Cable Tales

One of the benefits of having a brother who is a cable installer is getting our cable on the main floor configured so that the TV can actually be on the wall I want it to be on.

Another benefit is being able to hear endless stories about other people's homes and other people's lives and other people's general disgustingness. The Boy has seen it all. In fact, he recently coined the term "Nerd Trash" which is a lot like white trash, but it's a person who lives in absolute squalor but whose rat nest is filled with all the latest technology: huge-screen television, dual 30-inch monitors, loads of computers and accessories, all the right gaming consoles. You get the idea. Nerd trash. I think it'll catch on.


Recently, The Boy, pictured here with his new fridge in his new house, went to install cable in a particular home. A very large woman was on the couch (he describes her as a whale, manateed out all over the couch, and although it's a mixed metaphor, I think it does the job). She was missing half her teeth. And as The Boy worked on her cable, her six children scurried around the filthy house.

Then, another woman---he assumes it was the manatee's sister---came into the house. She took one look at The Boy and said, "Let me guess. He's staying the night."

Wow. I mean, I don't want to think of a slew of men staying the night with this toothless manatee (point of interest: manatees regrow a tooth every time they lose one, so from an evolutionary standpoint, this woman may be slightly behind manatees), but why else would the sister jump to that conclusion. Ew.

Poor The Boy. In telling this story, he said, "I admit that I'm not the most handsome man on the planet, but I think this," (here he motioned to his face) "is worth at least a full set of teeth."

Friday Treat

Since it's Friday afternoon, I figured I'd share with you all one of my favorite stories from El Senor.

El Senor once worked in a place where there were computers out in an open workspace. When everyone was done for the day, they'd pack up and go home, leaving the building to be cleaned by maintenance workers.

One day, a coworker was using her computer, started laughing, and called everyone to look at her screen.

She'd been entering a google search. When you start to type something in the google search field, your previous searches that match the letters automatically pop up. After she had typed the letter J, the previous searches came up.

Someone had tried to google "jiggly boobs." But they didn't know how to spell jiggly, so they tried about five different spellings:

jigly boobs
jiggley boobs
jiglie boobs
jigglie boobs
jiggly boobs

Now, was that one of the chemists, or one of the ESL maintenance workers? You decide.

(I now realize that I'm going to bring a whole new type of traffic to my blog...)

Mushrooms

I had a friend who, when she was seven, told her parents that her five-year-old sister had eaten some wild mushrooms. It wasn't true, but she was hoping that her sister would get in trouble.

Instead her parents rushed the five-year-old off to the hospital where she had her stomach pumped.

My friend told me this when she was 20, and she still refused to tell her parents the truth for fear of getting severely punished.

Commence Indignation

I have a friend. We'll call her Polly.

Polly is one of my favorite people. She is kind, smart, pretty, friendly, fun, and dresses well. Really, it's a winning combination. If I were a guy, I'd date her.

Apparently not all guys think the way I think guys should think.

When I asked Polly about the guy she's been dating over the past month or so, she told me that they broke things off this weekend. I asked why. She said that he came over to visit her one evening and asked her where she thought things were going. She thought this was going to be a "good talk." Then he said that he had some concerns about her.

1) She's vain.

First of all, Polly is not what I would call a vain person. She is certainly pretty, and she does a great job of staying in shape and wearing fantastic clothes. But she's very down-to-earth. When she shared his first point with me, she said, "I only shop sales!!" She also pointed out that this conversation took place while she was wearing shorts and a sweatshirt. She also said that on their first date, when he was talking about what he valued in women, he mentioned that his wife had to be beautiful. I don't think that you can be more beautiful and down-to-earth than Polly. This guy is crazy. (And I'm glad that the craziness came out this early so that they could break things off!)

2) She has a low standard for the company she keeps.

