Saturday Stories

My wife's old college friend Cat came down to spend Saturday with us. Naturally, I have stories.

Words, words, words

During lunch, Cat had a "forgotten noun" moment. This is when you're telling a story and forget a word. Then you grope madly for the word while feeling like a dolt. I do this far more often than I would care to admit.

She was talking about Tulsa's famous "Buried Car". "Why would they bury a car under the ... uh... the... thing where... uh..."

"Water table?", I suggested.

"Yes! That!", Cat shouted, with a sigh.

Later, I had a similar "forgotten noun" moment and my wife supplied the word I needed. Then, she had one and Cat came to the rescue. This happened to us at least 5 times during the conversation.

"You know," I said, "between the three of us we have just enough vocabulary for one person."

Arcade?

At the mall, Cat and my wife decided to check out the women's shoe section of a department store. This is like Kryptonite to most of us males, so I politely excused myself.

I discovered that the Promenade mall in Tulsa has the absolute lamest arcade I have ever seen. How do I define lame? It had:

- 4 video games, all of which were generic "Point Plastic Gun at Screen and Shoot" types from at least a decade ago.

- 2 of those "claw" machines, where a metal claw drops down into a bin of toys and fails to collect anything.

- 1 "Pink Panther" teeter-totter thing that looked like it could hold about 12 pounds worth of kid.

- 0 Customers.

Card Game

Saturday evening, we had a card game goin' with us, Cat, Scruffy and Genie. It's one of those games where you move from seat to seat depending on who won the last round. I spent a lot of time in the loser's seat that night.

Then, after one particular round, I finished third instead of last! I got to move up to a more comfy chair. Cat had to move down to the loser's chair.

"Well, at least you kept this seat warm for me," she quipped.

"Don't ask how." I replied.

It was some time before regular activities could be resumed. In addition to the gut-wrenching laughter, Genie's eyes were bugged out to an unnatural degree and Cat was making snorting noises. 'Twas fun.