Running in the rain

This afternoon was the city championships for cross country. The three junior highs, all dressed in red, were out to find out who was the best in the town. The Girl's race was at 4:15 pm. Around 4 it started to rain. Just a light drizzle that made you wish you kept an umbrella in your car but nothing terrible. By the starting gun it was pouring. But those girls ran like nobody's business.

The Girl got her personal best time of 16:20 and came in tenth!

The coach said that if both the girls and boys team won the championship, there would be no practice tomorrow. The girls ran first and one of our girls came in number one by a long shot. When the boys ran, the girls cheered on their lead boy so much, he broke the school record. It was a wet, cold and successful meet!

Return to the River

We like to start out our Scout year with camping. This past weekend we kicked it out in style back at one of our favorite campsites, Singing River.

Our troop has never been so small as it is this year. Only six girls went with us to the cabin. But they brought so much stuff and spread it out so far and wide that it looked like 30 girls were living in there.

Weaver, the cabin has a new stove, refrigerator and thermostat. Sweet! The plumbing is still sluggish and the kitchen floor is always wet because the floor is seeping through the cracks. Not sweet. There was this big, braided oval rug that smelled so funky we had to kick it out. We put on note on it that it should never be let in again!

The highlight of the trip was our afternoon picnic by the river. This year we took the buddy burners and hobo stoves and made soup and grilled cheese sandwiches.

And don't even start on me about flip flops and outdoor cooking. It may have been anti Safety-Wise, but I assure you that no one was injured.

The only bummer was that when the river is this low, it's not as much fun to play in. Weaver, someday you'll have to come out with us. Olive's Grave is waiting!

A Time of Painful Renewal

Autumn officially began this week and with it comes not only cool days and bright colors but also all the fundraisers. Boy Scout popcorn. Cookie dough for school. Girl Scout nuts and magazines. Take your checkbook and hide in a cave-- Here comes the kids!


I'll have plenty to say about popcorn in the coming days, being that I'm the troop's Popcorn Kernel. (I'm not kidding, that's what the person who runs the sale is called. ACK!). But today I want to tell you a story about the GS fall sale.


I was at the big kick-off event about a month ago out at Timberlane. Girl Scouts have had a fall product sale for a long time now. Compared to the insanity of cookies, the fall sale is barely a blip on the troop year. When I was a lass we sold calendars, then it was calendars and nuts, then just nuts, now it's magazines and nuts. The magazine sale, new last year, had a lot of bugs in the system. Add that to the fact that most people can't follow simple written directions, and by December the magazine sale had everyone hopping mad.


At this big kick-off meeting, people still felt like they hadn't complained enough about how last year went and proceeded to hog up the meeting time with their grievances. The sales rep guy was way, WAY too patient with them all:

"My subscriptions didn't start coming until March!"

"I paid for a year and it stopped after six months!"

"My mother got double billed!"

"Those annoying renewal offers come every week!"

At that last one, the calm sales rep raised his hand for attention.

"Remember that renewal offers you get in the mail are from the magazine publisher itself, not Girl Scouting. If you renew with them, Girl Scouts doesn't get any of the money."

The room quieted down a bit. He continued, mistakenly believeing he was getting control of the room finally.

"You have to renew on one of these forms," he said, holding up a copy of the now familiar form, "in order for your troop to make any profit from the sale."

The room was now practically silent. The only sound was that of women muttering not very Girl Scout words under their breath.

Are you kidding me? I thought. These women have renewed their subscriptions with the publishers and thought it would count? Uh-oh.

That uh-oh then happened quickly. One leader broke the silence with an exasperated, "Well, I wish to hell someone would have explained that a year ago!"

And with that the room broke out into chaos again. It was the single worst kick-off event in recent memory.

With that said, if you need any of your magazines renewed, let me know. I've got plenty of forms.