Polly is the only active LDS member of her family. A lot of her friends aren't members of the church. One thing that has always impressed me about Polly is her ability to accept people as they are. I think that it's admirable that she doesn't pass judgment on others just because they make different choices than she does. She doesn't let their actions influence her, either. She honors her beliefs. She also wants to date good members of the church and marry someone who has the same beliefs and lifestyle that she does. That sounds pretty grounded to me. This guy indicated that she should not allow anyone to practice anything that is not in line with her beliefs in front of her, and gave the example that if he is in a bar, he expects everyone to refrain from swearing and expects the bartender to not offer him any alcoholic beverage because the bartender needs to respect his beliefs.

I may add here that this guy is a beer delivery man. So while he's judging Polly for associating with people who drink, he's stocking the city with alcohol.

3) She works too much.

Polly works a full time job. She also does some freelance reporting on the side. In addition to that, she teaches a dance class and does volunteer work. To me, that all looks impressive. It shows an ability to manage time well (and since she's so happy all the time, you know that she's got some good balance in her life). To him, this kind of work ethic, initiative, and income is too much. And I guess in this point I must concede. I totally understand how a beer deliverer would be threatened by her accomplishments and success.

After bringing up all these issues, Polly said that she'd be willing to go 50-50 with him and try to reach a compromise (that may be Polly's only mistake in this whole thing because in my opinion, she should have kicked him out on the curb after he brought up his three concerns). He told her, "Your faults are my mountains and I will die on those mountains before I will ever compromise."

We can only hope that he finds some mountains to die on.

More on Pet Peeves

A while ago I was talking about pet peeves with a friend who will remain nameless. She told me that one of her biggest pet peeves was people who refuse to use public toilets that already have stuff in them. I told her that I was definitely one of those people---that I never wanted to risk splash-back in a toilet that already had someone else's stuff in it.

Recently I emailed this friend and told her that now, every time I see a public toilet with stuff in it, I thought of her, and that I was not sure she really wanted me to think of her while I was looking at some stranger's crap. She emailed me back this:

How passing over used toilets became a pet peeve/another thing I may have already told you: I was at a football game in high school and I had to go to the bathroom at half time. The stadium bathrooms were gross, but I really had to go, so I waited in line with the million other women. There was one stall that everyone was avoiding. There was some #2 floating in the toilet, but the stall still had toilet paper, so I decided to go for it because after waiting in line, I REALLY had to go. I took care of business, and this is important--it was #1 only--but it turned out that the reason someone had left their junk floating there was because (I just used "reason is because"--a phrase I hate) the toilet didn't flush. So I left the stall. A girl started to go into the stall after me, but when she saw the poop, she gave me the dirtiest look. I wanted to yell, "It's not my poop!" Anyway, I didn't really know dirty look girl, but I knew she hung out with snobs. So now I assume that people who don't use poopy toilets are prissy snobs. I don't think I'd ever told anyone about this pet peeve before you, and when you told me that you avoided poopy toilets, I had to reevaluate my thinking. "[Cicada] avoids used toilets, and she's not prissy or a snob. Imagine that."

I'm pretty sure I haven't told you this one: When I worked at the wilderness camp, we used to drive past this skeezy Mexican place called Alfonso's on our way to the desert. Alfonso's had crazy huge burritos with every imaginable filling that were called--quite imaginitively--the Alfonso. They were so big that they had be wrapped with two big tortillas. I never managed to eat more than half of one. Even though they were kind of gross, they were good to eat when you knew that all you'd be eating the rest of the week was lentils and ashcakes. In the wilderness, you couldn't really be subtle about what you were going to do when you went behind the tree. If you were carrying your digging stick, everyone knew you were going to take a crap. No digging stick=pee only. People would say, "Going to see a man about horse" or something like that when they were going to crap. One guy who had eaten an entire Alfonso the day before walked out of camp with his digging stick, and said "I'm going to go bury Alfonso." So sometimes I call poop "Alfonso" in my head.

That is it. I have now told you every poop story I have to tell and I will not tell anymore poop stories, because it is bad enough that you think of me when you see poop. I don't want you to always think of poop when you think of me.

Anyway, I loved her poop stories so much that I really felt they had to be shared.

