Thursday, September 23, 2004
Classification: "not a wimp"
Sooo…. From the recent posts, actually dating all the way back to nearly the VERY beginning of my little blog here, you can all tell that I have this new boyfriend guy. Whose name is Rob. Who I obviously think is pretty fantastic. And in thinking he’s so fantastic, I was understandably nervous about having him meet any of my family members, not because I was worried about what they’d think of him, but mostly because of what he’d think of them. My family is weird, y’all (see how I put in a “y’all” in honor of Miss Doxie, the idealized woman my brother The Mac has put on some sort of pedestal and to whom he has written a letter professing his undying love – see his post on same).
I talk to The Mac whenever I can, which is less frequently than pre-Rob times, of course, but last night I had a window of opportunity, so I called the bugger.
Me: So how’s it going?
Mac: ‘K.
Me: What are you doing?
Mac: Watching the end of Rescue Me.
Me: Good! How’s our boy doing? [because I do not GET Rescue Me because it is on some weird American network the Canadian people have not seen fit to add to our programming schedule]
Mac: This show is not as good as I had hoped. It’s good, but it’s not as funny as I would want it to be, and Dennis Leary’s character is kind of an asshole.
Me: Well, he does have that song “I’m an asshole”.
Mac: Yes, which is a good song. The show is funny in a serious way, but not funny in a funny way.
Me: That will be its downfall, although we’re told that’s how firefighters actually feel post-911.
Mac: He needs to get over it.
Me: So have you talked to the family lately? [and this is where it gets stressful]
Mac: Yes. The parents called me yesterday. [The Grumpaw] actually talked to me.
Me: Really? I love it when he does that.
Mac: Well, usually he calls and says “[Mac]. It’s your father here. Let me put your mother on the phone…” and that’s all you get out of him. But this time, it was Mother who called and she said “Your father has had too much to drink to talk to you.”
Me: Really?! How much?
Mac: Well I asked that. I said “what, did he polish off a bottle of wine?” and she said “Yes. [Grumpaw] when did you start that bottle of wine?” And he said “Saturday”. So it wasn’t like he had drunk the whole thing that night or anything.
Me: He’s better to talk to when he’s had some wine.
Mac: Then he got on the line, and he chatted! For, like, half an hour. It’s like he forgets who he’s talking to and gets all chatty. He told me about work, and all sorts of things. He said that he hadn’t heard from Laura since the weekend, and that they don’t talk to you much any more now that you have a new social life and the boyfriend…
Me: Yeeeesssss… and what did he say about Rob?
Mac: I’m getting to that. I asked about him specifically, about what they thought when they met this dude last weekend. And you know what he said?
Me: WHAT!
Mac: Boy, you get defensive. It’s fun poking people in the brain with needles. He said that Rob seemed normal. Seemed like a “nice enough fellow, but quiet”. Said that Rob didn’t say much when he got to the table, and that he ordered his drink, and drank his drink, and that Shane was the one who had talked to him most.
Me: Okaay…No, wait. He mentioned that Rob ordered and drank a drink? He got into that level of detail? But he couldn’t think of anything else to say? Besides, he was sitting at the end of the table, and Shane was at that end, and it was good that they were talking…
Mac: You need to relax. He also noted that Rob shaves his head. The impression was not negative. Neither was it positive, though, it was more of a draw.
Me: Well, I’d put that in the win column.
Mac: You didn’t expend much in the way of risk, and you didn’t gain anything. How is that a win?
Me: It’s not a loss. Therefore, in my books, it’s a win. Although we’re probably going to have to make another appearance sooner or later so they can talk to him.
Mac: I suppose it’s better than the rating the other guys you’ve brought home to meet the family have gotten.
Me: Huh?
Mac: Come on! You know that every time you’ve brought one of these hapless fellows home to meet us, [The Grumpaw] and I have looked at each other, and said one word.
Me: WHAT?!!
Mac: You don’t know this? You’ve been there when we’ve discussed them.
Me: No I haven’t! What’s this ONE WORD?!!
Mac: Heh. You know what it is. Wimp.
Me: WHAT?!! What-what-what?!! No way. I mean, I can see it with Craig, but…
Mac: Craig was a nice guy. He was a wimp, totally, but he was a really nice guy, so I liked him.