Rocket Park

Back in the day, THE place for playground fun was Rocket Park. That wasn't it's official name, but that's what everyone called it. If you were good in the grocery store or kept your cool the entire time at some boring great-aunt's house, a trip to Rocket Park was the big reward.

Of course we called it Rocket Park because of the rocket. After you made it across the swinging bridge and got over the planking you could enter the rocket itself. It had three levels that you reached by ladder. The middle level had a shiny slide for an emergency exit. The top level was the nose of the rocket and was so small only two or three kids could fit at the time.

Somewhere along the line, they tore out the amazing rocket and installed safe playground equipment. (I should mention that most moms hated Rocket Park because the whole thing was a serious, and possibly deadly, accident waiting to happen. The moms would sit together on the benches watching in horror as their kids would climb, almost slip and then climb again.)

I'm telling you all this because I think I found the rocket yesterday!

The Boy and I were out on the back roads on our way to the Girl's cross country meet. The team is forced to ride the bus to get to all its meets, so family members have to get their on their own. Luckily when the meet is over, you are allowed to take your kid with you so they don't have to ride home on the bus. Anyway, yesterday's meet was way the hell out in Sullivan. That's pretty big time Amish country and we passed plenty of buggies on the way. One of the towns we had to creep through was Spencer and right there on the road was a little community park with a rocket. The boy posed by it so you can get an idea of it's size.

If this isn't the exact same rocket that was in our park when I was a kid, then it is definitely it's twin.

These opening for the ladders are a bit smaller than I remember them being. I wish that graffiti wasn't so hidden. It said, "Becky is a wannabe redneck". Whoa! Those small town kids are scary!

This slide could use a coat of wax. If you had to actually escape from an exploding rocket, you'd only get halfway down before you'd have to push yourself along. Burnt for sure!

Way up in the nosecone, Commander J, spies the alien life form on the planet.

The alien has taken control of the rocket and is taunting me from the control room!

Back on Earth, I got to be the mommy sitting on the bench gasping as I watched my kid almost slip down the ladder. Not fun at all.

Not only did this park have the rocket, but look at the size of this swing set! And you know that I got it up there and I was looking over the top bar before I was done. The Boy was mighty impressed.

He wasn't so impressed with the thing that spins you until you barf.

There was also a spiral slide that was actually slippery, some real teeter-totters that we tried out and this little crane that you can sit on and dig up sand. The Boy really liked playing with that even though he was way too big for it.

Oh yeah, we made it to the Girl's meet with plenty of time to spare. She came in 31st with a time of 18:49. Considering how hot it was and that they had to run up and down hills instead of just a flat course, I think she did wonderful.

Now she wants to go to Rocket Park since she's seen the pictures. Another road trip is surely in our future!

Bush with big hair

Someone sent this to The Man. Take a moment and read what Garrison Keillor has to say about the elections. It's a great read.

Cedar Point Again

Sunday was Season Pass Day at Cedar Point. Season Pass holders got to enter the park an hour early and ride The Raptor . You could ride it as much as you wanted because it was the only thing open in the whole park. We got there fifteen minutes early and rode it once. That was fine by us.



After that the park was completely open so we rode Maverick twice and then the Millennium. The whole joint is all dressed up for Halloweekends which starts next week. The decorations are fantastic. They had a graveyard built on the midway with rides that have been removed from the park written on the headstones. "Funhouse" was written upside-down! Oh, I miss that one!


And finally we all rode Top Thrill Dragster. The boy rode it for the first time a couple of weeks ago, but this was a first for the rest of us. The Girl was so nervous she was on the verge of tears. When they were strapping me in all I could think was "So stupid! So stupid!"



But it was awesome! We all loved it so much we got right back on it right away. Of course, it helps that the line was only 15 minutes long both times!

Nature vs. Nurture (A Math Problem)

The kids read most of my posts. They get a big kick out of them. But this one I'll have to keep on the down-low.


