Bath Goo.

If I ever-- EV. ER.-- tell you that I am going on "vacation" with my mother EVER again, you are to immediately correct me. Here is an example of a typical "conversation" between her and my dad. I typed it verbatim, whilst on said "vacation," as she was telling my Dad about our shopping trip together.

Mom is telling dad about her purchases at my favorite bath store in town. Forthwith, the transcript:

“I got this soap." (Pulls soap out of bag.)

"THIS IS NOT THE SOAP THAT I GOT! What is this???
Maybe he gave me the wrong thing of soap!!!"

(Dismissively tosses $14 soap aside.)

"Then I got this for Aidan. It’s called ‘bath goo.’ ‘B...a...t....h g...o...o....’ And it’s got a duck in it. I could give it to Zachary too, either one of them would like it… They had one with a frog in it, but I know Aidan is afraid of frogs… I THOUGHT it was a dinosaur. And then he gave me a whole buncha samples. And he gave ‘em to her, too. I spent more than HER. But I never treat myself. It’s all probably worth two dollars.

"I got THIS to give to the next door neighbors for watering the driveway. We’ll have to go back and make sure they did it. Wildblueberry MAINE pancake mix, MAINE syrup, and MAINE beach plum jelly and MAINE red raspberry jam. It was 20 dollars, that’s enough, right? So that’s a nice present. A nice thank you."

Dad: Can we give something to Scott, too?

(Shrieking) WHY???? What did Scott do?


Dad: (Whispers something to Mom, then) Can we just give him a jar of jam?


NOOOOOOO!!!!!!! Those preserves cost $3!!!!!!!!! SCOTT???? I thought you said Jimmie!! SCOTT!?? You want me to give SCOTT a $3 thing of JAM???? NO!!!!!! I thought you said Jimmie! I thought, 'Whadcha ask Jimmie for?' Joan used to ask us to watch HER house and WE never watched it, so I bet he didn’t watch our house. So, he’s not getting anything. Besides, didn’t we watch HIS house when he was away? He didn’t get us anything. Get him a beer. The two of you have more beer together than anyone I know.

Everybody was eating ice cream. EVERYBODY. I just had a salad. They put TURKEY on a whole side of it. Not lunch turkey, but TURKEY, big chunks of it. I HATE turkey, so I didn’t eat it and Megan got an enormous hamburger cheeseburger and french fries that looked wonderful but she didn’t eat them.

Of course, we had to change trolleys. But we were fortunate because we were on the wrong side of the road for the trolley and then we saw the trolley on the other side of the road and we got on. Then we had to change trolleys. And that second trolley came right away, too. All the restaurants were packed but the restaurant we were in. The place WE went to had no people at all. They had some kind of African guys workin’ there who didn’t know too much English as the waiters. They were nice, though.

Well, you wouldn’t have liked what we did anyway…. We went to a couple of restaurants and looked at their menus… on the bus some of the people had the stinkiest awfulest perfume you would ever want in the world. One lady had on diamonds on her right hand… she had the most beauuuuuuuuuuuuuutiful diamond, and I wanted to see what was on her left hand, so I wanted to sit [behind her on the trolley] so I could see, and SHE said, 'I won’t sit there' and I said WHY??? And SHE said 'because that woman’s perfume smells awful' and then she sat in the back of the bus holding her nose like this.

My salad, goin’ down to the bottom, I kept finding stuff and I was so afraid I’d find some celery but there wasn’t any. There wasn’t any celery. [Note: celery would be a problem because I hate it.]

It cost a dollar to go here and then a dollar and a half to go from that busstop to the next.It’s supposed to rain. It was supposed to rain today, too, though, and it didn't.You know the next vacation we should do? We should go to the hotel above the casino--where was it that we stopped? Rolling Stones…. Rolling Stones Casino. We could eat at the expensive restaurants there…. And you’d get a good bed to sleep in and maybe we’d win a couple free meals. Not on the nickel slots. But you get rambunctious and go over to the quarter slots.

Okay. That’s what well do.