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Oh, Snap!
September 12th, 2008
The Huckablogs are spending a couple of days with the elder Huckablogs at their country compound in picturesque Middle of Nowhere. I tried to post last night, but the only computer available hadabrokenspacekey. Very.VERY.ANNOYING. Going through internet withdrawal, I swiped MMIL’s work laptop to get my daily fix. Must have email. Must have email, ahhh, spam, that’s the stuff.
Last night we went to the Middle of Nowhere County Fair…..and…..I got hit on by a Carney. Yes, the 400 pound man wearing a greasy t-shirt with the sleeves cut off and hairy arms thought I still had IT. I tried to hand him my four fuschia tickets so that I could ride the Cobra all by myself. (I am the only Huckablog who will ride anything fun. Yet. I had to give birth to my own roller coaster buddy, but he is a little wee just yet.) So Mr. Carney leaned in real close to me as he helped me in to the spinning bucket of death and said, “Honey, keep your tickets. This ride is on me and you can ride all you want.” Um. ewww. Did I mention that The Husband, The Son, MMIL and FFIL were like fifteen feet away watching from the side lines? Smelly Mr. Carney then made the ride go backwards….for a really, really, REALLY long time. I stumbled out of the SBoD (spinning bucket of death) on my own so he would not try to help me down. The Husband did not seem at all jealous when I told him about my new admirer. He laughed at me instead. I tried to tell him about the Taco Bell employee who gave me a free fruit freezee thing because I was “working it.”, but it seems that he does not feel threatened by carneys or teenage fast food employees. (Please do not send me emails about how your Daddy is a Carney and he has sleeves and works triple shifts to put you through Wellesley or something. I get it. Carneys are people too.) I felt really sick (maybe from the half a fair eggroll? Or the half a fair barbeque sandwich? Or the half a cold fair hot dog?) after the SBoD ride, so I shared my grape sno-cone with The Son and we went back to the compound.
Oh speaking of The Son, it seems when you go to the fair with your Gigi and Pappaw, you get to ride what ever you want. He rode an alligator shaped kiddie coaster, spinning ladybugs, a sparkly, wheelie-popping motorcycle, and a rotating Jeep. I went to strap him into the Jeep, and the seat belt (you are going to think I am exaggerating here, but this is the truth, I swear!) was half a bungee cord, and the other half was one side of the blue seat belt from a Wal-Mart shopping cart. It still had Wal-Mart imprinted on the faded fabric strap. I was then supposed to tie the two parts together around my precious only child’s abdomen. Yeah right. I asked the skinny, Lucky smoking carney if I could ride with The Son and he said, “if you think you can.” I wedged into the “back seat” (really that would be ten inch fiberglass wide spot)of the toddler sized Jeep, hung on with one arm, leaned forward and held The Son tight with the other. With a creak and the three non-burnt out bulbs flashing, we jerked forward, and I slipped deeper into the “seat”. It spun, and spun, and went entirely too fast for a kiddie ride, and I was extremely grateful when the ride ended.
Last night I stayed up way late enjoying my in-laws DISH. I watched Project Runway, The Rachel Zoe project, Top Design, and then some show about a scary British hair stylist. I stumbled to bed at two or three AM, and then this morning went to the Middle of Nowhere County fair parade with The Son and MMIL. He loved it; fire trucks, horses, floats, bands, and beauty queens–what is not to like? Actually, I enjoyed myself too, I love doing stuff like that. On the way back to the compound, about twenty minutes away, I realized that we had forgotten to pick up The Son’s pictures (stay tuned for those) we had taken! When I brought this to MMIL’s attention her response was “OH, CRAP!”. Immediately The Son said, “OH, CRAP!” Great. Now my baby knows a PG-13 word. Always the quick thinking educator, she said, “Gigi said OH, SNAP! Can you say OH, SNAP?” So for the rest of the day we said, “Oh, Snap!” whenever crap would have been appropriate. I am not entirely sure that The Son bought it, but he has not repeated “Oh, Crap” again. He is probably waiting until he is at church in front of my eighty year old grandmother. It’s okay, MMIL. My Mom accidentally taught him “shut up” while yelling at her dogs.
Can you hear my Mom somewhere moaning about what I post online? “Oh, SNAP!”