Most of their academic lives I've been lying to the kids about my feelings for math. It's true. I would lie to them every school day when they would need help with their math homework. It's an experiment I started with them back in second grade. That's the year you learn to borrow in order to subtract, the first complicated math process.


I took the least amount of math possible to graduate from high school. When I got to college they told me I had to take more math or I could take logic. I took all the logic they offered. It's not that I hate math or numbers. I just never felt comfortable in the subject. It's shaky ground I'd rather not walk on.


But here's where being a zombie teacher came in very handy. When you have to teach a math lesson everyday you can't help but become proficient at it. When you have to teach to first grade one day and then sixth grade the next, you get down right good at it. I can multiply using partial products or lattice. I can find the area of two and three dimensional shapes. I know what PEMDAS means and I can use it. And if you need to turn those mixed numbers into improper fractions, multiply them together, simplify the answer and then show it as a decimal and a percentage, I've got it covered.



So when the kids would get stuck at a math problem, I was always ready to help. I not only knew what they were learning but I knew how the concept was going to be extended into the next grade. The kids would say, "We're lucky you're so good at math." And here's where the lying started. I would answer, "I love math. It was always my favorite subject."



Why did I do this? Well, why not. I didn't see any harm. Why should I burden them with my math reservations when I was in the position to do the exact opposite? And the ironic thing is that I really do enjoy math now. Teaching the math lesson is usually my favorite part of a zombie day. There's manipulatives to play with, charts and graph and in the end there's an answer, a real answer that you can prove is right. When I'm explaining a math concept and you get to see that little bulb go off because they finally get it, that's the best. You don't get to see that little light in other subjects like you do in math.



The problem now is that I only teach through sixth grade and my kids are in eighth. This year they are taking algebra. It's not pre-algebra but high school algebra, the class I barely passed. The size of their book is intimidating. Flipping through it's pages is even more so. Their math teacher has already rubbed me the wrong way. (She told her class that this is the year that math would get hard, so hard they might cry. What the hell kind of thing is that to say to children at the start of a brand new year? Is sabotaging your class morale a new teaching model that I haven't heard about yet? I've already had words with this woman and I foresee more words in the future.)

Anyway, the jig is almost up. The Boy's math work last night had a story problem that made me want to go in the corner and hide...and they've only been in school eight days!

My Running Girl

At school Open House we were all sitting there, listening to the blah, blah, blah about dress codes, staying off the grass and the importance of punctuality. The meeting was winding up when they made one more announcement.

"We need the parents of any fall athlete to stay for a few more minutes to discuss eligibility."

Stunned, I realized that meant me.

It's true, the Girl has joined a school sport. She is a member of the Cross Country team. This is a sport I've only been vaguely aware of that existed before this and now we are all living around it's schedule.

How this happened is hard to pinpoint. Early this month she started to get herself up and out of the house and off to practice sometimes walking, sometimes on her bike. She would come home completely beat and sore. But the next morning, bright and early, she left again. Now that school has started, her practices come directly after school. She's REALLY tired by the time she gets home. But she must like it.

Yesterday was their first meet. Here's the Girl and the Girl Who Thinks She Lives at my House #1. We had to be at the meet at 7:15 AM!

This was a huge meet. The Man and I couldn't get over the number of people who were out there. First all the boys ran and then the girls. Here's our Girl right off the starting line.

She finished her two miles in 17 minutes and 39 seconds and that with taking a tumble after tripping over #1's feet! So she not only likes it, but she's good at it too!

Honestly, I can't understand it. I'd rather do pretty much anything other than run. But as long as she's happy, you can keep finding me in big soggy fields before the sun rises most Saturdays this fall.

Post Olympic Observations

• If Michaels Phelps is really double jointed in his elbows and knees, what is going on with his knee caps? I'm sure he has knee caps. If he didn't, everyone would know. But I'm having a hard time picturing a knee going backwards, even a little bit, with knee cap in the way.