Me: Yes, yes he was. And yeah, I can appreciate the whole wimp connection there, but the others?
Mac: Seriously. Frank? Wimp.
Me: No! Ok, well, maybe a little.
Mac: Darren? Wimp.
Me: Um… I guess I can sorta see that. Maybe. But there were others! Like… like…
Mac: All of them.
Me: Hey! I dated that Jeff Thomas. He wasn’t a wimp. He was a jackass, but not a wimp.
Mac: I have no memory of that. I don’t know who you’re talking about.
Me: Jeff Thomas. He was friends with Dave Ryan. Well, he was friends with Dave’s friend Sean, who I dated for a while and was also not much of a wimp.
Mac: Who?
Me: Sean Hoffstetter. Big guy. Like, 300 lbs big, and not all of it was fat. He was a football player. Friends with Dave Ryan. From University.
Mac: Ok. Ryan was the political guy, and he was relatively nice, but he was political and therefore slimy.
Me: But I didn’t date him. I dated Thomas and Hoffstetter.
Mac: Plus both those guys have strangely bland names.
Me: Hoffstetter?
Mac: At least Jeff Thomas. You should have said to him you wouldn’t see him because his name was too bland.
Me: And there was McAllister…
Mac: Who was both a wimp and effeminate.
Me: He did shave his chest once.
Mac: Exactly my point.
Me: Look, there were others, you know. There was that mud man.
Mac: The rig pig?
Me: He was really nice!
Mac: I didn’t meet him. I’m talking about the ones you brought home to meet the family. Even the Ian guy, who I didn’t meet but talked to on the phone was a wimp.
Me: Well, the ones that weren’t wimps were kind of rude. And Rob is definitely NOT a wimp in any way.
Mac: I’m not saying he is. I’m saying he got a good rating on that scale and has not been classified as such.
Me: Good.
Mac: Boy, you sure get defensive about this sort of thing. You’re difficult to talk to now that you’re… “coupled”.
Me: No I’m not!
Mac: You’re different.
Me: I’m the same! If we were talking about TV, we wouldn’t have this problem. We need to change the subject. What are you watching these days?
Mac: Nothing network.
Me: So, no Law & Order?
Mac: No. Mostly FX, really.
Me: I don’t get FX. I watched mostly stuff on Space last year, but this year they have crap. I mean, come on. Mutant X? That’s fine for Saturday mornings, but prime time? The hell?
Mac: No, that’s no good. You should watch this MegaStructures show they have on the National Geographic channel.
Me: But I don’t get the National Geographic Channel.
Mac: You don’t?
Me: No, man, I have cable. Good cable, but nothing like satellite…
Mac: Well, then do you get Discovery?
Me: Yeah.
Mac: It might be on that. This one I watched was all about the building of the Chunnel. Did you know that’s the largest privately-funded tunnel ever built?
Me: No.
Mac: It is. And you’d think they would start at one side, and tunnel to the other, but they didn’t. Guess how they built it.
Me: I have no idea.
Mac: No, you do not. They each started out on their side, and met in the middle. They were 14 inches out when they met. They even raced. The French side started racing against the British side.
Me: Who won?
Mac: The British. And after they built it, they scrapped the building machines.
Me: What? What if we want to tunnel across another body of water sometime? What will we use?
Mac: We’ll have to build new machines. And they couldn’t just drive through one another – they had to tunnel beneath the tunnel, and that’s where they scrapped the British one.
Me: So it’s just trapped down there forever?
Mac: Yes. And the French one, they couldn’t back it out so they just drove it over to the other side and scrapped it in Britain.
Me: I don’t think that’s good – that they scrapped them. What if we want to chunnel somewhere to Finland? Or Newfoundland?
Mac: Who'd want to chunnel to Newfoundland? It was the most expensive tunnel ever built. 18 Billion dollars.
Me: That’s expensive.
Mac: Yes. It was all funded by private banks.
Me: So that’s it then?
Mac: What do you mean?
Me: You’re just watching TV? Are you not teaching? Socializing at all?
Mac: I went for dinner at the neighbors’ parents’ place the other day.
Me: Good for you!
Mac: Yes, they had their hardwood floors redone upstairs, so they had to move all of their stuff while it was being done.
Me: And you helped them put it back?
Mac: Yes. And in return, they fed us.
