Thursday, August 12, 2004

Things you don't discuss at the dinner table

Sweetie's teenage cousin is visiting us this week. He's a city boy (from an undisclosed city in the midwest) who likes to come out in the summer and stay with us for a week or so. He is jewish, but he's not real devout. The boy eats hell out of BBQ. I do mean BBQ as in pig meat. He's a good kid, but I am slowly but surely trying to corrupt him. We always do things to aggravate his parents a little when he's here. The first time he came we got him some little washable Confederate flag tattoos and told his mom we'd taken him to the biker tattoo parlor. Another time he watched "Oh brother, where art thou?" about six times while he was here and went home singing "man of constant sorrow" all the time and drove his folks crazy. Seems like we told her once that we'd taken him to a snake-handling church too. Anyway, the day he arrived, I called his mother and asked if I could take him to a strip club. She's not quite sure whether I was serious...

He flies back home tomorrow, so sweetie put out a big feed for him tonight and invited Jeff (one of the farriers we know) over for dinner. Jeff is a basically a fifty-seven year old juvenile delinquent. We have some rather bizarre conversations at times. Monkey boy usually spends a least one day riding around with "Uncle Jeff" while he's here, but he didn't get a chance to this time, but we did get to do a bit of shooting this evening.

I usually enjoy shooting, although I don't do it very much any more, but today was a bit aggravating. I tried to fire my flintlock and kept having hang-fires because it needs a new flint and I haven't shot it in three years. I couldn't shoot my blackpowder revovlers because I couldn't find any grease or wonder wads and I was only able to shoot one of the Sharps a few times because all of my musket caps were so old they wouldn't fire. I'm also out of .45 Long Colt, so I wasn't able to shoot the single actions. I am in piss-poor shape logistics-wise it seems.I had to content myself with shooting my Grandfathers Winchester 97A .22 and my '61 Navy conversion in .38.

But anyway, on to the purpose of this drivel. As I mentioned, Jeff and I have some odd conversations. Monkey-boy being around makes it that much worse, so without any more background, I give you "Subjects to aviod at the dinner table."

Vaginal warts (I'm not sure where in the hell that came from, but it did come up)
Flesh-eating bacteria (our vet had an experience with that)
Port-a-lets (long story, but actually funny in a gross, juvenile way)
Jeff's love life (or lack thereof)

These were just a few of the many subjects discussed, but they were the ones that made my bride almost get up and leave. You'd think she'd be used to it by now because this happens almost every time Jeff and I get together.