• Staying with Michael, was anyone else concerned when he would run around with swimsuit pulled down WAY past his hip bones? Then he would start running around and screaming. I kept thinking that this boy was one celebratory jump away from being naked on international television.




• Mary Carillo is scary. They tried to pretty her up, but she's still a big scary man.




• One night when I couldn't sleep I ended up watching ping pong. I was really excited to watch something different since at that point I was sick to death of quarter final swims and dives. Unfortunately, that ping pong match was deadly dull. It put me right to sleep.




• There is a Yahoo site called Fourth Place Medal. Thank goodness for this site. They made sure that the stories that NBC didn't deem worthy enough got the attention they deserved.




• Those little Chinese gymnasts were so underage. All those medals should be revoked. But maybe since those girls were stolen from their parents when they were three and put in a school to learn how to perform or ELSE, they should get something. Instead of a gold medal though, I'm sure those girls who love to win a chance to go home and be a normal kid.




• Everyone is ga-ga over what a wonderful job China did with these games. How organized they were and how well run. How lovely the accommodations and venues were. But as the Man said, of course they were organized, the best criminals are very organized. Only by having a tight hand on everything they can get away with their crimes over and over again. The Chinese government just spent billions of dollars to prove to the world that the suppression of human rights are worth it; that they are not only making it work, but they are thriving. It all looked like a gorgeous, expensive mask to me.




• An American was murdered during the first day of the games. After the second day, they never mentioned it again, but I think it's important not to forget. Journalists were hassled, barricaded and occasionally detained with no explanation. There were serious censorship issues with the Internet. How many other stories did we not get to hear?




• I still love the Olympics. Here's to Vancouver!

Blooming Sunflowers

It started happening last week. First just one. Then next morning there were three more. And now there are oodles and there are still more to come.

Here's the view from my living room window.

And standing outside beneath them. That my bedroom window above them. The view of them from up there is a sight I didn't anticipate, but very much appreciate!

As much as I love the big ones, these little ones that peek up through the center of the tangle are like finding hidden treasure.

And this tiny one came out purple! Neat!

Mysterious Cameras Revealed

You'll recall not long ago the five disposable cameras that I found here and there around the house. They didn't exactly end up being big mysteries or even very old. Here's a quick tour of what developed.

Camera #1

Back in May, The Girl went to a student council conference in Mason. She had to spend two nights in a host home with another delegate that she didn't know. You weren't allowed to room with anyone from your school. Here's the Girl with her roomie. They got along smashingly. They are all dressed up and ready to go to the big banquet and dance that ended the conference.

Camera #2
Remember when The Man and his dad went to Florida for Indians Spring Training? They also went to NASA for a day and the Gulf of Mexico. Here's Pop all dressed for a day at the beach!

Camera #3

The Girl also went to a Student Council camp at Wright State University in Dayton in July. This camp was the whole reason the Man and I went on our big crazy trip. Here's the Girl with some of the other campers. She's pretty good about giving her camera to other people to get shots of her.

Camera #3 (again)

Camera 3 pulled double duty also going to Girl Scout camp. The Girl had a high adventure week including river canoeing, ropes courses, yatching and horseback riding.

Camera #4

We do have a son as well. Really. He went to Boy Scout camp. He's not one to have his picture taken especially with his own camera, but he did take a lot of shots of the other guys in his troop. They are quite a bunch.

Camera #5

This was a hodgepodge of different little events. It had some Girl Scout things, the Duct Tape festival, around the house shots and Cedar Point. I picked that first shot of the Girl and her roomie because we ran into that same girl at Cedar Point the first time we went out there. It really is a small world.

Wrap-up

Remember there was one shot left on each camera? So for our photo finale, I present the kids doing dangerous things in the park. This doesn't actually look dangerous, but the Boy is standing on the edge of cliff here and it's quite a long way down.

