don’t laugh at me):

    In 1992, a couple of friends and I started a casual concert series at Shattuck-St. Mary’s school in Faribault. Our first performer was Tom Paxton and it sold out. It was great fun and exciting and the Paxtons were so nice. What fun!

    So, having been successful and feeling confident, we tried again. I was really excited to have Peter Ostroushko come. I had just picked up the mandolin and imagined that Peter would be happy to give me some tips. But when I got a chance to meet him, I got hopelessly tongue-tied and blurted, “Please touch my fingers!” He looked at me like I was a walking, talking fungus. I must have turned as red as the upholstery in that lovely auditorium.

    It turned out that he was miserable with a cold and hardly wanted to be there. He probably thought I was really weird for wanting to touch his fingers when he had such a cold. Oh well. Mandolin skills can’t be transferred through fingertips anyway, but a girl can dream…

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  29. Oooh, painful story Krista! Peter is a great guy, so obviously he was in a mood that night.

    Here is a magical piece of tube tape of a bluegrass concert set up by Alison Krauss (one of my favorite people in the world). She has assembled a world-class group of bluegrass performers and then inserted in the middle of them a fifth grade girl who dreamed of one day playing with her heroes. The girl, Sierra Hull, holds her own in a thrilling mandolin performance. The smiles she flashes at Alison is just heartbreaking (2:10 and 2:42)

    Sorry I can’t embed video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDZ9PN5K06Q

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  30. hi, All – what fun reading all of your stories – you are brave to share. and Steve, you are a stellar leader of discussion! thanks!
    Dale, Happy Birthday again. i hoist my Dr. Pepper to you.

    who’s on tomorrow?

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    1. I don’t think it’s you, Barb. If we look back to when they were introduced from straight type, I think it might be Steve that didn’t get it closed. ?

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  33. Got to go and sorry I did not get to do much more than lurk today.
    Happy Birthday to Dale, Joanne and Lefty!

    Great blog today, Steve. Not sure I could tell a story like that on myself, even years after the fact.

    Thanks for the BBC updates all.

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  35. Steve Stevie Steven – that is one wonderfully executed bit of humor! I want you to know that I chuckled and chortled for at least 15 seconds which you must consider a true compliment because people tell me I have an adorable guffaw. And just think how perfectly that story would have worked in “What About Bob?” I’m going to predict that unless the unlikely sequel “So Now What Else About Bob?” contains your delightful anecdote, it will be doomed at the box office.

    As far as doing something silly trying to fit in – what happens more often is that I do something silly because I don’t pay close enough attention to trying to fit in. For example, once when one of my kids was going through confirmation, the church had a Seder Supper. There was lamb seasoned with garlic, I remember, and wine. As fate would have it, I was a lot more excited about the wine than the lamb so I poured myself a generous goblet full. Pretty soon, people, including the pastor, were staring and I realized no one else had taken nearly as much as I had. Boy, was I embarrassed! I still drank it, but it just didn’t taste the same.

    Happy Birthday to Dale, Joanne, Linda A., and Yours Truly. Seriously Kids, my birthday was yesterday! And I celebrated it in New York with my son! First time for me in that really big, really really big city. Some things we experienced: Central Park, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Upper East Side and the Lower West Side (or it may have been the other way around, or perhaps they were both uppers) Rockefeller Center, Broadway where we saw “A Little Night Music”, the Museum of Modern Art where we saw Julianne Moore, and many many subway platforms where we saw a rat and a transvestite. It was the best birthday ever!!

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    3. Donna In my parenthetic voice, I thank you for your story! Well done.

      Maybe sometime we can have the theme of “Was I Embarrassed!” If so, I’m gonna have to pick my stories carefully. My most embarrassing incident would cause coffee to spurt out the noses of all Babooners . . . even those not drinking coffee at the time. The second-most-embarrassing incident doesn’t involve disgusting bodily functions, and could be told in public.

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