My son, Austin, (the one who is currently sunburned only across the bridge of his lily-white nose… “I thought I put sunscreen everywhere!”….. sheesh) came up with the idea to retain one memorable line from each of our family vacations. I liked the idea. It’s like an inside joke for the whole family. A one liner that transports all of us to the same location, time and incident… and makes us laugh, creating family bonds.
Years ago we all went with Rick to Oklahoma City where he had a week of flight training. The kids and I dropped him off each morning and went exploring. The Cowboy Hall of Fame is in OKC… and they have an entire room full of drawers dedicated to barbed wire. I had no idear (cowboy talk for idea) that there were thousands of ways to tie barbed wire knots…. but there are… and they are all preserved in drawers in OKC. (That was cool side information not related to the Famous Quotes.)
On a different day in OKC, we found a movie theater at 10:00 in the morning and decided to see the kid’s Christmas movie about the train with Tom Hanks…. title escapes me…. and when we walked up to pay for one adult and three kid tickets we were greeted by an old woman with a wicked witch voice. She slowly raised her shaky, knuckled finger, pointed at Larisa and asked in a high screechy voice, “How old is SHE?” It startled all of us. The volume. The sound. The accusing manner. We ended up being the only ones in the theater, so Larisa sat in the first section, Keeve and I sat in the front row of the back section and Austin ran up and down the aisles throughout the whole movie. Just this week one of our kids did the scary “How old is SHE?” line, teleporting us back to OKC.
So our recent dental vacation south of the border produced so many great one-liners, we had a tough time deciding on the perfect ONE for that trip. Most were great salesman lines from street vendors trying to sell us their wares. And the nominations for Best Line in Los Algodones were: “Almost free today.” “Just one Mexican minute.” “I’m having a Chapter 11 sale. I just filed this morning.” (My personal favorite.) But the all time winner was from a man selling a “leather” hat to Keeve. The only leather thing about it was the little braided strap around the brim. The rest was a great looking and feeling imitation, but the back was synthetic fabric. So $20 was WAY too much. Rick stepped in to barter, at which, I must add, he is a master. Please, let me give you a little glimpse into how it went:
Guy: $20
Rick: $10
Guy: $19
Rick: $10
Guy: $18
Rick: $10
Guy: $17
Rick: $10 (See the pattern here???)
Finally the guy came down to $12 but Rick was stuck at, you guessed it, $10. The fine salesman finally slaps Rick on the shoulder in a friendly gesture and says, “Why you have to be so Mexican?” Priceless. The ultimate term south of the border for being highly frugal….. Mexican. Albeit, Rick does blend in well down there with his jet black hair, dark skin and Mexican teeth, it totally made us laugh that the guy recognized Rick as one of his own.
A belated Happy Father’s Day wish to our Mexican. You’re the best dad! (a close tie with my dad, of course.)
My Sister's Jar 