It Made My Father Cry

Last night, I saw my father laugh the hardest I can ever remember seeing him laugh. I honestly have never seen him look like that. When Brother 2 and I got into the car to go home, I mentioned that I'd never seen Dad laugh so hard. He said that he was just about to say the same thing. His face was completely scrunched up and there were tears in his eyes. He actually looked a lot like his sister, who laughs hard like that on a much more regular basis.

So let me tell the stories that made him laugh. I know that several of these will be repeats for many of you, but at least they'll be repeated more accurately since they're now fresher in my mind.

We were talking about Brother 2's best friend. They've been friends since they were in the dorms together up in Rexburg, almost a decade ago. We'll call him Victor. The first time I met him was at a Halloween party where he showed up in full snorkel gear---he had the wet suit, the flippers, the snorkel and mask---and he was all alone (the night before his first child was to be born). He would swim around in the indoor pool, and then come and sit, soaking wet, on the benches and watch the people partying. At one point, he dove into the foot-deep kiddie pool and started splashing around. This was my first impression of Victor.


At the Airport

Later that year, Victor drove Brothers 1 and 2 and me to the airport so that we could fly home for Christmas. He accompanied us all the way to the gate (back in the days before 9-11). We got to the airport at about 6:00, which meant that we'd all been awake since four or five. I, personally, hadn't had any sleep that whole night. So we were tired. Brother 2 and Victor were standing in line, talking together, and Brother 1 and I were standing behind them. At one point, the line moved forward, and before Brother 1 and I could move up with the line, two rather large girls cut in line in front of us. We were annoyed, but we didn't do anything. Instead, we continued waiting in line for a half hour. Finally, when Brother 2 and Victor were next in line to be served, Victor said to me and Brother 1, loud enough for everyone in line to hear, "Quick. Move up in line before these hefiers try to steal your spot again."

The "heifers" looked stunned. Victor responded to their stunned state by looking straight at them and saying loudly, "Mooooooooooooove over!" Brother 1 and I reclaimed our rightful place in line.


The First Time Brother 1 Met Victor

Brother 2 and Victor have done a lot of climbing together---they both really enjoy the outdoors. So one time, Brother 2 invited Brother 1 to come climbing with him and Victor. It was the first time that Brother 1 met Victor. They were up in Rock Canyon, and it was a fairly busy day. Hikers, rock climbers, and boy scouts all milled about. Brother 1 was on belay (holding Victor's rope) and Victor was ready to rappel down the cliff that he was standing on top of. It was sortof taking him a while, and Brother 1 was wondering why.

Finally, Victor's head peaked over the side of the cliff. He looked around, up and down the Canyon. Then Victor swung his body over the cliff. The only thing he was wearing was the harness.


The First Time Some of His Wife's Friends Met Victor

I love Victor's wife. Let's call her Patience (it was the name of several African women I met in Italy... so it works). Patience was at the same house where the Halloween party was hosted, shortly after she had married Victor. So there was an indoor pool. And a big indoor slide, too. Patience was sitting near the pool with some friends. The friends said to Patience, "So you got married! Is your husband here?" She said yes, and that he was just about to come down the slide. So the whole group of women looked to the slide (one of those long, curvy tube ones) and Victor came out of the bottom, face-down like Superman, with his bathing suit around his ankles. Patience said, "Uh, actually, I think my husband's the next guy."


The Time His Family Members Lost Their Appetite

Victor went to a dinner with his wife's extended family one day. When they were just about to eat the meal, someone mentioned that Patience's sister should get her newborn baby who was sleeping downstairs. Victor said, "Don't worry. I'll get her." So he went downstairs. Instead of grabbing the baby, he grabbed a doll and wrapped it in several baby blankets.

He came upstairs, holding the baby. So a family member said the blessing on the food, and as soon as "Amen!" was said, Victor dropped the "baby," which hit its head on the table and then bounced on a chair before it hit the floor.

There was absolute silence.

Then Victor reached down and picked up the doll to show everyone and said, "It's okay! It's just a doll! It's just a doll!"

Silence.

Then the wailing started. No one was hungry anymore, so dinner was abandoned, and no one wanted to have anything to do with Victor, who was eating his dinner alone in a corner. His father-in-law finally approached him and said, "Well, I thought it was funny."