Hello From Mama and Papa!

Today I am having a blog sale and am offering two posts for the price of one!

I haven’t mentioned Mama and Papa for a while, but let me reassure you that they’re both fine. The other day Mama called me to tell me what happened to her friend Tania. Well, nothing happened to her friend Tania, but fortunately something happened to Tania’s son, although to be fair I’m using the word fortunately in the ironic sense. So anyway, Tania’s son, who I will call Igor, because I don’t remember what his name is, went to Germany for a brief stay and he met some girl there and stayed at her apartment and to make a long story short because who has the time to read endless stories when there’s so much TV to watch, what with the Olympics being on and all, one day he woke up and couldn’t find his passport and also the girl he met and whose apartment he was staying at was gone and so was her dog.

And Mama says, “so you can imagine what happened” and I am nodding vigorously, and then I remember that we’re on the phone and she can’t see me so I say, “of course. The girl stole the passport” and this is met with silence.

“Stole passport?” Mama says. “No, no stole passport. We think dog ate passport and that is why dog left with girl.”

Then I didn’t say anything for a long time because I thought she was kidding, but after an elaborate explanation of how if the girl stole the passport, there would be no reason for the dog to leave, I was less sure. Of anything in my life.

“I think the dog left because the girl took the dog with her,” I tried.

“Well, it is very bad if she stole passport. Criminal even,” Mama was suddenly this girl’s moral guardian.

“I know, but good news about the dog’s character, right?”

But some people just refuse to see that rainbow, no matter how brightly it shines.

“If dog ate passport it’s not dog’s fault. Dogs eat things,” Mama defended him.

So the moral of the story is that if you ever go to Germany, don’t take your passport.

(Question: Why did I bother making up the name Igor for Tania’s son if I only mentioned it once?)

* * *

And last week I also had drinks with Papa. And Papa was telling me about a new neighbor-nemesis. The details of the neighbor-nemesis’sins are a bit convoluted but basically it has to do with him keeping his dog on a long leash, despite Papa telling him, several times, to put the dog on a short leash because when his dog is on the long leash, he runs all over the place, makes my parents’ dog insane and he interferes with Mama’s enjoyment of her morning constitutional. At one point their short leash vs. long leash discussion heated up and Papa said “put the dog on the fucking short leash or else.” He may not have said or else, again, I lost sight of the details because the neighbor-nemesis obliged and volunteered that he was a PhD.

This is the part that’s interesting to me because I understand that PhDs are important and hard to get, but once you have it, does it mean that you have to let everyone know that you’ve been PhD’d? I don’t know. But in any case, it didn’t go so well for the neighbor-nemesis nor his PhD because Papa’s said “I fuck you and your PhD.”

So, as you can see both Mama and Papa are fine. Thanks for asking!

One year ago ...

• Good bye - 2011