(man fills large coffee cup and sits down at a table next to the window. he takes out his cell phone.)
man: hi, hi there! yes…yes, I just got out of prison yesterday. yes…
now, I know this really isn’t that strange. I do concede that as a conversation opener, it’s a doozy. but did this man actually just get out of prison? was he joking, using “prison” as a metaphor for some other place or situation that he found unpleasant or confining? and would it have been inappropriate for me to ask him if he had actually just gotten out of prison?
my grandparents, miles and agnes, passed away about two years ago.
they lived in an old white house with black shutters on a practically impassable dead end street, one house away from a large, rambling graveyard. they had a doormat on the cement stairs that read “one nice person and an old grouch live here.” it suited them remarkably well. my grandfather renovated the house in the late 1960s/early 1970s to make it extremely stylish for the time: drop ceilings; wood-paneled walls; thick yellow and green shag carpet; absolutely hideous tan wallpaper with urns and leather-bound books on it; and best of all, styrofoam rafters (painted brown and carved to look like wood) in the kitchen to give it that oh-so-rustic appearance. there was a closet-turned-bathroom under the stairs, barely big enough to turn around in, and a humongous television console in the living room.
the house always smelled like cleaning products and cigars, which my grandfather was fond of smoking in the back yard, shirtless. he’d make one cigar last all day sometimes, sucking on the stub of it while he mowed the lawn or painted the garage, the garage where my father spray-painted his initials–BOG–in the early 1980s before I was born. the stairs to the second floor were steep steep steep, and my grandmother fell down them once in the dark and broke both her arms. the stairs to the basement were equally as steep, leading to an almost labyrinthine, cement-floored cellar where they kept another tools and that stray cat they took in (“it”) and a refrigerator stocked with ice cream and assorted meats.
I remember riding my big wheel there, and watching scooby-doo with my grandfather–his favorite cartoon, and he really liked cartoons–while my parents were at work during the summer. my grandfather would fall asleep every other minute but say he was just “resting his eyes,” and my grandmother would yell at him to wake up and then give me jello with cool whip. and I remember dreading my visits with them towards the end of their lives.
and now we’ve painted the wood paneling, cleaned up the carpets, and sold many of their things. we’ve found my father’s stuffed rabbit and g.i. joes in the closet and laughed until we wet ourselves. and now we’ve passed on their home to a growing family.
yes, that is a union soldier about to be devoured by a tyrannosaurus rex.
this weekend, I went to dinosaur kingdom in natural bridge, virginia, a weird, alternate universe where the union army has tried to harness the power of the mighty dinosaurs and failed miserably. the “kingdom” is picturesquely situated along a wooded path, the sylvan glen echoing with the angry growls of dinosaurs set to a soundtrack much like the one my mother played one halloween.
what. the. hell.
then of course there was the mighty two-headed tortoise, taunting one soldier by sipping from his canteen…
…and of course the terrible moment when a rogue velociraptor stole the gettysburg address from abraham lincoln.
I can’t tell how lincoln feels here. is he angry? sad? suffering from writer’s block? helplessly bullied by a prehistoric pest?
while in natural bridge, we also stopped at foamhenge, which was created by the same man who started the dinosaur park.
BEHOLD ITS MAGISTERIAL GLORY!
apparently, this is was made in the same dimensions as the actual stonehenge, and it’s probably the closest I’ll ever get to seeing the real thing. my only regret is that I forgot my druid robe.
except that katie-rose and I saw a really awesome shoe exhibition at the 
