A Drive-By Fruiting

Drove into DC Sunday night to meet up with some friends for dinner and as we took the Connecticut Avenue exit, I was hit with a wave of nostalgia as we drove by Aunt Lil's street. But not before getting hit with a wave of nausea as we saw a presumably homeless man delicately putting a lit cigarette to the big toe of his left leg which was bent up towards his face as if it were made of rubber. Did you see the second Harry Potter movie where he broke his arm and the put the wrong spell on it so that it was flopping all around with no bones in it? This was no prosthetic leg, but I'd venture to say that he had no kneecap or shin bone whatsoever. Guh-ross.

I don't have an Aunt Lil per se, the woman I am speaking of is my first wife's aunt. This will probably be the first of a series of posts about this "unique" woman as the stories just wrote themselves every time I was in her presence.

This particular occasion was "Cousins Day", a day between Christmas and New Year's when my ex, her sisters and their two younger cousins went down to Silver Spring to endure a day with Aunt Lil, a large, excessively frugal woman who complained frequently about her bad back, wore way too much lipstick and who on her best day is difficult, annoying and prickly. I tagged along for what sounded like a benign visit - going to the movies. 2 hours where you don't have to talk to her - should have been uneventful. Wrong. wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Silly me.

After meeting up at Lil's house for the obligatory "while you're here, would you mind doing x for me?" we decided to take 2 cars to Union Station to see some Steve Martin movie. I think it was Father of the Bride - pure crap, but when you went to visit Lil, you did or watched what Lil wanted to see or do.

In the spirit of the holiday season and in the name of back-handed charity, Lil decreed that we were going to give her (overripe) oranges and grapefruits to the homeless as this was a rather bitter winter if I recall correctly. Lil was driving in the lead car with a sister and the two young cousins who were probably 11 and 13 at the time. When we stopped at a traffic light by a small park in DC, there was a man laying on a bench a few feet from the street. I could see some commotion in the car ahead of us with some pointing and arm waving and head shaking. Apparently, Lil wanted the 11 year old to get of the car in traffic and hand some half rotten fruit to a potentially dangerous or passed out wino. There was much discussion and dissent in the lead car which led to Lil simply rolling down the window and yelling, "HEY YOU!" as she lobbed a flurry of discolored and lumpy grapefruit at the poor dude on the bench.

Green light. Go. Merry Christmas, man.

Cousins Day Part II: What happened at the Air and Space Museum when an adult in her late fifties decided to burst into song. Very, very loudly she sang it while leaning on me with all her weight. The song? The diarrhea song. Yes the one from 3rd grade. You remember it well.