December 19, 2003
The Infinite Joys of Life at Home
This is my kind of news story. There's something highly appealing about the whole thing . . . the spirits of uneasy historical figures haunting the famous scenes of their demise. Stories like this don't appear in your local paper very often, but there are books and books of them lying about here and there, and I have been fascinated (and, in earlier days, scared sleepless) by them for as long as I've been able to read.
In other news, maybe I should just stop going to supper. Seriously. Good times for me have not, thus far, been the result of the family gathering for dinner of late. Tonight went something like this:
I'm talking to my dad about . . . something (topic unimportant) and the youngest brother is being annoying and, more importantly, loud. So I turn to him and say, "Sho!" then turn back and pick up the sentence where I left off. Brief background for the uninformed: "Sho" is essentially Guatemalan slang for "Shut Up," and I am told that it is considered by some few to be "vulgar," but no one can tell me why or by whom, so I ignore that piece of information.
So, before I say three more words, I realize that I'm getting "the look" from my dad. (Paraphrase) "We don't say that word. I'll have you writing Bible verses if you say it again."
Me: What's wrong with "sho"?
Him: Ten Bible verses . . . Do you want to pick them, or shall I?
Me: What are you talking about?
Him: You're gonna write ten Bible verses. I told you not to say that. Are you gonna pick them, or do you want me to?
Me: What the heck?
Him: Don't say the "h-word."
Me: This is stupid!
Mother: Don't say the "s-word."
At this point I'm fairly certain I looked kind of like a fish on dry land . . . I had the whole gasping for breath and mouth flopping thing going on. I was so flabbergasted I didn't have the foggiest idea what to say. Well, I take that back . . . I knew exactly what to say, but I didn't want to say it in front of the two little brothers watching the proceedings with much interest from the other side of the table.
It would have started off something like: "What do you think you're doing?!" And it would have gone downhill rapidly from there . . . but I kept my cool until I could have a private word, and the matter was dropped (for now). I'm really rather tired of being forced into situations around here that make me feel like a rebellious punk teenager. I attempted to make various points on the subject of why it was completely idiotic to forbid the use of "sho" with my mother later on, but I didn't get anywhere, of course. She ended the thing with her usual line: "Nothing I say is going to convince you because you have your opinion and you aren't going to change it, no matter what my reasons are."
The sad difference is that I try and base my opinion on reasoning that is as sound as I can get it . . . she is every bit as guilty of clinging stubbornly to an opinion in the face of all argument. A rather humorous "case-in-point" occured last night.
The house isn't insulated, like, at all because it just doesn't get that cold, and there are all sorts of minute cracks around windowsills and whatnot. The upshot of this is that when it gets really windy around this time of year, I get cold (heck, I get cold whenever and wherever . . . everybody knows that). But that's okay, because we have those little air heaters, and so on and so forth. So I'm lying on the couch reading a book, and I've got the heater up on the couch with me, at the other end so the warm air is blowing on my feet. My mom comes in and tells me she wants the thing off the couch so it won't set the house on fire. I start to tell her that that is ridiculous, it isn't going to set the house on fire because . . . And that was as far as I got because she told me to take it off, turned around, and walked out.
Now, the heater had been up there with me for over an hour at this point, so I got up and followed her, and asked her if she could please come into the living room for just a second. I had her feel the couch right in front of and directly under the heater with her own hands. It was, I will have you know, cooler than the spot I had been sitting on that whole time because the heater blows hot air only out the front, and as we all know, hot air rises . . . so the couch wasn't feeling anything, and it certainly wasn't about to burst into flame. As soon as she realized this, she said, "Well, I don't know why you need to use the heater anyway, it uses up too much electricity." And then she went and got me a blanket. And I still can't have the heater on the couch.
*beats head against wall, figuratively and literally* I admire her skill . . . it's probably where I got mine. She changed tack very swiftly, showing how versatile and (as I like to think) slippery she can be in an argument. But clearly she has her opinion, and just as clearly I can't change it even when I stick a fact in front of her that she can get the feel of with her own hands. How much less am I going to be able to convince her of something as nebulous as . . . well, anything?
But all I know is, nobody had better be assigning me Bible verses to copy . . . Hmmm . . . *looks thoughtful* He didn't say they all had to be different . . .
"Jesus wept."
"Jesus wept."
"Jesus wept."
"Jesus wept."
"Jesus wept."
"Jesus wept."
"Jesus wept."
"Jesus wept."
"Jesus wept."
"Jesus wept."
Okay, I'm done.