Shanamadele’s Coffee Break
Pet Peeve #162Archive for Once a Johnnie
Living vicariously
Once again, Johnnies rule!
This, impossibly, was the 25th year of the croquet match.� When I saw my first match as a first-year student in 1986, it was just the fourth ever. There were no uniforms. The Freshman choir did not sing. Stuff just happened.� Like, I think some Johnnies tarred and feathered a statue of the Academy’s mascot my first year.� And I vaguely remember helping make some paper-mache marionettes my senior year.� Or something.� It’s all very vague.
I should dig out a very cute picture of Pumpkin sitting on the lawn watching the croquet match when he was a first-year student.� Okay, not cute. Sexy.� I thought it was a very sexy picture of Pumpkin.� It is, in fact, an image I can see when I close my eyes because I looked at it so frequently the year-plus between my sophomore year and my senior year when we apart while I went off to Santa Fe.
Now, it’s an institution.
Over the river and through the clouds
Last week, we went to grandma’s. (Grandpa lives there, too, but it feels like grandma’s.)
Butternut did great! He got hungry while we were waiting for the flight to depart Portland. After we fed him, we changed him, per normal operating proceedure. Then, he made the poopy face. So, we changed him again. It was great timing. We boarded the plane shortly thereafter, confident that we were done with poopy diapers for the rest of the day. Because, as we found out on the ride back, you do not want to change a poopy diaper on the plane if you can help it.
He slept through most of his flights and was adorably awake during our trips through the airport. We were prepared with bottles for him to suck down to help with the air pressure changes during take-offs and landings. The other passengers remarked at how quiet he was during the flights.
People in airports are very friendly when you have a baby. They also have opinions. “Isn’t he a little young to be traveling?”
The grandparents, not surprisingly, adored him. They were celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary, and Butternut upstaged them, I’m afraid. The first thing out of many of the guests’ mouths was, “where’s that baby?” Despite all of the extra attention and adoration, we could not find anyone who was willing to take the night shift.
On the way home, a man in the Minneapolis airport saw Pumpkin’s St. John’s College sweatshirt and gave us a full report on our alma mater’s shut-out victory over Navy in croquet. Hoody hoo!
