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The Newsletter >
Gourd Flipping
July 30, 2009
“You are going to flip your gourd,” Sherwood said. Sherwood has been married to me for thirty-one years in October, and he has been alive for fifty-one years this month.
Now when someone says that you are going to flip your gourd it generally means (in the colloquial) that a person is going to be upset, fired up, or astonished. When my husband uses this phrase, it might mean that he expects me to go out to the garden, find a gourd, and flip it over. I never know.
“Why? Why am I going to flip my gourd?”
“I just got my yearly work review. It seems that one of my strengths is communication,” he said.
“Excuse me, I need to go and find a gourd and flip it over,” I said.
Excellent communication—this from a man that I have to ask every single week, when the taxi drops him off at our front door, “So, did you see Sissy Spacek, Captain Kirk, any ex-presidents, wrestlers, sports figures, members of the twelve apostles, possible terrorists, rampaging children, or people that we know or are related to at the airport?”
Because, if I don’t ask, he will not tell me!!!
No, that’s not fair. He will tell me, SIX MONTHS LATER.
“Oh by the way, last year, I saw the actress that played a Ferengi on Deep Space Nine. In fact, she sat next to me on my flight to Fill-In-The-Blank. We chatted.”
I blame Marriott—the hotel, not the guy. Sherwood is now working in Detroit, Michigan for OnStar, owned by General Motors. The Marriott hotel is INSIDE the corporate complex—in a tower. Sherwood is staying in the highest room in the tallest tower.
His room is on the seventieth (as in 70th) floor. There is a mystical place in the hotel called the concierge lounge where food magically appears and dishes are washed by elves. The beds are made by hordes of hobbits and the floors vacuumed by a myriad of fairies. Food, goods, and services appear as if by magic in my husband’s life without the give and take of actual human speech, and then he goes to work where he uses up all his communication words.
I was describing to Staff Sergeant Zern, in Iraq, his father’s new hotel room.
“ . . . there’s a conference table in his room that seats twenty, two bathrooms, a bedroom, and a kitchen. Did I mention he’s staying in the Governor’s suite and his room has 1400 square feet?” I explained to SSG Zern.
“Mom, I live in a shipping container.”
“What did you say?”
“A shipping container. They call them Connex Housing Units—CHU’S. They cut two holes for windows and a hole for a door.”
My granddaughter overheard me say CHU’S and thought I said shoes, and now she thinks that Uncle Aric lives in a shoe in the desert.
“Wow, but the real question is, have you seen Sissy Spacek lately, and if you had, would you tell me?”
I asked my husband what his Sunday school lesson was about this coming Sunday and he said, “Whom the Lord loveth, he chases.”
“I think the word is chastens not chases.”
“That’s what I said. Whom the Lord loveth, he chases.”
I sighed and said, “Hey, have you heard? Aric is living in a shoe in the desert? We should send him a gourd to flip.”
Have a magical week, filled with words that make you laugh and people that you make you smile.
Linda (Good to Gourd) Zern
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