Life In Close Quarters
Sunday, November 8, 2009 at 11:04AM This morning I was cleaning the kitchen, and Bob was keeping me company, reading aloud an essay by a travel writer named Rolf Potts. The story, Something Approaching Enlightenment, is about his travels to the Himalayan village of Kaza. He went to visit the Buddhist monasteries there during the winter, to avoid the tourist scene. Turns out that there's no scene at all in the winter -- everything is shut down tight.
The whole trip was a bit of a folly. He ended up stuck in the tiny village, in a room with three very drunk Hindu engineers who spent the night watching American pornos. Bob read softer when he got to the racy parts -- the questions the Hindu's asked about American sexual habits, and the answers explaining that pizza delivery girls in America don't really arrive on their motorcycles dressed like that and "ready to play". It was a pretty funny essay.
When we walked out of the kitchen and into the living room the kids were angry, "You ruined our video, like, five times. Every time we got to the end we had to erase it because of all the bad words you were saying."
"What?"
"We were making a video and we kept having to delete it because you kept cursing and using bad words."
"We weren't cursing. What bad words?"
"Dad said the "A" word about that guy," Owen said.
"Yeah," Ella added, "And you said the "N" word about a lady."
My mind raced. "What "N" word?"
"Naked!"
At this rate I'll never get the Mother Of The Year award.
Bob & Brenna Redpath | 3 Comments | Email Article | Stumble, Digg, etc. | in humor | tagged Kids, Rolf Potts
Reader Comments (3)
:)
Brenna, thanks so much for this post. Just another reminder that our plans may not always work out...this was an hysterical example of that!! I went to the link and hope everyone does...the essay is laugh out loud funny...even called a friend and shared it with her laughing all the way through it... I think it's so sweet your husband read this to you...I think I might have enjoyed cleaning the kitchen under the same circumtances and the kids probably still made a great video in spite of the stops & starts!
Look at it this way.......... I think it is pretty cool that they were upset by the language. They could have just left it in the video and repeated the words several times in the worst possable public situaction.
I think maybe you are still in the running.
After all, they did not say that learn bad words by listening to you drive.