Pre-dawn Laughs

Sometimes J can't sleep. (Ooh, I am talking about myself in third person! Hell, I'm going with it!) It's not the J is worried about anything. No pressing problems are robbing her of her dreams. Her nonstop list making during daylight hours usually keeps her worry free during sleepy time. No, none of that. But sometimes, J wakes up at 4 AM and that's it. She's wide awake. She's done this enough to know not to fight it. Lying in bed bored doesn't do her any good. So she usually gets up and catches up on everything. She reads every body's blogs, the newspaper and enough Mental Floss to keep her an interesting person to talk to for a week. She also checks out the cute cat pictures because that is required 4 AM material. Usually they just make her smile or occasionally coo, but this one make her laugh out loud. It's so something she would do to one of her cats...or kids. Perhaps today.

Jack and Meg are Two!

Happy Birthday, you photogenic felines!

Two years of cat hair everywhere and destroyed furniture. But it has also been two years of cuddles, snuggles, purrs and love too! Everyday with cats is a new adventure!

Professor Man

It's The Man's first day as a big shot college teacher!

For his first semester, he will be teaching four class for two colleges at three different locations. Tres busy! But you know the part I'm excited about? College zombie stories!

Picture Worthy

Check out this nonsense.

Five disposal cameras. Where in the world did all of these come from? What, oh what, could be on them? I have no idea. Yesterday I found two together in a basket. I recalled that there was one in my desk drawer and one in the glove compartment of the van. When I got the four together, the Girl brought down the fifth one from her room. And here's the really weird part, they all had exactly one picture left on them!

Armed with these cameras we all went walking through Cascade Park and took five pictures of the kids climbing rocks in various dangerous ways. After I get these cameras developed I'll let you in on what we find. I know one went to camp with the girl and one went to camp with the boy, but the other three are mysteries. Stay tuned.

###

I know what you're thinking. You want to know how my sunflowers are doing. Go ahead and click to see what they looked like a month ago. Here's what they look like today.

And the view from my kitchen window. Yay!

Yes, they are very, very tall. Even compared to my overly tall kids.

But we are seriously lacking flowers. Most of the plants have what will be a flower on the top, but none except a few shorter ones in the center have opened.

These giant leaves already make me so happy. I can't wait for the flowers!

The Olympics can change lives (or just living rooms)

I love the Olympics. Really, really, truly, truly love them. And I don't know why. I'm not a sporty kind of girl. I can't sit through an entire baseball or football game. But I'm going to actively waste the next two weeks sitting right here on the couch watching every little event. The kids are down with it now. Give it a few days. They will get sick of beach volleyball and me pretty damn fast.

Young newlyweds and homeowners, the Man and I had one little TV with a funky antennae wire that we would drape around lamps and out the front door to get reception. We really didn't care. But then the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer were coming up and I suddenly realized that the situation was unacceptable. We had cable TV a few days later. Go Team!

We still only had one TV and it was fairly small. We didn't care. But then the Summer Olympics in Atlanta were coming up. Our home had acquired these two demanding little people who kept me upstairs quite a bit. It didn't take much discussion on what had to happen to keep peace in our home. A short time, later I had a set in my bedroom, with cable. USA!

Our downstairs TV seemed to be shrinking. The dog had eaten the remote and the buttons on the set had snapped off from overuse. We had to use an unsharpened pencil to poke at the broken buttons to turn it on or change the channels. We didn't care. But then the Summer Olympics in Sydney were coming up and with Olympics being broadcast on multiple NBC channels, a change was needed. A trip to Best Buy and a great deal on a floor model graced our home with our current behemoth. (The pencil TV was sold in the next yard sale to be used just for video games. I hope it's still making people happy out there.)

It's been awhile since we've had an upgrade in our television situation. But be assured that when it happens again, an Olympic-sized event will probably be the cause.