Me: What did you have?
Mac: Turkey dinner. They cooked TWO turkeys.
Me: Score!
Mac: And the best part is that they gave me some to take home because a lot of the people who were supposed to help failed to show up. I now have five pounds of turkey in the fridge to eat.
Me: Wow. That’s a lot of turkey. What are you going to do with it all?
Mac: I dunno. Make sandwiches. Maybe an omelette.
Me: I’d stick with the sandwiches. Omelettes are not for your best stuff.
Mac: A turkey omelette would be great!
Me: I’m just sayin’ that you’d want to actually have the turkey in something you can really appreciate, like a sandwich. An omelette is for less-optimal stuff. Like if you have ham that’s about to turn, you can put it in an omelette. You should freeze some of the turkey so you can eat it later.
Mac: You know I have this thing about making food last.
Me: Yes, I know. Which is why you should freeze some of that turkey before it goes bad.
Mac: You remember the ham.
Me: Yes, I do remember the ham. That was scary.
Mac: The 99 cents/pound ham.
Me: Right.
Mac: But I had to buy ten pounds.
Me: I remember.
Mac: And then I had to eat it all.
Me: Dude, freeze the turkey.
Mac: It’s like living on the edge.
Me: Eating bad food is not living on the edge.
Mac: It’s like an extreme hobby.
Me: Eating bad food is NOT an extreme hobby! It’s insanity! You get this from Mother. “Oh, that milk’s alright, it hasn’t gone bad, yet…”
Mac: Yeah, but that’s more from her growing up on a farm. My thing is like trying to cheat fate.
Me: Which you do entirely enough of. Hey! Did you know they have a new Lays ad out with Mark Messier? It’s the dill pickle one. Where there’s this guy all laid out on the ice, and then Messier says something, and opens the bag of dill pickle Lays, and then it cuts to info about the chip, and when it cuts back to the hockey scene, ALL the players are laid out on the ice.
Mac: Don’t tell [The Grumpaw]. It sounds weird.
Me: Yes, well I was just watching it without sound while I’m talking to you. So it probably makes more sense when you can hear what they’re saying.
Mac: Hmm.
Me: I may tape it and send it to you.
Mac: That’s probably not necessary.
Me: Ok. I have to go then. We’re going to watch The Tick.
Mac: Later.
And then the Mac just hung up on me without letting me say goodbye. After a conversation like that, you need a “goodbye” to let it all go. But with no goodbye, then you get a post like this the next day.
I talk to The Mac whenever I can, which is less frequently than pre-Rob times, of course, but last night I had a window of opportunity, so I called the bugger.
Me: So how’s it going?
Mac: ‘K.
Me: What are you doing?
Mac: Watching the end of Rescue Me.
Me: Good! How’s our boy doing? [because I do not GET Rescue Me because it is on some weird American network the Canadian people have not seen fit to add to our programming schedule]
Mac: This show is not as good as I had hoped. It’s good, but it’s not as funny as I would want it to be, and Dennis Leary’s character is kind of an asshole.
Me: Well, he does have that song “I’m an asshole”.
Mac: Yes, which is a good song. The show is funny in a serious way, but not funny in a funny way.
Me: That will be its downfall, although we’re told that’s how firefighters actually feel post-911.
Mac: He needs to get over it.
Me: So have you talked to the family lately? [and this is where it gets stressful]
Mac: Yes. The parents called me yesterday. [The Grumpaw] actually talked to me.
Me: Really? I love it when he does that.
Mac: Well, usually he calls and says “[Mac]. It’s your father here. Let me put your mother on the phone…” and that’s all you get out of him. But this time, it was Mother who called and she said “Your father has had too much to drink to talk to you.”
Me: Really?! How much?
Mac: Well I asked that. I said “what, did he polish off a bottle of wine?” and she said “Yes. [Grumpaw] when did you start that bottle of wine?” And he said “Saturday”. So it wasn’t like he had drunk the whole thing that night or anything.
Me: He’s better to talk to when he’s had some wine.
Mac: Then he got on the line, and he chatted! For, like, half an hour. It’s like he forgets who he’s talking to and gets all chatty. He told me about work, and all sorts of things. He said that he hadn’t heard from Laura since the weekend, and that they don’t talk to you much any more now that you have a new social life and the boyfriend…
Me: Yeeeesssss… and what did he say about Rob?
