What a Fun Day

This is an excerpt from an older blog from 2009:

My day off today was…interesting. At 4am I was awakened by six young dogs howling and barking at the side door. Donning a sweatshirt and my sweatpants, I went outside with Samantha in the pouring deluge to find out why they weren’t safely in their pen. The rain had flooded them out so bad, that they bent the wire and crawled through to get to higher and dryer ground. It was dark out so I pulled the car around to shine the headlights on the fence as I repaired it. I had nowhere else to put the pups, so I put them back in the pen and planned to wait until it got light. 10 minutes later, they were back out. I went out again with the headlights and pieces of fencing and made another repair. At about 6:45, I was able to see what I was doing without the aid of artificial light, and surveyed the damage.

The entire area was flooded. There was a torrent of water running in front of the chicken house and another running along side the carport. I waded my way through the water to the chicken house and brought back two pallets and a sheet of plywood. I made them a platform that rose above the mud and water and covered it with hay and dry blankets. They were finally content and so was I. After a couple of big scoops of dog food, they went to sleep, and so did I.

In the morning, after a hot bath and some Malt-O-Meal, we all headed down to Woodstock to go to Target, then on to Kennesaw University so Tim could by his books for school. Before stopping at the bursar’s office, he had to suddenly use the bathroom. So he went into the Social Sciences building as I waited outside. He came out after a couple of minutes, holding his thumb in an awkward fashion. He had something unpleasant stuck on it, and the water was turned off. I tried to get him to wash it off in a puddle, but he insisted on using the bathroom in another building. He eventually made it to the bursar’s office then on to the bookstore where he picked up his class outlines and his books. One of his requirements to read was the “Communist Manifesto” by Karl Marx. The whole time he kept on smelling his thumb.

He asked me if I knew who Karl Marx was; I told him that he was the fifth Marx Brother. The other four didn’t think that his ideas were very funny, so they kicked him out of the group and he went into politics.

“The Marx Brothers?” He asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “Groucho, Harpo, Chico, Zeppo and Karl.”

“Karl Marx was a Marx Brother?” he asked.

“I’m sure he was.” I replied. “Lenin read all about him during a Beatles concert. Stalin was there, too.”

“Really?” He asked.

“Lenin and Stalin were the only ones in their families that graduated college, so they (Russia) named cities after them, Leningrad and Stalingrad.”

‘You’re full of crap, Dad!”

Albeit I may be, it was still fun messing with his head.

_{Copyright 2009/2011 By Del Banks}