Earlier today, the soldier and I were making plans to meet for the weekend.
“So New Mexico again, you think?” he asked.
“No, looks like Texas. Amarillo, Texas is my best guess at the moment.:
“Oh. Yellow.”
“Yellow?”
“Amarillo. That’s how you say yellow in Spanish.”
“Well I know what that means. Malaria, Texas here we come!”
But 2 hours later our plans fell through. It does not appear we will see each other this weekend so know we’re both snotty and edgy. We were doing our training-up stuff which we are good at these days, but it’s still tedious. He must have sensed my irritability.
“You okay, P. How are you feeling?”
I sighed. “Well I’m here in my body. Yep, I am here.”
“Oh.”
“What? That’s not a good answer?”
“Yeah, it’s a good answer. It’s good enough,” he said.
“Good enough?”
‘It’s as good as the other answer you gave me.”
“What answer?”
“Well, when we were kids I asked you why you couldn’t come to Virginia with me to see my family and you told me it was because Tucson is an Estes home town. This answer is about like that one.”
“That was my explanation for not going home with you?”
“Yep. Come to Virginia. No. Why not? Because Tucson is an Estes home town. That’s what you said and I have not forgotten that my whole life.”
I shook my head.
“Tucson is an Estes home town” was a jingle from a commercial at the time. I can remember telling him that like it was yesterday. My attitude was like, “Any other questions, brainiac?” Gah.
Does it ever occur to you the things you say may stay with someone for a lifetime?
Me neither. But other’s words stay with me forever.
Yes, f**k, I do!!! Then again, I have a lot of siblings and you know how they are, they’ll remind you of the time you yelled for your mom to come “help you” when you were in potty training, for god’s sake!
Well, here’s hoping! And here’s hoping they’re the words you’d want remembered!
My daughter had to submit ‘words of wisdom’ from a parent for the school magazine and her pearl of wisdom – from my mouth – was “That bath won’t run itself!”
Mortifying!
Cx
Carrie – lol.
Better neutral than bad, though!
Yeah – I guess 🙂
But I say so many, more wise things to them. They pick the banal ones??
I see it most definitely in my kids, especially my son, who side-parents his sister when he thinks I’m not listening. But I also hear my words come from my BFF, usually in a similar situation to the one when I gave them to her in the first place. 🙂 And I have older friends who remind me all the time of specific things I say all the time. It’s nice.
People throw my words back to me all the time! Like the time I described a fetus as a parasite (thanks, Dr. Cotez, for the vindication) and silly stuff I said as a child (“I’ll do it MESELF, me said!” said the Leo sun, Aquarius moon toddler. 🙂 ). But, thankfully, most of the stuff people remember me saying isn’t mortifying. And as long as they get it ~right~ I don’t mind. Misquote me, though, and you’ve got an argument on your hands (Leo Merc conjunct Sun and Saturn)!
Yep. I put the words my lovers tell me in my poems and novels.