Best. Rejection. Ever.
I was cleaning out some files and came along this little gem from about a decade ago, when I was first casting about for freelance work while in grad school.
This one was a real keeper.
Overheard in the Wolfe House #133
Peggy: Wanna go to St. Philips in the morning tomorrow, since you’re working tomorrow night?
Sam: Yeah.We’ll take your truck.
Auto Identity Theft
Sam got pulled over again in Flower Mound.
He tried to tell me this once before, that his car identity had been stolen. It made no sense to me. His car had caught that officer’s eye because he was in the wrong lane for a moment, so I thought the license plate story was getting lost in translation.
Kind of like the aphasiac talk in Diane Ackerman’s book, One Hundred Names for Love.
But today, he explained it well enough that I knew I had to make a call.
You see, the officer recommended that he just get new license plates. That kind of recommendation doesn’t get lost in translation.
I made a follow-up call to the police department and the officer who pulled him over set me straight. Someone got a ticket in Balch Springs and didn’t pay it. When they issued a warrant for her arrest the warrant went out on both her driver’s license and her car license.
What got lost in translation was that girl’s license plate being entered in to the database. Sam got his tags at the Denton County Tax Office in 2008.
Guess where we’re going Monday? We aren’t going to try to bother telling Balch Springs his are not the tags they’re looking for. We’re going to solve this expeditiously.
Well, as expeditiously as a human being can experience the tax office.
His Own Kind of Up
In training for my first half-marathon, as of this morning, I have run 193 miles. That’s about as far as Kent Couch flew in 2007, when he launched his lawn chair with helium balloons in his own version of “Up.”
Overheard in the Wolfe House #132
Sam: I really like that new ice cream flavor you made. Is it chocolate cookie dough?
Peggy (not wanting to say it’s a knock-off of Ben and Jerry’s Schweddy Balls): No. But it has rum in it.
Sam: It has rum in it?
Peggy: It has rum in it. Is there any left?
Sam: It has rum in it?
Peggy: Did you eat all of it?
Sam: No. I didn’t eat all of it.
Explaining the Unexplainable
Throughout Sam’s life, the things he’s needed to learn had to be taught directly. You cannot imagine how important learning from context is until you are confronted with the inefficiency of hours and hours and hours of direct teaching.
As Sam has grown, he’s learned to generalize. He’s picked up more from context — but he had to be taught how to do that, too. Taught to imitate, taught to read context, taught to recognize idioms, taught to generalize.
I get tired just thinking about it.
Now, Sam is struggling mightily with a new problem. And I have to figure out how to explain what civil rights are. Do you know how often we toss out that phrase and we have no idea what it means?
That violates my civil rights.
Read him his rights.
They marched for civil rights.
Google it yourself, and see what a mess you get. Dear readers, can you help?
Tour des Fleurs
Random thoughts from today’s “race.”
I love trail running best.
Dallas air quality is better than Denton County’s.
Green bananas taste good after you’ve run for 2 hours and 40 minutes.
I think it would be easier to run farther if I ran faster.
The homes in Lakewood Trails — up in the hills around White Rock Lake — are beautiful, and no two look alike.
My favorite landscapes are the ones where you can tell the owner does it, and not a landscape service.
If you run long enough, your body surrenders the toxins. It took me 3-4 miles, it took RunnerSusan about 6. (Poor thing.)
In the hardest parts of the run, the only people encouraging you are the Dallas police officers at their posts. That has got to be some kind of metaphor about life.
Overheard in the Wolfe House #131
Peggy: So what do you think about having hair like Grandpa?
Sam (inventor of the phrase “no hair, just a head”): It will happen if I keep going bald.
Lights in London
I promise not to subject you to a bunch of home movies — especially as aged as these images have obviously gotten — but I couldn’t help myself with this one.
When the Dallas Symphony went on its first European tour in 1997, Mark was hired as second tuba. I went along for the first half of the trip as an orchestra groupie. We had a blast.
We left the kids — Sam was 9, Michael was 6, and Paige was 4 — in the capable care of my parents. But we took the camcorder to capture things we thought would interest them on our return.
The videos sat in a box for years after our VHS player died. I borrowed one from my parents this summer and, with the help of a Pinnacle Dazzle, have begun digitizing the handful of family videos we have.
We made this little ditty in London when we realized how much fun Sam would have had, if he had been there to play with the light switches.
This was the first time I’ve heard Mark’s voice since the week he died. I’m not sure who was grinning bigger tonight when we captured this first “movie,” Sam — re-living a favorite childhood memory — or me, remembering the sound of the love of my life.
Overheard in the Wolfe House #130
Peggy (after Sam ends a phone conversation with North Central Texas College’s vice president for instruction): Some people are afraid to talk to deans and vice presidents. You certainly aren’t.
Sam: Well, why would anybody be afraid to talk to them?
Peggy: Oh, it might start in elementary school, when children learn to be afraid of the school principal, even though the main part of their job is to solve problems.
Sam: I wasn’t afraid of Gaye Pittman Wise. She was a really nice lady.