Warning: Girl Scout Content Ahead

There's a wide range in Girl Scout leadership styles. Starting at one end you have the "Assistant Leader" who is that mom who stays for all the meetings and doesn't mind wiping up glue or spilled juice. At the other end are the whackadoodle leaders who do Girl Scout things even without girls around because they just can't get enough. Fearless Co-Leader and I have met plenty of those Whackadoodles and contrary to what you might think, we are not them.

That said, we just got back from from two days of leader training.

It was held out a Camp Ledgewood which is in Peninsula. We had never been there before which was part of the appeal to go to the training. We could scope out a new property and see if we wanted to camp there with our girls. As for that, the answer is yes. The camp is amazing and I can't wait to get my girls out there is see it.

Fearless and I have been to plenty of trainings in the past. (I'm not even going to mention the number of hours!) We use them as mini vacations and we almost always learn some new things for the girls. For this training event we went to three classes the first day, swam in their gorgeous pool, spent the night in an Adirondack cabin and had two more classes the next day. We learned a new way to decorate t-shirts, made lunch bags and cell phone cases out of duct tape, learned that we knew nothing about trip planning and got an overview of the new program coming out.

When other leaders found out we were from Erie Shores we would get quizzed nonstop about Timberlane and someone (not us) would always called it "The Hilton". Whatever. Just because our camp has flush toilets and dishes in the cupboard they think we're soft. I prefer to call it civilized.

As for those Whackadoodles, this event was chock full of them. They practically glow green they are so Scouted up. And just to reiterate it's not us. It's not us. It's not us.

She was there

Just quickly I'll say that the sleeping girl was there again last night, but someone had already claimed the gold circle seating position right behind her so we didn't get the bonus show. I did get a glimpse that she was using a notebook for a pillow and had a pen clutched in her hand. Two corners of her blanket were held down by half empty bottles of orange juice. The Man said he saw he sit up near the end of the show and was watching. Wonders never cease.



Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, by the way, was wonderful.

Ah! The theater!

The Cleveland Shakespeare Company was in town last night and put on a wonderful performance of Hamlet. This is the third year they've graced our humble community college with their presence giving those of us starved for culture a free show.



But the Andersons got more than one show last night, I'm afraid to say. The tale I'm about to unfold is so strange, I honestly can say that you had to be there to appreciate it, but I shall attempt to tell it true.



There is a little outdoor amphitheater where the show was to be held. Some people bring chairs and some blankets. A few hardy souls bring nothing and sit right on the grass or hard concrete steps. Last year we took a blanket and it sucked sitting on the ground all that time, so this time it was chairs.



As we scan for a place to sit, we spy a nice open spot right behind a blanket that's been spread on the concrete. There's a girl sleeping on this blanket using a wadded up beach towel for a pillow. She has an empty plastic cup clutched in one sleeping hand. This girl isn't just napping though, she appears to be passed out cold. We set up our chairs behind this snoozing person and wait for the show to start. I gaze down at the sleeper and notice a good sized spider on the back of her bare thigh. As a wonder if I should brush it off, the spider scurries up and over her bottom, up her back, into her hair and back out, OVER HER EAR, finally jumping off the top of her head. I wanted to scream.



Fifteen minutes later the show starts and the sleeping girl slumbers on. Occasionally she turns or fidgets. Soon she is directly in front of me and the Boy giving us a total view up her too short shorts to reveal her black and white stripped panties. Adjusting this part of her clothing now becomes part of her nocturnal activities as well. There have been plenty of more spiders and ants using her as a highway this whole time as well.



The players are booming on the stage, acting their hearts out, but still our favorite audience member prefers her dreams. This goes on for two hours.



Finally, right when Hamlet accepts Laertes challenge of a duel, Sleeping Beauty sits up. She doesn't look disoriented at all. Actually she looks very comfortable in her surroundings. She adjusts all her bits and pieces some more, rummages through her purse and finally settles in for a smoke. For a short while she actually pays attention to the excellent sword fight on the stage but then decides to do some texting instead.



