the post-holidaze...

so, katie (my step-sis) is leaving tomorrow and will be out of town for the rest of the time i'll be here in mississippi, so tonight she and i went out to get drinks. note the plural.

where did we go? well, apparently there are only really two bars in pascagoula that aren't scary, so we went to the one called the jazz club. and before you ask, no -- they don't sell t-shirts, and no -- there is no jazz. there is, however, a helluva lot of lynard skynard on the jukebox...

now, this bar is that hometown bar where all the kids from high school go when they're home for holidays. and so, i saw a lot of people i knew. nobody from as far back as my high school years, but a good number of my brother's and step-brother's and step-sister's classes. i know some of these kids, in particular my brother's old high school crowd. and this made for some good storytelling and laughs.

my favorite part of the evening was when my brother's friend nick, whom i adore, says to me, "hey, i thought of you the other day -- remember that joke you told when you were running for student council president?"

gasp! GASP!!! because yes, i do remember that joke i told. or rather, i remember telling the joke, my sixteen year old self, delivering my campaign speech at the podium of our lady of victories church, a wee junior in high school, back in the spring of 1993. i didn't remember the actual joke, having successfully blocked a lot of those humiliating high school memories from my adult brain.

nick, of course, did remember the joke, and he told it to me. it goes like this:

there were two ducks in a bathtub. one duck says to the other one, "hey, can you pass the soap?" and the other one says, "what do i look like, a typewriter?!"

huh? yeah. hence the blocked-a-lot-of-those-humiliating-high-school-memories thing. wow. WOW. i mean, wow.

hurray for the hometown bar scene! i left humbled. and a lot less drunk than katie, so i drove us home. and now it's time to go to bed, and with the exception of having just memorialized the joke that had been deeply buried under fourteen years of post-student-council-presidential-campaigning recovery, i hope to never think of these things again.

merry christmas, bedford falls!