My late mother was a smart woman with an endearingly ditzy side. A lifelong voluptuous blonde, she always used to say “You have to be smart to act dumb,” which was probably a direct quote from a Marilyn Monroe movie like “How to Marry a Millionaire” or “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.” Either way, Husband’s first comment upon meeting my mom eleven years ago was about how engaging her natural upbeat innocence was and how infectious her laugh. Now that we’re married a decade, he’s mentioning more and more how much I remind him of her, usually as I wander around a parking lot beeping the remote to locate my car. Don’t tell him, but more than once I’ve done that at the train station before remembering I walked that day. As every woman realizes at some time in her life, eventually we become our mothers.
Husband has frequently remarked that it often seems like I don’t know where I am. I would have to agree with him. Although my psyche is centered and my yin and yang feel perfectly balanced, geographically I’m as lost as a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest. On our recent trip to Arizona, we got off the highway to visit some historic sight, and when we were ready to get back on Husband asked if I could read the sign in the distance that said AZ-51. I said that I could and should I look for east or west? He shot me an astonished look and said, “East or west? It runs north and south. We were just on it for twenty miles; didn’t you notice it was AZ-51N?” The short answer is: No. I don’t notice things like that. That’s what a GPS is for. There’s only so much room in my brain for trivia like location and direction. I prefer to go with the wise hippie logic of “Wherever you go, there you are.” It may not help in finding the nearest Golden Corral, but that much food isn’t good for you anyway.
It is an endless source of amusement for Husband to get off a hotel elevator with me and watch as I walk down the hallway in the wrong direction, again and again. At some point on my journey, I realize he’s not responding to what I’m saying and I turn around to see him way far away by the elevator chuckling and shaking his head. It is then that he calls out my mother’s name and waves me in like an airplane on a runway. When I reach him, he invariably asks how it is that I have no inner compass whatsoever. I tell him I have an inner roulette wheel, and that makes my days infinitely more interesting. You never get bored if everything always seems fresh.
Somewhere in the universe there is a blonde with big boobs who always knows which way to go. I would like to think of us as twins separated at birth. Although I am brunette, and voluptuous only in my dreams, I would regale my long-lost sister with the dizzy blonde jokes that always made my mother laugh.
Why did the blonde write TGIF on the tops of her shoes?
To remind herself Toes Go In First.
My mother would give me a sly wink when she laughed at jokes like that because she knew that a little ditzy can be a real gift. Wherever that other phantom daughter of hers is, I hope she’s enjoying going in the right direction as much as I am wandering around. And no, I wouldn’t change places with her for anything.
Today’s Fotos are from Tombstone, Arizona, pardner
tourist bonanza
horseys
giant squashblossom
bipartisan warning