Random Thoughts

We’ve had two, count ‘em, two ultrasounds, in which two completely different technician people in two completely different darkened rooms looked at two completely different grainy black-and-white screens on equipment which must have been taken directly from the bridge of the Red Oktober, which they both assured me were images of my kid.

 If they’d told me that they were satellite images of a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan, I wouldn’t've found it any harder to believe.

At the first ultrasound, the technician took a very suspect-looking, er, wand thingy and did something very disturbing to Sherrill with it, without even buying her a drink first, and I’m sorry, even now I can’t talk about it, so let’s move on, and then on the screen I saw a bunch of greyish and whitish spots on a black background in the shape of an inverted windshield wiper track. 

I was very glad to have something else to look at.  As much as…you know what, I am just not even going to end that sentence, if that’s okay with you.

This, the technician explained, was a baby. 

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I don’t have any way to measure how accurate my memory of the girl who danced ballet from when I was eight years old is when I recall it today, but if I can describe it in that kind of detail thirty years later, I know I can’t be too far off.  And I can remember this memory in crystal clarity too.

It was a year later.  Fourth grade.  I was at my tallest ever, 4′ 4″, and in the best shape of my life up to that point.  We had the best teacher in the world, Ms. Pomerantz, who was funny and from the North (there’s a North?) and who taught us math and stuff occasionally, but wasn’t a fanatic about it, and then sat around with us doing Mad Libs. 

And Kristin was in my class.  It was gonna be a good year.

Now, if you have any doubt that Ms. Pomerantz was the best teacher in the world, if you have the nerve to think maybe you had a teacher that was better, then let me just make it clear that you don’t know what you’re talking about, and you should sit down before you embarrass yourself, because I am about to prove to you that she was, in fact, the best teacher in the world. 

One day Ms. Pomerantz decided, in her blindingly limitless wisdom, that she was going to have us sit alphabetically.

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Note to sensitive readers:  this doesn’t end well.

The first time I ever saw Kristin was in dance class in third grade.

Oh…yes, dance class.  This was one of my mom’s many fantastic ideas, like piano lessons or activities at the Rec Department.  One of those character-building-type activities.  Or maybe just an excuse to get me out of the house.  But anyway, in third grade, very much against my will, I was subjected to dance class. 

So yes, during one very dark period in my life, I owned a pair of tap shoes.  I even won a trophy.  Me and some other guy (probably the only two guys in dance class) each got one for being able to do a move called a machine gun 50 times in a row.  A cheap flimsy 9″ high trophy capped with a sappy-looking “gold” dude holding a top hat.  I think one of its arms broke off within a week.

…Sorry, just having a PTSD flashback.  Anyway.  The point of confessing that painful little chapter of my life was so I could tell you this story. 

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Yay USA

One night on the front porch, there was a scuffling sound.  I opened the door to see

A possum!  Awwwww, look at the little face!  Now, for those of you who don’t know, possums are by far the stupidest animals in the entire world, if you don’t count some humans.  This is why nearly all the possums you’ve ever seen in your life have been dead on the side of the road.  They just don’t understand that those fast-approaching huge loud hunks of metal with huge bright headlights and blaring horns could possibly be any kind of threat until about twenty minutes after it’s too late.

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