Everyone is dead on the stage and Horatio is giving his sad, sad speech to end the play. Our theater lover is folding up her beach towel and her blanket, luckily she doesn't stand right in front of me to do all this. She locates her high heel shoes and picks up all her stuff just as Fortinbras delivers the last lines. While the cast takes it bows, she picks her way through the dark going who knows where.



Tonight is Rosencrantzs and Guildenstern Are Dead. I do hope we can watch this play with her again. She added so much to the performance. Hamlet will never be the same for any of us again.

Doing my patriotic duty

We took advantage of the sun and warmth yesterday to hit Cedar Point. It was fairly crowded. We rode a few rides, caught a show, had some fries and an elephant ear and left. But this post is about what happened on the Fourth of July at CP. I've been putting it off, but the Man insists that I document the incident. I'll let the three of you be the judge. I've gotten nothing but grief about this from my family.


Like I said, it was the Fourth of July and we thought, for some misguided reason, that going to CP would be a good idea. Unfortunately everyone else within a ten hour drive of the place had the same thought. The place was packed. We didn't get there until around 5Pm and our only goal was to ride the Millennium and see the fireworks. We ended up getting in plenty of rides, including the Millennium before nightfall.

We headed down to the beach for the fireworks show. The Man created us all amazingly comfortable beach recliners dug into the sand. Mine came complete with a headrest thanks to my bag. The beach was filling up fast and it wasn't long before we were surrounded on all sides.

Right behind us there were two young men. It was obvious that they were employees of the park who were off duty. One was Slovenian or Slovakian, I didn't quite catch it. The other (and I'm tipping my hand in this story by naming him this) was the Stupidest American on the Beach. I'm just going to script out their conversation, along with my reactions. The fireworks show was going on this entire time, but it wasn't so loud as to drown out this unfortunate conversation.

Eastern European Tax Break Employee: In my country the fireworks are much brighter, much higher.

Idiot: Oh yeah?

EETBE: Yes. They have more colors and are bigger too.

Idiot: Sounds nice.

EETBE: This is an American holiday?

Idiot: Yeah, it's an American thing.

EETBE: What is it called?

Idiot: It's the Fourth of July.

EETBE: I know that, but does it have another name?

Idiot: Nope, just Fourth of July. Makes it easy to remember.

I think, "Independence Day" must have too many syllables for you!

EETBE: Ah. (long pause) So what is it that it celebrates?

Idiot: Ummm.....It's got something to do with the starting of the country.

EETBE: You don't know?

Idiot: No, I know. It's just hard to explain. I don't know all the details.

EETBE: You don't know the history of your own country?

Idiot: Well see, they teach all of it like when you're in the fourth grade and then you don't get back to it again, so it's hard to remember. But Fourth of July is when the country started.

He did NOT just say that! Oh, please stop talking!

EETBE: So then, what year did this country start?

Uh-Oh..

Idiot: Ahhhh....ummm.....something like....ahhhh.....1804?

What? What did he say? AHHHHHHHH!

EETBE: You don't know?

Idiot: Like I said, that was a long time ago (very long pause). No wait! It was 17...92.

EETBE: Oh.

This has to stop. I'm going to lose my mind!

Idiot: No wait, wait. It was 177......

I hold my breath. Will he redeem himself? Redeem us all?

Idiot: 9!

I snap. Literally. I wheel around in my chair made of sand and scream over the fireworks...
"1776! For Christ's Sake!"

I fall back and behind me the stunned silence falls like an iron wall.

The Man leans over. "That was really rude! What's the matter with you?"

The Girl chimes in, "Yeah Mama, why were you yelling at that guy?"

"He had it coming", I say fiercely. But as I am criticized by my family I start to feel I little bad for my behavior.

Finally the two behind me come out of their shock.

EETBE: (Mutters quietly)

Idiot: Yeah, 1776. That sounds right. That was the year of the Boston Tea Dance.

I didn't say a word.