It's Everybody Can Bite Me Friday!

I'm all lunched out. Three lunches this week and another one I missed because I didn't like the people. How do you turn down a lunch without lying?

"I can't go to lunch because I had my jaw wired shut. How can I talk on the phone? Well honestly I didn't think of that when I answered it because I'm not a spontaneous liar."

My sister and I are not spontaneous. I once told Maman that and she said, "Oh my Goddddddd, zat's horrrrrrrrrrrrrreebul." I was afraid to ask why.

My sister and I are planners, list makers, people who dust the day before company arrives as opposed to the day of. This is a picture of the 3 spontaneous ones in our family and our mother, who probably threw on that dress while the photographer was setting up.

Notice everyone in the picture is smiling but me. On the positive side, I now have no lines around my eyes. On the negative side, when I was a waitress customers complained that I was always in a bad mood.

We used to go to France every summer, except for my Dad, who stayed behind to work. My mother was a teacher with summers off.

When the ocean liners were making the crossings from New York to Cherbourg, France, we would drive up to NY from D.C. and get on the ship.

My sister and I were packed weeks in advance so as not to miss one precious item which, once we got to Paris, never touched because France had cooler shit.

My mother found it more convenient to pack the day we left and had a 3 hour drive ahead of us. The first and second summers we nearly missed the ship. Every year Dad lost 6 pounds via his sweat glands. He and my mother never fought in 27 years but I'm pretty sure they finally got a divorce based on those trips to New York.

Mom thinks "Everybody ready?" means "Time for a snack." She thinks "IT'S TIME TO GO, HONEY" means to check every spigot in the house to make sure nothing was leaking even though my father was still going to be there while we were gone."

The third time my father made us go the day before and spend the night in a NY hotel so as the three of us would not have a heart attack. We still arrived at the docks late because my mother was doing God knows what. Restocking the maid's cart? Slipping newspapers under doors? Checking in new guests?

The 4th summer he made us take the plane.

End of chat.