The Old Men and The Old Man

The Old Men

The W and I went to the Illini Basektball Banquet last Tuesday. It's an annual thing we do with my parents and it's usually a quick evening (over by nine so babysitter, in this case Tia, Ali's sister, gets home at a decent hour). 

It's a typical "rubber chicken banquet", but when you're trying to feed 800 people what can you do? People will always woof down their meal regardless. 

Each tables seats 8-9 and we were maxed out at ours. Me, the W, my parents, a good family friend, two 40-ish buddies, and a pair of septuagenarian men. One of the gentlemen was sitting next to me. At all the tables the desserts are already set out. Usually they are centered in front of each place setting. That night they were scattered around like toys in our living room--all over the place. I didn't pay much attention to that fact until it we bounced the rubber chicken down our throats and turned to dessert. Alas I had no dessert in front of me. The closest one was by my elderly table companion. I could have grabbed it, but he had already placed a half-eaten dinner role on the plate and it was touching the cake--by rule he had claimed the cake.

Unfortunately the way the pieces were laid out if everyone had grabbed the cake to their left we would have been OK, but everyone was playing fast and loose with the rules of cake! By the time the dust had settled "my" piece of cake was eaten by one of the 40-ish dudes. He scored two pieces of cake that night (probably the best night of his life) and I . . .  none.

That's not the point of this story, but when you get gyped of cake you got to let someone know! What was a delight to see was that one of the old men had cleaned his plate of everything . . . all but the cooked carrots in the mixed vegetable medley. He had carefully segregated them so that at the end of his meal he had an island of cooked carrots in a sea of clean plate. 

It was revealing to see that whether 4 or 74, when you don't like cooked carrots, you ain't gonna like them, you ain't gonna get used to them, and you ain't gonna eat them.

The Old Man

Sugarpop, aka--the W, left for a conference in Toronto Friday morning. Last night she packed from 11 p.m. until 1 a.m. Set her alarm, was up at 3:30 a.m., and out the door at 4:15 a.m. She'll be gone until late Sunday night. The fact that last time she was gone I experienced this and the fact that an earthquake shook the land a few minutes after leaving does not bode well for my fate this weekend.

So this afternoon I'm reading the paper and the boys are playing on the floor. I finish up the paper and start playing with the O and the Happy Elf. The Happy Elf and I got into playing "Cars" (the movie) and the O busied himself with his beloved Schleich animals.

A few minutes later the O had moved to the LazyBoy and was looking at a book. 

"What are you reading? I asked.

"I'm an old man and I'm reading the newspaper." he said.

"Oh. What's your name Mr. Old Man?"

"Daddy."

Oy.