9/13/09

Okay, let's put a wrap on the weekend here before bedtime. I am a bit exhausted after all is said and done but, given my natural sleep patterns, we can take this as a good sign.

It occurs to me as I review yesterday's missive that I failed to note the best part of the trip back to the hotel. We were on the Red Line heading out toward the Shady Grove station. The older of my two little brothers was talking with some young girl for a few minutes and then he started to get off the train at the wrong stop. He realized his error, got back on very quickly, and then sat across from my youngest brother and me. We were "talking shit" (to use his words) about his inability to keep his head up or his eyes open. He was making offensive hand gestures to inform us that he could hear us. Good times. Good times.

Somewhere along the way we learned that the young lady had given him a gift. You would have to read this blog every once in a while to know the significance here, but that gift was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Yeah, I know, seriously. As I learned more of the back story today, I decided that any involvement of PB&J in my life should probably be included in this blog. So...

The girl and her friends had made forty sandwiches on Saturday afternoon. They got on the Metro with hopes of being able to help feed some of the less fortunate people in the area. For six hours, they rode from station to station. They approached people who appeared to be disheveled and so forth. After six hours, they had managed to give away... zero sandwiches. "Get the fuck away from me," seemed to be the most common response. (I'm not sure if the girls said it that way or if my brother substituted his own terminology. Either way, the story is fairly clear.) So the girls were feeling a bit disappointed as they headed home. Enter three drunken brothers...

My brother listened to the story from these teenagers and, in his infinite drunken wisdom, told them that he was awfully hungry and a sandwich sounded pretty good. They were more than happy to give him one. Perhaps a goofy drunk is as good as a homeless person when it comes to receiving charity. I don't know. The girls then told him that the next station was Shady Grove and he followed them off the train. He saw that he was underground (we had boarded above ground in the morning) and that his two drunken brothers were still on the train. So he hopped back on before the doors closed. This was the point where the talking and gesturing and laughing and such took place.

We went to the next station (the actual Shady Grove station) and got off the train. Somehow, through methods that I haven't fully figured out, the young girls were outside the station when we disembarked. Maybe there was a wormhole from one station to the next or something. I don't know. I just know that they got off the train at the Rockville station and they were present when we arrived at the next stop. That's not the important part though. I'm inadvertently burying the lede here.

The girls still had their picnic basket. Their new buddy (my brother) asked them for a couple more sandwiches to feed his hungry brothers and they were happy to oblige. One sandwich went flying across the parking lot in front of me. It turns out that my youngest brother wasn't hungry and instead felt like being a belligerent ass. I, on the other hand, accepted their gift with delight and scarfed that sucker down in a hurry. So let's cut to the chase here... PB&J on the same day as unlimited beer and on the same day as a gathering of hundreds of thousands of ignorant right-wing hayseeds like myself. And I didn't even have to go to Nebraska. Dude, seriously.

Today brought a long ride home and then a drive out to the northwestern 'burbs for dinner with some friends. Tomorrow I believe I'm telling the secretary here at Fenian Godfather, Inc. to cancel all appointments and leave the phone off the hook. I think I need to cool my heels for at least one day.