August 31st, 2014

 

Rules of the Road: Possibly interesting related material but not necessarily factual (or yes it is a journey into absurdity):

As a father I eagerly awaited my daughter’s sixteenth birthday when she could get her driver’s license, and for the same reason most fathers do.  Because, she can drive me from bar to bar and then home again while I explore the vagaries of intoxication.  Girls do the best driving job in regards this exacting responsibility.  Teenage boys tend to be too irresponsible.

Explaining to my daughter the Rules of the Road, I spotted and so pointed out to her an older woman on a moped, a Vespa (the bike's a Vespa not the lady).  I told my daughter, “Be careful: moped riders have been known to track down and pulverize or even kill anyone that dings or dents their bikes.  So, if you have a fender bender with a Vespa driver -- whether you want to or not -- you have to do all you can do to finish the moped driver off or they’ll get you.  I keep a jar of leeches, a monkey wrench from Macedonia, and a speech on liberty, freedom, and human rights by ISIS on the end of a javelin.”

About last October Clause's back fur was thickening in anticipation of winter, but he went to Florida, where he shed like crazy.  Hell, he was almost hairless and nearly froze to death when he got back to Maine in December.  As a good father, I used this experience to educate my daughter: “Watch out for this regional translation difficulty,” I told her, “make sure you gotta a good heater in the truck when you're dating anyone just back from Florida.”

I informed my daughter at an early age that the turban U.S. women wear after getting out of the shower was invented by a guy named Singh.  The Female Shower Turban is made out of a simple bath towel.  Who would have figured it when looking at a cotton gin?  Huh?  Well: O’Brien Singh was a Sikh from India, a plumber in Charleston, SC, who never got a buck or a rupee for his gift to American women, though his attitude was this: since he was married to a lady from Rhode Island for thirty-two years he more than got his money’s worth (and then some since the woman was actually from “Miles and Miles of Rhode Island”) and everything was fair and square.                                                                                                                                                                         In America, we feel a special bond with fully-clothed Sikh-American cab drivers as we see them at work, and many of us love naked women too …


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