fatdavid8

While heading to the airport to return from our vacation trip to Mexico, MausFrau (my tiny wife who lives in a shoe) and I shared a taxi-van with a family from Cleveland. I had a bit of the sort of desultory and dispirited chit-chat that one tends to have with strangers at the end of a trip with the father of the family:

Cincinnatus: So, where are you heading back to?

FatD: To (undisclosed location in the corn). How about yourself?

Cincinnatus: Back to Cleveland. I'm not looking forward to going back to the darned snow, let me tell you. {Cincinnatus loses himself in thoughts of impending snow}

FatD: Cleveland? Don't they have a university there? Case Western Reserve, maybe?

MausFrau: Yes.

Cincinnatus: What? Oh, yeah.

FatD: I think my wife had a job interview there a few years back.

MausFrau: I did. They have a lovely campus.

Cincinnatus {still pensively pondering his return to the hell that is snow}: Oh. Really?

FatD: She couldn't take the job, though, because they've got one of those signs at the edge of campus, you knowthe kind that say, "You must be taller than this sign to work here". {I place my hand about head-high} So, obviously, she couldn't get in.

{At this point, MausFrau begins furiously punching me in the shoulder with her very small, but very mighty, fists, but Cincinnatus doesn't seem to notice}

Cincinnatus {still apparently snowblind}: Oh. Really? That's too bad.


So, on the whole, I'd say the trip to Mexico was totally worth it just for the interesting people we met and for the great conversations we had with them.