9 Responses to “Oh, Snap!”
Speaking of church…you should get to experience your child telling the preacher that Dad’s not there because he stayed out too late playing cards and drinking b-” (my hand over child’s mouth.) Not funny. But hilarious because it happened to someone else, here’s another church story. One of our long-time teachers answered the preacher’s call for special singing when she was five by running to the front of the church and singing “Don’t come home a-drinkin’ with lovin’ on your mind.”
At least you get hit on by Carnies! Some of us don’t even get that anymore!
I don’t even think anyone has leered at me in months…
Oh! I take that back… the last person who cut my hair was creepily attracted to me.
I can’t wait to see pictures of you guys at the fair. I know they’re going to be awesome!
That was some pretty quick thinking by Gigi!! Way to cover! I’m with 7 day trial, and am thinking at least you get hit on. Sure, some of my 88-year old patients flirt with me occasionally, but only when their wives are still in the waiting room. I totally don’t trust anyone with blue hair who tries to disguise their weapon of choice as a walking aid.
P.S. There is a documentary about carnies, appropriately titled “Carny”. I currently have it saved on my DVR as I haven’t quite had time to watch it yet, but I’ll let ya know how it turns out.
Oh, and if I had Bravo, I would never get anything done between Tabatha, Project Runway, Top Chef, and Shear Genius…I love reality TV…
This is titled, “In My Defense”:
Okay, yes, I admit it, I did shout “Oh Crap!” to which TheSon, in a nanosecond shouted, “Oh, Crap, Gigi!” and one-half breath later HeyYou shouted, “Gigi!!!” and proceeded to laugh hysterically.
BUT…you tell me what you would do when, in mid-sentence about some interesting but not extraordinary conversation, your passenger takes a HUGE gulping breath and exhales explosively with, “WE FORGOT TO PAY FOR THE PICTURES!” as if we had just robbed a bank and forgotten to cover our faces first.
You would have responded with the first Fruedian thing your primordial brain’s survival mechanism came up with. So…I think I was QUITE fortunate that my survival instinct was to let “Oh Crap!” fly out of my mouth rather than some of the old-school phrases I learned in my youth!!!
Yep….TheSon did finally play along by saying, “Oh Sssss-nap!” Here’s hoping I deflected his brain’s synaptic development so that “Oh Crap” didn’t have a chance to build its own Bullet Train from his memory to his mouth! Only time will tell. I just hope if it IS now lodged in there somewhere that he doesn’t reply, “Gigi said it.” when asked where he learned the phrase!!
Oh….and if you ever want to see a REAL parade…come to the Nowhere County Fair Day Parade (actually…I think of it as God’s Plan Nowhere b/c we think He found it for us). It’s such a tradition “in these parts” that 3 different school districts place Fair Day on their calendar as a no-school day and then everyone shows up at 10:30 (yep in the morning) for the best parade any county ever put on. If you look fast, you’ll probably see Sheriff Andy and Deputy Barney…and maybe get a lemonade from Aunt Bea while you’re waiting on the 15 fire trucks and 75 horseback riders (not exaggerating folks…at least not by much).
We love this community HeyYou calls Nowhere….and it loves us. Can you tell?
PS:
I was there and still laughed hysterically while reading this post. And yes, that guy DID really hit on HeyYou…she looked so lovely in green face, how could he have resisted her charm?
My expectations for the parade were FAR exceeded. It really was a very good parade. And they threw CANDY! It took The Son a few minutes to figure out what they were throwing at him, but he got the hang of it and his pockets were bulging when we left. There really were at least 50 horses. And one Brahma bull being ridden during the parade.
Oh, and the Term Middle of Nowhere is more geographically speaking than emotionally. All of the Huckablogs love it at the compound. If they all get out of school for the fair, do they also get out of school and have parades for anything else? If so, count us in.
Michelle, I had tears rolling down my face about the little choir savant.
Hey You is quite correct when she says the title “Nowhere” is merely a geographical location.
Here’s how our new home got its name:
My BestFriend from Hometown (3.5 hours away) wanted to visit but was afraid she’d get lost. So I met her in HeyYou’s easy-to-find town and BestFriend followed me from there–just an hour’s drive but much of it through National Forest lands.
When we pulled into my driveway, BestFriend exclaimed, “I thought we would NEVER get here…that is the Never-Ending Highway to Nowhere.” However, after two days, she showed appreciation for the bounty and beauty of Nowhere.
Heads up…there’s another parade in 2 weeks: “LovelyVue Frontier Days Festival”.
Best Friend corrected me. She called it the “Never-ending ROAD to Nowhere.”