....."is the Place to Be"
I found myself riding home from work this evening with a friend of mine, I should say an old friend of mine probably. My car had decided that yesterday was as good a time as any to deliver its latest round of negative karma to me in the form of total engine failure on a busy highway in Asheville (another story altogether), and at any rate that’s why my buddy and I were sharing a ride.
It’s funny to me the broad range of purely ridiculous topics that Jeff and I so often find ourselves discussing, also particularly disturbing, in retrospect mind you, is the passionate quality of the debate on said discussed topics….. .For instance, somehow, don’t ask, the “discussion” began with the topic of people talking on their cellphones while driving and thereby recklessly endangering the lives of others with their irresponsible behavior. Reasonable discussion, responsible subject matter, adult oriented cautious-minded discourse……in a span of 4 or 5 minutes of highway driving, at an alarming rate of speed as I recall, (of course I only always notice this particular fact when I’m not the one driving!) we were in the middle of a debate as to how many people would be involved in this despicable behavior out of the next 10 cars that we passed (again, at Jeff’s normal alarming rate of speed). Taking our own responsible highway driving focus from the task at hand and redirecting said focus towards now trying to steal a glance into the drivers side windows of the cars that we passed (did I mention the “alarming rate of speed”?) in order to keep score of the # of reckless cellphone addicted drivers along our hurried path! In the course of our journey back to Black Mountain and while still keeping “score” we passed a narrow grassy median right next to the highway with what must have been literally 30 turkeys grazing on god only knows what. Our conversation changed directions immediately and without so much as a hiccup we were discussing the possibility of some pickup driving Swananoan hillbilly-type stopping there on the side of the highway to collect dinner for his inbred brood in the trailer park down in the holler. Could happen.
As we made our way off the main highway and began the last short leg of our journey veering (at a reduced rate of alarming speed) onto Old Highway70 through Swananoa/Black Mountain, the conversation took a hairpin curve and somehow arrived abruptly at a new but equally invigorating subject: “Green Acres“. All of a sudden the characters of Fred Ziffle (“Mr.“ for the less familiar) and Arnold, Mr. Haney, Eb, Mz. Douglas; the telephone that could only be accessed by climbing the pole, all of that useless trivia nonsense that represented our “re-memory” of that long ago watched show re-surfaced for absolutely No Good Reason! With 5 minutes left to complete our trip we found that after what has to have easily been 25 years or better we still somehow remembered every word to every verse of that long since wrapped up show!…….I took an entire semester of Geometry in High School pretty much around the same time as I occasionally watched that less than intelligently stimulating show…………….I can remember every word of the Green Acres theme song………every word mind you…….. apparently I can even halfway sing it between gales of laughter at the absurdity of my uncanny ability to be able to recall such wholly disuseful information……………….but, for the life of me, I could not at gunpoint begin to recall even one “theorem” from my time spent that semester at Page High!!!
It’s funny to me the broad range of purely ridiculous topics that Jeff and I so often find ourselves discussing, also particularly disturbing, in retrospect mind you, is the passionate quality of the debate on said discussed topics….. .For instance, somehow, don’t ask, the “discussion” began with the topic of people talking on their cellphones while driving and thereby recklessly endangering the lives of others with their irresponsible behavior. Reasonable discussion, responsible subject matter, adult oriented cautious-minded discourse……in a span of 4 or 5 minutes of highway driving, at an alarming rate of speed as I recall, (of course I only always notice this particular fact when I’m not the one driving!) we were in the middle of a debate as to how many people would be involved in this despicable behavior out of the next 10 cars that we passed (again, at Jeff’s normal alarming rate of speed). Taking our own responsible highway driving focus from the task at hand and redirecting said focus towards now trying to steal a glance into the drivers side windows of the cars that we passed (did I mention the “alarming rate of speed”?) in order to keep score of the # of reckless cellphone addicted drivers along our hurried path! In the course of our journey back to Black Mountain and while still keeping “score” we passed a narrow grassy median right next to the highway with what must have been literally 30 turkeys grazing on god only knows what. Our conversation changed directions immediately and without so much as a hiccup we were discussing the possibility of some pickup driving Swananoan hillbilly-type stopping there on the side of the highway to collect dinner for his inbred brood in the trailer park down in the holler. Could happen.
As we made our way off the main highway and began the last short leg of our journey veering (at a reduced rate of alarming speed) onto Old Highway70 through Swananoa/Black Mountain, the conversation took a hairpin curve and somehow arrived abruptly at a new but equally invigorating subject: “Green Acres“. All of a sudden the characters of Fred Ziffle (“Mr.“ for the less familiar) and Arnold, Mr. Haney, Eb, Mz. Douglas; the telephone that could only be accessed by climbing the pole, all of that useless trivia nonsense that represented our “re-memory” of that long ago watched show re-surfaced for absolutely No Good Reason! With 5 minutes left to complete our trip we found that after what has to have easily been 25 years or better we still somehow remembered every word to every verse of that long since wrapped up show!…….I took an entire semester of Geometry in High School pretty much around the same time as I occasionally watched that less than intelligently stimulating show…………….I can remember every word of the Green Acres theme song………every word mind you…….. apparently I can even halfway sing it between gales of laughter at the absurdity of my uncanny ability to be able to recall such wholly disuseful information……………….but, for the life of me, I could not at gunpoint begin to recall even one “theorem” from my time spent that semester at Page High!!!
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