Anecdotes

I've been meaning to write some of the anecdotes I commonly used. I used some of them in a poem I wrote for Java Monkey's spoken word last week. Of course, I don't think it was a poem, but maybe I'll try to record it here... some was pretty ad lib. But, to start the ball rolling, there is this one:

Once, as a reporter, I was assigned to go to this family reunion-birthday party-picnic over the weekend to get "local color" for the newspaper. Apparently some patriarch was turning Umpty or something.

So, I talked to the birthday fella and he's talking to this guy in a wheelchair whose right arm is amputated. I ask him (the birthday guy) for a picture and the guy in the wheelchair said, "Do you want me to be in it?" and I am not expecting this and my face probably went through a couple of things... the guy holds out his left hand to shake and says, "I should introduce myself, I'm Max Cleland." Senator Max Cleland. Whom I just don't happen to ever have met.

When I got back to the newspaper office, I told people there what had happened in a "was my face red!" tone of voice. "Kat," they said, "he's in a wheelchair and missing one arm, who did you think it was?"

"I thought of that!" I retorted, "But what do you expect? I should say, 'Excuse me sir, since I can't help but notice you have only one operational limb, can I assume you are our esteemed senior Senator of Georgia?'"

Dreams of last night

I had a dream in which I tried to steal a mattress, I lost my car while trying to make a delivery, I found a house with over 100 rooms... they all had little numbers stuck to their doorjambs. Some of them looked like the inside of caravans, some of them were full of junk, some were nurseries, or studios, or people's apartments. Some of them had doors to the outside, most didn't. Some of them you went through a trap door or a steep staircase or narrow hallway to get to.

Somehow, I think this is about my nesting instinct.