Mac: I’m getting to that. I asked about him specifically, about what they thought when they met this dude last weekend. And you know what he said?
Me: WHAT!
Mac: Boy, you get defensive. It’s fun poking people in the brain with needles. He said that Rob seemed normal. Seemed like a “nice enough fellow, but quiet”. Said that Rob didn’t say much when he got to the table, and that he ordered his drink, and drank his drink, and that Shane was the one who had talked to him most.
Me: Okaay…No, wait. He mentioned that Rob ordered and drank a drink? He got into that level of detail? But he couldn’t think of anything else to say? Besides, he was sitting at the end of the table, and Shane was at that end, and it was good that they were talking…
Mac: You need to relax. He also noted that Rob shaves his head. The impression was not negative. Neither was it positive, though, it was more of a draw.
Me: Well, I’d put that in the win column.
Mac: You didn’t expend much in the way of risk, and you didn’t gain anything. How is that a win?
Me: It’s not a loss. Therefore, in my books, it’s a win. Although we’re probably going to have to make another appearance sooner or later so they can talk to him.
Mac: I suppose it’s better than the rating the other guys you’ve brought home to meet the family have gotten.
Me: Huh?
Mac: Come on! You know that every time you’ve brought one of these hapless fellows home to meet us, [The Grumpaw] and I have looked at each other, and said one word.
Me: WHAT?!!
Mac: You don’t know this? You’ve been there when we’ve discussed them.
Me: No I haven’t! What’s this ONE WORD?!!
Mac: Heh. You know what it is. Wimp.
Me: WHAT?!! What-what-what?!! No way. I mean, I can see it with Craig, but…
Mac: Craig was a nice guy. He was a wimp, totally, but he was a really nice guy, so I liked him.
Me: Yes, yes he was. And yeah, I can appreciate the whole wimp connection there, but the others?
Mac: Seriously. Frank? Wimp.
Me: No! Ok, well, maybe a little.
Mac: Darren? Wimp.
Me: Um… I guess I can sorta see that. Maybe. But there were others! Like… like…
Mac: All of them.
Me: Hey! I dated that Jeff Thomas. He wasn’t a wimp. He was a jackass, but not a wimp.
Mac: I have no memory of that. I don’t know who you’re talking about.
Me: Jeff Thomas. He was friends with Dave Ryan. Well, he was friends with Dave’s friend Sean, who I dated for a while and was also not much of a wimp.
Mac: Who?
Me: Sean Hoffstetter. Big guy. Like, 300 lbs big, and not all of it was fat. He was a football player. Friends with Dave Ryan. From University.
Mac: Ok. Ryan was the political guy, and he was relatively nice, but he was political and therefore slimy.
Me: But I didn’t date him. I dated Thomas and Hoffstetter.
Mac: Plus both those guys have strangely bland names.
Me: Hoffstetter?
Mac: At least Jeff Thomas. You should have said to him you wouldn’t see him because his name was too bland.
Me: And there was McAllister…
Mac: Who was both a wimp and effeminate.
Me: He did shave his chest once.
Mac: Exactly my point.
Me: Look, there were others, you know. There was that mud man.
Mac: The rig pig?
Me: He was really nice!
Mac: I didn’t meet him. I’m talking about the ones you brought home to meet the family. Even the Ian guy, who I didn’t meet but talked to on the phone was a wimp.
Me: Well, the ones that weren’t wimps were kind of rude. And Rob is definitely NOT a wimp in any way.
Mac: I’m not saying he is. I’m saying he got a good rating on that scale and has not been classified as such.
Me: Good.
Mac: Boy, you sure get defensive about this sort of thing. You’re difficult to talk to now that you’re… “coupled”.
Me: No I’m not!
Mac: You’re different.
Me: I’m the same! If we were talking about TV, we wouldn’t have this problem. We need to change the subject. What are you watching these days?
Mac: Nothing network.
Me: So, no Law & Order?
Mac: No. Mostly FX, really.
Me: I don’t get FX. I watched mostly stuff on Space last year, but this year they have crap. I mean, come on. Mutant X? That’s fine for Saturday mornings, but prime time? The hell?
Mac: No, that’s no good. You should watch this MegaStructures show they have on the National Geographic channel.
