The other day, I walked into Ron's office and he noticed some blood on my arm.
"What happened there?" he asked.
"Oh, I guess I just scratched myself. You know, they say your thin gets skinner as you get older." That's exactly how I said it. I noticed the slip as it came out. "So I guess my thin is getting skinner, too."
He laughed. "I heard the way you meant it, not how you said it. I guess my brain switched the words back around."
I bought a watermelon the other day. It had been a long time since I'd had any and it made me think of my dad. When I was a kid, I remember coming home from wherever I'd been and looking in the fridge to find a big, fat watermelon. I'd remove the tin foil covering, anticipating a thick, juicy slice. Instead, I would find the center of the carved out, as though some confused antarctic scientists had taken a core sample. My dad had gutted the thing. He'd taken the sweet heart, leaving the dregs and the rind behind.
"Da-a-a-ad!" I would shout, then hear him laughing from the other room. "You took the best part!"
"Well of course I did," he'd say. He did it more than once. He did it every time. If you wanted a decent slice of watermelon in our house, you had to be first. So when I bit into that sweet juiciness yesterday, and then again today, I thought of him and smiled.
We ran out of gas today. Now we know that two propane tanks last us exactly 8 months. Usually we call when one runs out. Guess we spaced. No cooking (except on the grill or in the toaster oven or microwave or rice cooker or electric egg poacher) and no mechanical clothes drying 'til Tuesday. Oh my goodness, will we survive? I say lets eat out! Let's go to Ken's. Sumo!
A hui hou. Aloha!
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