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You have to give my wife credit for many things, but one of them should be sticking around for these 33 years together and not jumping ship.
Ann Marie and I recently spent a little more than two hours checking out the Amish stores and produce stands along Kettle Road in Blair County, and it's amazing sometimes that she doesn't choke me when she tells me something that I have never heard of before.
For instance, I did not know there was a flower called Impatiens, I never heard of a plant called "A Wandering Jew," and I did not know you could pull a wheat stalk out of the ground, pull the seeds off the top and eat them.
Of course, because of the world we live in, it is no longer referred to as "A Wandering Jew" because if someone is offended, you have to change things, and according to the Internet, alternative names like "Wandering Dude" is used, or you can refer to it by its scientific name, Tradescantia. You know how hard it is to come up with a pun or a bad dad joke using Tradescantia? Hard!
This takes me back to my lead paragraph ... because while she was telling me about the origins of the aforementioned flower, plant, etc., all I kept thinking about were puns and bad dad jokes. If it was driving her nuts, she does a great job of hiding it, but I will keep after her until she acknowledges the badness of my humor.
For instance:
– "Ann Marie, did you find the Impatiens in the greenhouse yet because I am tired of waiting?" And then you sell the joke by stomping off toward the car. But only Mel Brooks gets me ... or at least I think he would if we could meet. He is still alive. Just turned 99 last month.
– "Ann Marie, there are three greenhouses out back. Do you think it will be hard to find which one 'The Wandering Jew' will be in?"
And I am working for a laugh that I can hear because sometimes a smile is not enough. Maybe she is being polite. Maybe she actually likes it. Maybe she is trying not to spit on me.
The wheat stalk thing just floored me because we stopped on this back road, put the car in park, and then she got out and walked to this field, pulled a stalk out of the ground and brought it back to the car.
She pulled off the top, which looked like some giant bug, pulled out the seeds, showed them to me and then munched on a few of the kernels.
Of course, she was explaining what everything was, but all I wanted to do was sing the song "The Seeds Of Love" by Tears For Fears to her. If my friend Fuzz Frazier is reading this, he gets me.
But again, with me being me, two things crossed my mind as she was doing the whole wheat thing:
– She may be nuts with this whole back-to-nature talk.
– Or maybe she is like one of those Hee-Haw Honeys from the old TV show who would sit on the porch lazily and chew on wheat stalks. Hmmmm!
But I digress.
The latest "Word Search" nominee was the term "Swamp A$$," which I am not sure I am even allowed to spell in print, so that's why we're going with the dollar signs. Never heard the "Swamp" thing before.
My son, Vincent, comes home from helping his Uncle Mike on his farm. Two hours in the sun and heat, with blue jeans on, left huge sweat marks on his pants. My wife referred to his "Swamp A$$." I looked at her befuddled and asked, where did that come from?
"You never heard that used before," she asked.
The woman of my dreams then starts to explain the origin of the word because, well, she's a teacher who can really never take the summer off if it involves hanging out with me. I really tried to listen, but I kept thinking about a bad-dad joke retort like "I was afraid to become the butt of her jokes" should she tell someone about me not knowing what it meant.
My kids had heard the "Swamp" thing before. My friends at work, too, except for reporter Bill Kibler, who, like me, was new to the word. Bill is way smarter than me and if he never heard of it, then all was not lost.
Finally, I told my wife that yes, we did sweat growing up on Third Avenue in Altoona, and yes, we did things around the house during the summer. But the only thing we called it was "Jeannie Franco Won't Turn On The AC Because We Don't Need The AC A$$."
Now that is something I've heard before!