Salad daze

It was so perfectly timed I was sure it'd be a joke, even though that's not my mom's style at all. What other explanation could there be?

Just as I was lifting my first forkful of crushed Oreos and whipped cream and something else like pudding, Mom said "Oh, I forgot to get out the dessert!"

I theatrically stared at my fork, then at her, but of course it was wasted because of course she wasn't looking at me at all. She hadn't meant to make me laugh.

I picked up this Oreo stuff when I went back to the kitchen for seconds of some childhood staples — macaroni salad (my dad's mom's omnipresent contribution, though my aunt is making it these days), Grandma's baked beans (my mom just gives us the stuff out of a can, so my dad and I always clamor for her to bring her version with molasses and bacon and other delicious stuff) and scalloped corn (of which a vat is always required at Christmas and Thanksgiving).

"What?" I said, indicating my plate. "I'm eating dessert!"

"No!" Mom insisted as if I'd just said, "Can I set this on fire?" or "Do you think sand tastes nice?" or something. "That's not dessert..." and here I realized she was right; I remembered her saying she was going to make apple crisp. Besides, I'd obviously forgotten where I was: I couldn't get my mouth around her next words in time, but I did know what they were going to be before she said them: "It's salad."

I'm not kidding, you know: Oreos, whipped cream. It's not even like the Snicker salad (which setharoo reminded me about when I told him this story! another classic at family functions) which at least has apples in it (along with the whipped cream, powdered sugar, and of course candy bars...), which are just about a healthy, salad-type ingredient.

I shook my head, grinned, and got myself another forkful of salad. "I love Minnesota," I said. My family chuckled at me, which I knew would happen and which would have been a good enough reason to say it, but it happens to be true anyway.

The Third Hand

My friends may have speculated on the nature of this apparent long-distance booty-call — which isn't how I would have categorized it, but I didn't blame them for thinking so — when I could not hear, but they were all nonchalant about it when I was around: the only concession I heard was Josh wanting to know what I do if when there are more than two people I want to hold hands with at the same time.

"Do you think a third hand would be a good idea?" he asked.

I thought about that for a second. It had never really been a problem for me, so I wasn't sure what to think of this new idea. "Well, it depends!" I said. "I mean, Is it just sticking out of the same wrist as the other hand? Or are you talking about a whole nother arm, like Zaphod Beeblebrox?"

But the truth is, there's never been more than two people that want to hold hands with me at the same time, so it works out all right. Indeed, there is very rarely more than one.