Saturday, March 20, 2004
Aunt Laura and Uncle Nick began driving yesterday afternoon for the green pastures of Washington, D. C. They shall return next Saturday or Sunday. They left Debbie and me each fifty dollars for groceries, with the instructions:at 9:33 PMBehaveDebbie and I bought our groceries already; I purchased a six-pack of Mountain Dews, and Debbie purchased a six-pack of Heinekens. They left several cans of tuna and chicken, one can of 99% fat-free Chef Boyardee beef ravioli (it's good stuff), about thirty eggs, salad greens, salmon, a bag each of colby jack and Mozarella cheeses, and various cuts of frozen chicken. I might survive.
Keep the house clean, preferably cleaner
Behave
Debbie- no cigarettes; we want to see receipts
Nick told me chocolate milk is not a grocery, and that I therefore cannot buy any. I define as "grocery" any item found within a grocery store. This includes (but is not limited to) chocolate milk, goat meat, and paper clips. In lieu of chocolate milk, I'll get those insanely expensive glass bottles of Starbucks mocha drinks. That'll show him.
Mladen chatted with me as we rolled dough this afternoon (I bond with people at odd times). He noted that he doesn't speak English very well (actually, he does- it's a little broken, but he gets his point across), so he doesn't read American authors, except for Stephen King. Mladen was impressed by The Talisman, which I've never read.
Then he asked if I had any siblings. After my response, he said, 'Oh, wow, a full house! That's great!' in his adorable Bosnian accent. I find it "adorable", I suppose, because I've never been around Bosnians or other Eastern Europeans. St. Louis, for whatever reason, has a large community of Eastern Europeans.
Mladen mentioned he has one younger sister, and that she goes to school here (by "here" I mean the United States- Mladen immigrated between five and eight years ago, I think). He said, 'She's really smart- all A's. She's amazing.' I teased (rather ignorantly, in retrospect), 'Oh, and you didn't do as well in school?' Mladen shrugged, 'Well, it was during the war. We just sort of went, and we were off the street. I did all fourteen years, but I didn't learn anything. Most of the time we would go around the neighborhood and [he struggled a second for the best way to articulate what he meant] hang out, you know. It was a small town; we didn't have money to spend like you do here. Me and my friends, we would pool five bucks, what would be five bucks, and we would buy beer or something.'
Put that in a pipe and smoke it. Terrorism, schmerrorism. For most of us, it's still abstract compared to how kids like Mladen grew up.
