Hey Y'all?
Are you a Southern gentleman? I say y'all all the time. I'm sure that fits in with Rob and PJ's image of the backwoods country bumpkin'
That is such a loverly image first thing in the morning. Thanks for sharing.
Luckily I don't have a weak stomach (kind of a no no in my profession)
I don't think I'd completely qualify as a gentleman.
Pros:
I do open & hold doors for others.
I do say 'please' and 'thank you'.
I do nod and/or say "hi" to people as I pass by (depends on where I'm at).
Cons:
I do occasionally say curse words in the presence of ladies.
I do occasionally tell jokes or say things that cause people to force liquid through their nostrils.
I do point and laugh when that happens.
You had asked about my trip to D.C. a few pages back? It was a lot of fun, but very tiring. It was much as I thought it would be - very hectic pace. For example, we had exactly 1-1/4 hour to eat and tour the National Air & Space Museum - that one museum is an easy 5-6 hour to get most of the stuff looked at. We ate pretty quickly (McDonalds right there in the building) and we had just over 45 minutes to walk around. At the National Zoo we had an hour scheduled. That was pretty much how the whole thing went. We saw a whole lot, but we never stayed in one place too long.
The worst things that happened:
Our first evening, at dinner - Pentagon City mall food court.
Very crowded mall. A group of six 7th & 8th Grade girls split from their chaperones (I was a chaperone to a group of five boys - so it wasn't me) to go shopping. The mall is 4 or 5 stories - it took 10 chaperones 45 minutes to find all of the girls while the rest of the kids sat in the buses. We had a very late-night chaperone meeting that night to discuss how not to have that happen again (basically they split that group of girls and mixed them with other groups).
The next night at the Vietnam Memorial, one of my kids split from me for about 2 minutes, but he was still with a larger group of kids from our school.
On the way home, I wandered into the ladies' restroom at the restaurant we stopped at. It was drizzly, late afternoon and I had been catnapping (along with most of the bus). I was sitting toward the front of the bus and I can walk fast when I need to (I really had to pee). So I was the first from our bus into the restaurant. I really had to pee. It was a Hardees, and if you've eaten at one Hardees you've eaten at them all. I don't think I ever looked up from the floor as I walked. Went through the door, did my business (Hmmm - no urinals? I'll just use a toilet...), washed my hands, and opened the door. To the flash of paparazzi-style flashbulbs. So I posed for a bunch of photos, pointing at the women's toilet sign, dopey grin on my face... Oh well, at least it'll help a bunch of kids remember how much fun the trip was. And if that's the dumbest thing I do this week - that'll be fine.
The coolest things?
Changing of the Guard at the Tombs of the Unknowns (Arlington Cemetery - all of the kids were quiet and reverential!). The Holocaust Museum (not enough time). Air & Space (not enough time). World War 2 Memorial (enough time, and it was dusk so lots of good pictures). National Cathedral (enough time, and tons of photos). Library of Congress (not enough time). The top of the Washington Monument (last time I was in DC it was being renovated).
We also had a dinner theater the last night. We drove and drove - turns out the dinner theater (Toby's) was in southwest Baltimore (Columbia MD). The play that night was a musical "George M." - about the life of George M. Cowen - Vaudevillian star and (arguably) the man behind modern Broadway - he wrote "Yankee Doodle Dandy", "Over There", and "Give My Regards to Broadway", among others. A bunch of the kids slept through the second act, and I admit I nodded off a couple of times. I'd like to go back - it was fun.
U. I was only responding to the people who had posted on the last page or so. Forgive me.
Neither of the other trip reports were this freakin' hard to write - they just shot out of me like the proverbial guano from the gander. I know, I know, an author hones his craft...
you go girl.