Me: But I don’t get the National Geographic Channel.
Mac: You don’t?
Me: No, man, I have cable. Good cable, but nothing like satellite…
Mac: Well, then do you get Discovery?
Me: Yeah.
Mac: It might be on that. This one I watched was all about the building of the Chunnel. Did you know that’s the largest privately-funded tunnel ever built?
Me: No.
Mac: It is. And you’d think they would start at one side, and tunnel to the other, but they didn’t. Guess how they built it.
Me: I have no idea.
Mac: No, you do not. They each started out on their side, and met in the middle. They were 14 inches out when they met. They even raced. The French side started racing against the British side.
Me: Who won?
Mac: The British. And after they built it, they scrapped the building machines.
Me: What? What if we want to tunnel across another body of water sometime? What will we use?
Mac: We’ll have to build new machines. And they couldn’t just drive through one another – they had to tunnel beneath the tunnel, and that’s where they scrapped the British one.
Me: So it’s just trapped down there forever?
Mac: Yes. And the French one, they couldn’t back it out so they just drove it over to the other side and scrapped it in Britain.
Me: I don’t think that’s good – that they scrapped them. What if we want to chunnel somewhere to Finland? Or Newfoundland?
Mac: Who'd want to chunnel to Newfoundland? It was the most expensive tunnel ever built. 18 Billion dollars.
Me: That’s expensive.
Mac: Yes. It was all funded by private banks.
Me: So that’s it then?
Mac: What do you mean?
Me: You’re just watching TV? Are you not teaching? Socializing at all?
Mac: I went for dinner at the neighbors’ parents’ place the other day.
Me: Good for you!
Mac: Yes, they had their hardwood floors redone upstairs, so they had to move all of their stuff while it was being done.
Me: And you helped them put it back?
Mac: Yes. And in return, they fed us.
Me: What did you have?
Mac: Turkey dinner. They cooked TWO turkeys.
Me: Score!
Mac: And the best part is that they gave me some to take home because a lot of the people who were supposed to help failed to show up. I now have five pounds of turkey in the fridge to eat.
Me: Wow. That’s a lot of turkey. What are you going to do with it all?
Mac: I dunno. Make sandwiches. Maybe an omelette.
Me: I’d stick with the sandwiches. Omelettes are not for your best stuff.
Mac: A turkey omelette would be great!
Me: I’m just sayin’ that you’d want to actually have the turkey in something you can really appreciate, like a sandwich. An omelette is for less-optimal stuff. Like if you have ham that’s about to turn, you can put it in an omelette. You should freeze some of the turkey so you can eat it later.
Mac: You know I have this thing about making food last.
Me: Yes, I know. Which is why you should freeze some of that turkey before it goes bad.
Mac: You remember the ham.
Me: Yes, I do remember the ham. That was scary.
Mac: The 99 cents/pound ham.
Me: Right.
Mac: But I had to buy ten pounds.
Me: I remember.
Mac: And then I had to eat it all.
Me: Dude, freeze the turkey.
Mac: It’s like living on the edge.
Me: Eating bad food is not living on the edge.
Mac: It’s like an extreme hobby.
Me: Eating bad food is NOT an extreme hobby! It’s insanity! You get this from Mother. “Oh, that milk’s alright, it hasn’t gone bad, yet…”
Mac: Yeah, but that’s more from her growing up on a farm. My thing is like trying to cheat fate.
Me: Which you do entirely enough of. Hey! Did you know they have a new Lays ad out with Mark Messier? It’s the dill pickle one. Where there’s this guy all laid out on the ice, and then Messier says something, and opens the bag of dill pickle Lays, and then it cuts to info about the chip, and when it cuts back to the hockey scene, ALL the players are laid out on the ice.
Mac: Don’t tell [The Grumpaw]. It sounds weird.
Me: Yes, well I was just watching it without sound while I’m talking to you. So it probably makes more sense when you can hear what they’re saying.
Mac: Hmm.
Me: I may tape it and send it to you.
Mac: That’s probably not necessary.
Me: Ok. I have to go then. We’re going to watch The Tick.
Mac: Later.
And then the Mac just hung up on me without letting me say goodbye. After a conversation like that, you need a “goodbye” to let it all go. But with no goodbye, then you get a post like this the next day.
