Shortly before we turned off the highway, I told Jaime that I thought there were less MAGA signs in the rural part of the state than the last time we'd driven through.
"Fewer," he said.
The line between work and home has become way too blurred this year so we booked an Airbnb without wifi next to a small, private lake where we could teach Harper how to paddle board without embarrassing ourselves beyond the inherent humiliation of teaching your dog to paddle board.
After losing cell service, I began reading the thorough instructions our hosts had written us to Jamie from a screen shot. But even in my distracted navigator's role, I noticed the signs.
The first one posted on our cabin's dead end gravel road said, "We don't call 911."
They got progressively more or less threatening after that depending on your gun control views and relationship with the lord god.
The property owners' double wide was the last house on the road other than our slightly older trailer, and I was relieved to see no symbols of conviction on either except for an American flag on their front porch.
Our host and his beagle were waiting to greet us under a sign reading, "Welcome to Paradise." He was wearing an "America First" shirt. The beagle wasn't wearing anything. I was wearing one that said, "Bad things happen in Philadelphia."
I don't know if he got the reference, but I certainly got his.
The owner's real name started with a B, so I'll give him the completely random name Barack to protect his identity.
Barack thrust out his hand to shake Jaime's and told me I didn't have to wear a mask. I continued wearing a mask. He'd come by to collect some chicken eggs, which was a huge selling point for us. We don't eat eggs at home, but they are an integral part of the Spanish tortilla Jaime had been craving.
We decided the chickens wouldn't mind if we ate their eggs before we met them, but the geese were a different story. We hadn't known about the geese.
Barack told us the birds' back story. It was genuinely romantic, and Jaime decided he wanted to try a goose egg. I sent him out to ask our host because the bigger eggs weren't a part of the deal. The menfolk quickly found themselves at an impasse and asked me to come settle the score.
Jaime learned that sure we could try the eggs, but they might have some premature goslings inside. Barack couldn't understand why Jaime was pooping his pants (his expression) over this, but I could. It was because we couldn't ask Mother Goose if it was okay with her.
I felt that if I laid several eggs a week with the goose I loved, I would not mind if someone ate some of our babies. Jaime accepted my feelings and we decided to sacrifice the potential life for a novel experience that we felt could bring us closer to understanding our place in the universe.
Barack was thoroughly confused at this point, but he collected two eggs and rinsed them off in the spigot.
To our relief, there were no overrated but universally handsome goslings in our eggs. We ate well then took Harper for a paddle.
No comments:
Post a Comment