Strange Sentences

The other evening Dan called me. "Mom, I've been worried about you. I called a couple of times and there was no answer."

"I was out setting the possum traps."

This set me thinking. Of all the sentences I have spoken in these 68 years (I didn't speak at all until I was 2), the above sentence may be one of the weirdest. I grew up in Washington, D.C. As far as I know I had never seen a cow, definitely not seen one up close. And even more definitely, had no knowledge of possums, no desire to catch one, no blood lust to kill one. How things have changed! So here are some of my favorite strange sentences.

Yael and I are traversing Mt. Everest, AKA paddock #1, to bring the steers down for the home kill guys to dispatch them to the happy grazing grounds so we can have our next year's meat. Now that is a strange sentence. I had never linked live cows with my hamburger. Now I do and I have to say that our hamburger is delicious. Still, there is more than a twinge as my buddies for the past 2 years amble off for the last time.

Yael has graciously offered to sprint up the paddock and move the steers down in my direction where I will herd them to the next outpost.

"If I fall in a tomo, tell the kids I love them," she shouted as she skirted the tomo barricade. Now that's a strange sentence!

I have had my household stuff shipped from the states and the moving van has pulled up to our gates. Our driveway won't take the large van so they have driven a smaller van to transport my books,  bed, etc. from the gate to the house. It is a horrible day weather wise. It is cold, gray, and wet.

"The rain is coming sideways, so we'll have to pull the feeder truck in at an angle to try and keep your stuff dry." It took me a while to understand what he said and then I puzzled some more. What difference did the angle make when you have to carry the stuff across the driveway and and down into the barn or across another driveway and into the house? I still don't know but I occupy my many idle moments trying to figure it out.

When Dan and Yael went to a restaurant for dinner, placed their orders, and waited 45 minutes for the non-appearance of their food, they questioned the owner.

"Where is are our food?" they asked politely.

"Surf's up," came the reply. It seems the wait staff all booked to the nearby beach for play time and the diners were left to wait until the surf surge was over. The strangest part of this was that the owner didn't seem to feel there was anything strange about that at all!

I could go on and on. The stock boy, who in response to my query as to the whereabouts of light bulbs, stared at me fixedly and said "You're American!!" Now I wasn't in the wilds of Borneo, there are lots of us Americans here and we are all over the television (last season's shows, but still American). He had to have heard an American accent before, hadn't he? And besides, what was the deal with me being an American?

I have had a lot of strange reactions to America and my being an American. Perhaps that will be the next blog. See you later.