Now to the topic at hand, I wanted to update about the History Bee, which is an event for 3rd 4th and 5th graders sponsored by the newspaper that is similar to a spelling bee but the questions are about the history of our county and state. It's always a good time, and Will and I were proctors this year as usual, which means we get to ask the questions in the first two elimination rounds, and I always enjoy working with the kids. It's when the parents decide to get involved that things get annoying, but we had a minimum of that this year until the end when a loud, rude man started shouting directions on how things should be run from the stands. It's ok though, he was a soccer referee and therefore eminently qualified to run a History Bee. The first, second and third place winners were all kids who had been at Will's and my tables in the elimination rounds. Will says we inspire greatness.
AFTER the History Bee though, Will and I were leaving the FCC campus by making a right turn on a green light. The people across the intersection, who were making left turns on a green light didn't seem to know much about traffic laws, because they felt they had just as much a right to make their left turn on green as I had to make my right turn on green and they were all going right ahead. One guy was totally ignoring me and proceeding through the intersection directly towards my path, not yielding at all, so I honked at him. Not a loud rude honk, just a short tap to say "Hey dude, WTF?". Well THAT got his attention. He began to gesticulate wildly in my direction, venting his road rage over his shoulder at me. In fact, he was so focused on making sure that I got a good yelling-at that he ran right into the median and blew his front tire! It was absolutely fantastic.
He swerved all over the place for awhile, finally coming to a stop at a traffic light. There he got out of the car to figure out which tire was blown, and as he circled his car he kept up a steady stream of unintelligible but angry muttering, periodically crescendo-ing into a shout that showed his long, rat-like teeth to their best advantage. His long, grey grizzly hair blew softly in the wind as he paced around in the road...however his righteous fury was directed at the silver van sitting behind him in traffic, and not myself. I guess he figured that since it was silver like my Highlander, it must be the offending vehicle.
I would be completely, gleefully happy about the whole course of things, except for the fact that he had a young child in the back seat. I feel awful for the child that he had to see his guardian making such a display, and while I don't care if that jerk had to risk getting his head crushed by passing traffic while changing a tire since he brought it on himself, I do regret that the child was inconvenienced because he had nothing to do with it. Of course I didn't run the guy into the median myself, so I really shouldn't feel bad at all.
The rest of the weekend passed in a slightly less dramatic way. Emily enjoyed a playdate at our house with Sam on Saturday:
The parents enjoyed it too. That night we all went out to celebrate St. Patrick's day at the Corner Pub in Hagerstown. We didn't realize it ahead of time, but apparently the Pope had decreed that St. Patrick's day be observed on Saturday anyway to keep everyone from drinking too much during holy week, so even though most of us aren't Catholic we agreed that if the Pope wanted us to go out and drink on Saturday night, who were we to argue? We even witnessed a drunk dwarf falling off his barstool. While I felt bad for the guy, I think everyone in their lifetime should be treated to the sight of a drunk person falling off a barstool, and the fact that the person I witnessed making the fall was a dwarf just makes it that much more unique of a story to tell afterward.
Sunday we had a nice St. Patrick's day dinner at my parents' house, then spent a little downtime relaxing at home for the first time the whole weekend! So as a whole, I count our weekend (filled with drunk dwarves and grizzly rat men though it may have been) as a success. We squeezed in time with each of our families, met work obligations, were able to get in our exercise both days, spent some time with Emily's baby friends and our own adult friends.
There was something for everyone.
No comments:
Post a Comment