One of my favorite things about this blog is how I get to pop in and bracket posts written by health insurance or national security experts with my completely vapid bullshit and inane observations that anyone who had ever spent more than ten minutes outside a WV holler would already know. Fucking brilliant.
At any rate, another thing I have noticed is that sunset means something completely different here. In WV, where the sky is just shades of bruise for seven months a year and it’s just not bright that often in the winter, sunset means nothing. But here, a couple hours after sunset and I am ready for bed.
Also, Joelle is mad she has not been getting any good lines, and would like to let you all know that she told me a while ago that Tempe Cold and WV cold were two different things. I would also like to note that I have seen Joelle give me the finger on several occasions, a few of which I am not sure she intended for me to see it. Regardless, I have informed her that her little hobbit fingers are so tiny that she also needs to vocalize or I might miss it. This led me to tell a Cole family story that I don’t think has been mentioned before.
At any rate, many decades ago before becoming a parent, my mother was a genteel Quaker girl who didn’t drink, smoke, or swear. She still doesn’t drink or smoke. And for years she did not swear. She would say thinks like “shoot” or “sugar” or if more mad than usual she would break out a “fudge” and when at her absolute limit would throw out a rare “fudgesicle.” That is all I remember her ever saying until the mid eighties. When I was a teen and broke her.
I remember it plain as day. We were in the kitchen, and I had her just frothing mad in a way that only I can get someone (it’s a fucking talent, really), and she looked at me, held out her arm and extended here middle finger and aimed it right at my face and said:
“THERE!!! THAT IS WHAT I THINK OF YOU!!”
And. I. Got. HYSTERICAL. I laughed so hard I could not breathe it was so absurd and mom started in laughing, too. From that point on, mom eased into swearing and took to it like a natural.
Many years later, my brother had infuriated my mother and instead of flipping the bird, just looked at him and said “OJ!”
My brother looked at her and asked “What the hell does OJ mean?”
And mom, the English teacher and grammar nazi, stated confidently: “Obscene Gesture.”
Seth looked at her and said “Gesture is spelled with a G, though,” and the giggles followed.
And from that point on, whenever someone in the family irritates someone else in public, we just say “OJ” to each other and know what is going on.