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Oh Little Town Of Bedlam 12.25.97
A beautiful Christmas day with sunny skies and temps in the upper sixties turns dark and quiet as everyone on Dumaine settles back in their homes to be quietly disappointed with the gifts they received or did not receive.

The children, I believe, were universally disappointed with their gifts. On a zero budget M bought and scraped together nearly 30 gifts for the neighborhood kids. No one got a BB gun, or a remote control car, or anything really cool. I ran Shelton off with a rather boring speech on being grateful.

Erica seemed not to notice that the Sesame Street doll M gave her was a second hand item, and let me read to her from a Disney book without interrupting too much or repeatedly assuring me that she can read this herself. When she grabbed Marqin's spark gun and started blasting me, I was forced to take the law into my own hands and throw her on M's bed, put her arms behind her back and cuff her with imaginary bracelets. Erica did not, however, respect the imaginary boundaries of my jail, and was soon on the lam. The first thing she did after breaking out was to track me down, throw me on the bed, and put cuffs on me.

"You'll never get me to that jail, sheriff," I taunted her.
"I ain't no sheriff, Ima police," Erica tells me.

So we had a few moments of that traditional familial type fun on Christmas day, then we threw the kids out and had a quiet time. M developed the dreaded fever addendum to the ongoing cold everyone in New Orleans is sharing, and can occasionally be heard to moan pitifully, or cry out hysterically,

"I've got hepatatic diptheria and will die from it."

Although formerly a health care professional, M learned everything she knows about life threatening malapropisms from yours truly.

- jimlouis 5-24-2002 10:30 pm [link] [add a comment]