Save That Sign

My parents and ant came to visit tonight. Though it's good to see them, it can also lead to a lot of peculiar situations.

My dad is rather insistent that he use rubbing compound on my car to get the scratches out. "I also need some soap and water," he instructs me. As I'm entering the house to get that for him, he adds, "Put it in a bucket." Ah, right. The idiot that I am, I figured he wanted a glass of soap and water. It's a wonder I manage to keep myself alive without his supervision. In the three minutes it takes for me to make like Jack and Jill and fetch a pail of water, my dad proves why I cannot leave him unattended. Arriving back outdoors, I find him scrubbing my car without a shirt on. I make one of my patented horrified faces that my students seem to love and remind him that it's a residential area. No amount of hinting gets him to redress himself, so I try to avoid eye contact with the neighbors walking their dogs past my house while praying that the sun will go down faster. For fifteen minutes, my mom, ant, and I watch When my dad says he's about done with the job, Kline arrives at home just in time to see the spectacle for herself. "Oh, hey, meet my parents. My dad's just... yeah, so this is my dad."

For dinner, we make reservations at a nice steak place, only to find the restaurant so thoroughly crowded that we can't even get a parking spot. Attempting to find a new source of food, we proceed to get lost for, oh, forty five minutes, driving in all four directions at various points. Finally, we find a bar. Awkwardly, we stand at the door for a couple of minutes as people stare before it becomes obvious we need to seat ourselves. With few options, we sit at a long table, only to have the other half of the table soon filled with bizarre thirty-somethings wearing Halloween costumes. In fact, most people there were bizarre thirty-somethings in costume, meaning we were the people who stuck out the most, especially when all four of us ordered medium rare New York strip steaks.

Parting for the night, it was my mom's turn to be peculiar. We have a campaign sign in our front yard promoting the preservation of beautiful land from being turned into yet another developmental area. She had been curious about what it meant earlier in the day, but I had not realized the extent of her interest. After her final farewell, she requests that, after the election, I save the sign for her. I glance her incredulously. "Are you serious?" I ask. Apparently, she is. "What could you possibly want that for?!" I sputter, unable to hold back laughter, as cannot my dad and ant. At any rate, my mom thinks the sign "looks nice," so I will be sure to keep the oversized, vaguely attractive sign on a local campaign issue that means nothing on the other side of the country and bring it to her on a future trip to Connecticut so she can scrapbook it or something.