(Walking past a store window we regularly walk by, MB is looking at himself. I bust him as I frequently like to do.)
ME: Good Lord. You can’t get enough of you.
HE: It was just a glance!
ME: (as I am fixing my hair whilst, yes, glancing in the car window): Yeah. A loving glance.
HE: This from the woman who just looked at herself in the car window!
ME: Ohh. Well. That was a critical glance. Yours are like mmmmm ….. yummmmy …..
HE: Oh, brother.
ME: It’s true!
HE: Well, I guess I just like to be a celebrant.
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(After finally finishing all the leftovers and frozen leftovers from the 20-pound ham that he — the ham-aholic — purchased during the holidays for, you know, the two of us.)
HE (in all seriousness): I’m really starting to miss the ham and beans. It was a part of our lives for so long.
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HE: Okay. Here is a list of the worst places in America.
ME: Oooh, really? Okay. Good. Let’s hear it.
HE: Okay. Rite-Aid ……. CVS drugstores ….. Denny’s …… any kind of Coco’s ……
ME: Wait. You said “places.” These are businesses.
HE: Oh, they’re places. They’re places!
ME: Wow. You feel strongly about this.
HE: I do!
ME: So those four?
HE: Yep. Worst places in America.
ME: But “Any kind of Coco’s”? Aren’t they all the same?
HE (in a fury of disgust): Any kind of Coco’s!!!!!
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So we’re at a Coco’s with my parents after a really strange Christmas program at their megachurch, celebrating the birth of baby Jesus with a dancing Frosty the Snowman and a sad-sack Henry Wadsworth Longfellow miming depression. Surreal.
MB wants to kill himself. My parents want pie. Dad likes to save money.
DAD (to waiter): Okay. Give us a whole blueberry pie and cut it into five pieces.
WAITER: Okay.
DAD: Put the last piece in a box and we’ll take it home.
WAITER: All right.
DAD: We all want ice cream, so put ice cream on the other four pieces.
WAITER: Got it. Okay.
He walks away. Long pause.
ME: How do you cut a pie into five pieces?
Even longer pause as the other three just stare at me, open-mouthed, gobsmacked.
And, honestly, pippa, I still struggle with this question.
My in-laws attend what passes for a “mega church” here, and she brow-beat me into going to their “ladies only” Christmas party.
It started out with a skit where two people sang “Winter Wonderland” and danced in fake snow, then there was another skit where this dude pretended to be a soldier coming home from the war, then there was a reading of Luke 2, followed by some door prizes, then “The 12 Days of Christmas” WITH AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION (our table was 10 Lords-a-Leaping), then a pushy pushy OFFERING, then an altar call, then “Have Yourself a Merry Christmas.”
You know I twittered that shit all the way through. It was the only thing keeping me sane.
Hey, ham-a-holics are good people in my book!
Two questions:
1. Is (your) MB telling us that the East Coast is better off without a Coco’s of any type?
2. Did you inherit your enjoyment of pie (sans math problems) from your parents?
Lisa — I swear, the name “Jesus Christ” was not mentioned for the first 25 minutes. I kept track out of curiosity. Bizarre. It was an epic, EPIC production. I mean, this is a huge church. A very nice theatre, actually, with great acoustics. The music sounded fantastic, but I was reworking the show in my head the entire time I watched it. Seriously, how does Frosty the Snowman fit into a church Christmas spectacular? I’m all for Frosty, but time and place, peaches. Time and place.
Or at least have Frosty hanging around the manger, sharing his corn cob pipe with baby Jesus. Come ON. That’s a no-brainer, people.
Kate P —
1. I would have to dig further but I get the sense that his disgust for Coco’s knows no boundaries.
2. Hm. I suppose so. My dad in particular likes pie. The math problems are my own, though. 😉 Numbers are not my friends.
OTOH,
we still have the Nativity scenes up at our church, b/c Christmas season doesn’t end until Candlemas, aka the Feast of the Purification of the B.V.M., which is Feb. 2.
If you draw an imaginary star on the pie, nicking the crust at each point and cut to those from the center, you’d have five pieces. They’d be whompered, but there would be five. But I notice, on the legal pad where I was working this out, that it turns your pie into a pentagram, and that might not be a good thing.
Sal — Ahhh! Devil pie!!
How can you have a list of the Worst Places in America and not include K-Mart?
I’d rather spend all day in a Denny’s than 5 minutes in a K-Mart.