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2003-06-11 I have decided to do some globe-trotting with my family, so you will be without Not-A-Finger for nigh on three weeks. My plane leaves at six-thirty Friday morning. Now that I think about it, ten whole days of immediate family plus seven more days of Grandma and other choice extended family members in historic Williamsburg, Virginia is likely to render me deranged. (Who decided that it was historic? Virginia did. Tell me, when did we start listening to Virginia? For what is Virginia famous? What does Virginia have on its state quarters, a blackened lung?) There will be—count them—four babies along for the ride. That is so many babies, and babies are so small; I fear one of them will be buttered and eaten. Do babies enjoy historic outings? I will consult my Baby Zagats. Think of it: hoop skirts, mint juleps, quilting bee re-enactments (which might possibly be actual quilting bees; I will investigate this and then write a shocking newspaper article) and long, uneasy, despairing silences punctuated by inappropriate non-sequitors courtesy of Grandma. “I read in the paper that a man shot a little girl who wandered into his yard, thinking she was a Sasquatch,” she will say, apropos our conversation about menstrual cramps. I have no doubt she will have some things to say about monkeypox. I have some things to say about monkeypox. First of all: pet prairie dogs? How cheap are these parents? That’s like giving your kid an extra long worm and telling him that if he takes very good care of it, in a few years you’ll be able to trust him with one of the lobsters out of the tank at Joe’s Crab Shack. Second of all, trust the prairie dogs of Indiana to carry some second-rate disease like monkeypox. Here in Colorado, they carry the bubonic plague.
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