The official site of Kelly Sedinger: Reader, writer, photographer, and dreamer
I got ’em all in three minutes, forty seconds.
I remember a similar running joke on an episode of Friends, when Joey was proud because he was able to name fifty-six states, and later made fun of Ross, who’d been stumped at forty-six, as “Mr. I forgot ten states”.
This woman loves her husband:
Twenty-two years ago today, Mr. M-mv gave me an engagement ring. I was surprised about how and when he proposed, yes, but the idea of marriage? No surprises there. He had already told me that we would be getting married. He announced this about two weeks after our first date.
Silly boy.
So does this woman:
In our early days together his friends and family were all shaking their heads, figuring my man was going through some sort of middle age crazy to hook up with “that head-in-the clouds hippie girl” and my pals were wondering what in the world I was doing with some straight Republican cowboy with good manners when they knew me to generally have a strong preference for bad boys in leather on motorcycles who never called anyone Mame. Clearly, by most accounts, our being together made absolutely no sense.
But when I’m in the crook of this guy’s arm I feel like all the planets have lined up and the universe is smilin’ on my soul. After twenty five years of marriage we’ve learned to compromise and negotiate a plenty. Some of the differences have been quite humorous, and a few have caused frustration, disappointment or outrage. But through it all, there’s never been any question that our spirits were meant to fill each other up.
Ahhhh, l’amour!
I hate it when people point out that “Just because that’s the way we’ve always done it is no reason to keep doing it that way.” Why do I hate this? Well, it’s always true to note this, of course; it really is the case that tradition isn’t in itself a good reason to keep doing something.
What irritates me is that this bit of wisdom is, in my experience, usually advanced in support of making a change, in and of itself, as though change is a priori good. The above mantra is often tossed out there as a means of shutting off debate of a change that amounts to little more than a whim on the part of whoever wants things changed in the first place.
So my response is usually to say, “I agree, but you haven’t sold me on your idea yet, either. Why make a change?” If there’s no convincing answer forthcoming to that, then I say, keep things the way they are.
(No, this post is not occasioned by anything specific that happened at work or in real life recently. It’s just a thought that I have every so often. Kind of like my dislike of the idea of “common sense”.)
A press item, noted today:
BOSTON — Still smarting from their recent partial shutdown of the city, which was perceived nationwide as a staggering overreaction to what was later uncovered as a viral marketing ploy, the Boston Police Department is now facing questions about its conduct in investigating another bomb scare last month.
“There was clearly intent to harm civilians,” said Detective Duncan Shaun O’Reillyhughe the Third. “The surveillance tape clearly shows the suspect wiring a piano to explode with ten sticks of Grade A dynamite from the ‘ACME’ corporation.”
The scheme, as explained by Detective O’Reillyhughe, was for the bomber’s quarry to approach the piano and plink out the tune written out on the manuscript paper on the instrument’s sheet-music holder. The tune, as identified via surveillance tapes of the scene, was ‘Believe Me If All These Endearing Young Charms’. The dynamite was wired to the ‘C’ key one octave above middle-C, with the expectation that the bomber’s quarry would hit that note and then be destroyed in the explosion.
Fortunately, the bomber’s quarry proved to be a poor musician, and repeatedly struck the tones to either side of the high-C, eventually prompting the bomber — a short man with red hair, beard and mustache, and tall cowboy hat — to come to the keyboard himself to demonstrate. Surprisingly, in the resulting explosion, the bomber was unhurt save for the singing of his hat and facial hair. His quarry, who was dressed as a rabbit, escaped unharmed.
Boston police acted on a tip about a man matching the bomber’s description, going from bar to bar in the downtown area demanding to know if anyone had seen a “flea-bitten varmint”. When police arrived on the scene, the bomber ran from them, shouting that “no lawman would ever catch him”. Police then gave chase, Detective O’Reillyhughe said.
Accounts from here differ as to what happened next. According to Detective O’Reillyhughe, the official police report states that the piano bombing suspect ran down a dead-end alley, but when pursuing officers arrived, the suspect was gone. However, a homeless man who was sleeping in that alley says that the suspect was able to escape by hastily painting a tunnel onto the wall and then escaping into it. The pursuing officers attempted to give chase into the painted tunnel, only to be forced to evacuate when a light therein indicated an oncoming train.
“These two individuals, the bomber and the unidentified ‘varmint’, are highly dangerous,” Detective O’Reillyhughe said in his statement. “We are releasing their photo, taken from the surveillance cameras on the scene of the piano bombing, in hopes that someone in Boston will recognize them.”
