Real Conversations with Mom: Gardening

Mom:  "Listen!  If you don't do what I tell you, your ass is grass, and I am the lawnmower!"

Me:  "Mom!  Where did you hear that?"

Mom:  "I've known it for a long time.  A long, long time."

Me:  "Fine, well, could you carry this folder inside while I get the bags?"

Mom:  "I don't know.  That might be too heavy for me.  I am delicate, you know."

Me:  "The sarcasm is running pretty thick today."

Mom:  "Vroom-vroom!  Vroom-vroom!"

Me:  "What?"

Mom:  "Vroom-vroom!  I am the lawnmower, and don't you forget it!"

The Office Door

Hello, beloved readers!  Today, I must confess, I have gotten a bit out of hand.  You know how sometimes you have a good idea, one that is slightly funny or witty, but which, once you get it going, you find yourself unable to stop until you swerve into a fast lane of ridiculousness that overwhelms your sense of self preservation, dignity and good sense?

Okay, well, it happens to me all the time.

For example, I am teaching an independent study this fall on Old English (no, not Shakespeare.  No, not Chaucer.  Never mind.  If you want to know, you can take the class), and, unfortunately, my dedicated and brilliant students kept getting interrupted by people wandering into my office.   So the solution we came up with was to hang a little sign on my office door.  Voilà!

Of course, once I had such a sign, and I saw that it was reversible, I had to add something to the, well, reverse:

But there's more!  You see, these lovely door signs came in a package of eight, so, of course, I had to fill them out with increasingly stranger and more inappropriate messages.  I tried to stop.  I really did.  But I just couldn't.  Please don't judge me.

Worlds Collide

Hello, delightful readers!  Today was an unusual day, for I find myself in a quandary, a confusing confluence of events, and I need your help.

In preparing for class today, I noticed these lines from a 15th century Middle English romance about King Arthur (I have translated them for you, good readers, as some of you, sadly, do not read of the Middle English):

"Sir Perceval and Sir Gawain;
Sir Gaheris and Sir Agravain;
And Sir Lancelot du Lake;
Sir Kay and Sir Yvain
(who could fight well on the field
and undertake battles!)
King Ban and King Bors
(who had a such a great reputation
that men never saw their like)
Sir Galafré and Sir Launfal,
About whom a noble tale
awakens for us!"

Now, some of you, loyal readers, are thinking, "Okay, so what?  Nothing actually happens in those lines.  It's just a list of knights."  But others of you, those who bear the weight of heavy nerdosity, are thinking, "Wait!  Wait!  Sir who?!"

To which I respond, "Sir Galafré, that's who!  Or, possibly, Who!"

And now, many of you are thinking, "I don't get it.  What is this post about?  Can't we hear more about your mom? I like those posts."  But others, those dearest to my heart, are standing up and shouting, "?!?!"

And indeed, those who are speechlessly shouting in punctuation, you are my people.  For the rest of you, let me explain:  Galafré--or, in Modern English, Gallifrey, is the home planet of the Time Lords.

Moreover, when I first read this romance, precious readers, generally referred to as Sir Launfal, for my oral examinations in grad school, I read it repeatedly, and I read it well.   And yet, I have no memory of this Sir Gallifrey.  And why do I have no memory of him?  Is it because I am getting old and forgetting those things I once knew?  Or...is it because a certain Man with a Blue Box, not satisfied with his role as Merlin (see "Battlefield," Season 26) also became, between the time I got my Ph.D. and now, a knight of the round table?!

Now, I know what you're thinking, beloved readers.  You're thinking, "But nay!  If such a thing had happened, your memories would have been altered, just as the text of yon medieval romance was altered."  And, yes, they should have been!  So why, why have my memories of an alternate version of the romance with no Sir Gallifrey remained intact?  There can be only one conclusion.

At some point in my future, I too will enter the Blue Box, journey to the time of Arthur and meet this Sir Gallifrey, therefore becoming a part of what is clearly a fixed point in time.

So from now on, you may call me Sir Natalie, Knight of the Decorated Pots.