Bananas Never Survive a Roadtrip

Today is Real Estate Dad’s birthday. I thought about not saying anything until 10 minutes to midnight like he did to me last year, but I decided not to. I mean, I don’t want anyone to think I hold a grudge or anything. Besides, he looked so good when he got ready for a meeting today that I just had to hug him.

This week was the elementary school’s book fair. EEEEEEE I love book fairs! I used to love getting those flimsy little newspaper magazines from the Scholastic Book peoples. Clifford, Miffy, Hello Cat You Need a Hat – all the good classics still exist in our house today came from that book newspaper.

I know. You want to know why I still have books from 40 years ago. Even if you didn’t want to know, I’m telling you anyway. My parents? They don’t throw anything away. Like, at all. To this day, every phone call that comes FROM their house or any visit TO their house inevitably carries with it, some version of “I was cleaning out some closets and I found (insert piece of garbage) do you want me to save it for you?” My answer is always no, but that doesn’t stop them from dumping it on me when I visit. Now when I’m saying goodbye to them at the end of a visit, I keep my hands in my pockets so they can’t hand me anything.

This hoarding thing isn’t new. The aroma of my entire childhood is eau de rotting bananas. Every time we left on a vacation there would be the last-minute-grab of things that wouldn’t keep until we got home. We all know that bananas are really bad travel companions. That didn’t stop my parents from trying. We would leave our house, get on 95 south and in 20 minutes the banana rot could overpower the burning smell of the Bronx, circa 1979.

The gorgeous landscape of the Bronx in the late 1970’s

The gorgeous landscape of the Bronx in the late 1970’s

Now that we got that whole “descended from hoarders” piece out of the way, let’s move on to the book fair. I volunteered for a shift every day because I’m a book nerd. I love reading. I miss reading. I don’t get to do it as much as I would like to because, houses need to get sold, kids need to be raised, corgis have to be walked, other corgis have to be rescued, our house needs to be cleaned, yadda yadda yadda.

I have to say I did pretty well in my customer service role. Good thing the last day was indeed the last day because I started to crash. I didn’t even shower for my last shift and I didn’t bother to change out oOffspring T-Shirt. The one with the smoking skeleton head.

Ugh…..of course some kid said something to me. OF COURSE. In front of his dad too, who didn’t look like he was anyone who would appreciate the Offspring.

“Why is that skeleton smoking? That doesn’t even make sense. Why would he have a cigarette in his mouth?”

I could not ring that book up fast enough to get Chatty Charlie the hell out of there.

Then the security guard, who was milling around with friends, wandered over to the book fair and tapped a parent on the shoulder to say, “You didn’t sign in.” This shit again.

The point of signing in is so that they have your face on camera. I get that. But the school was a complete melee. For anyone to have any sort of false sense of security that the guard is going to be able to stop a real threat is comical. I should be nice because last week she appeared to give one tenth of one shit about my grandmother’s ring that Chubs defiantly brought to school and promptly lost. But she could be playing me.

The piece de la resistance was a Harry Potter Cookbook. This thing sold out like hotcakes and there was one left which a teacher had added to their wishlist pile. Someone wanted to buy it and it was late. Since no one had bought the book for said teacher, the book fair lead was going to let her buy it.

So, picture this. We have a line that’s got about 10 people in it, and a woman flipping through a cookbook trying to decide if she wanted to buy it. I have everything else rung up and ran her card and was waiting to see if she wanted this cookbook. I see the line getting antsy and I asked her to just step over so I could grab the next person. She clearly got mad and said “Never mind, I’ll just buy it on Amazon.” Yowsers. I didn’t think it was wrong to ask her to step aside to look at the book, and if she wanted it we could have rung her up real fast but yeesh. She said something about not having enough time to look through it and yelled the Amazon dig again.

Lady, you don’t have to threaten me with Amazon. I’m a full on Ama-whore. There ain’t nothing Amazon is selling that I ain’t buying. Like where would you ever be able to get something like this? (Don’t forget to read the comments – that’s where the gold is.)

 

Yes, but does it have a thermometer?

Yes, but does it have a thermometer?

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