Tumbleweaves

Mornings look different these days compared to how they looked back when I wrote this post. Brett and I may or may not get up at the same time and I likely won't eat breakfast unless Brett wants breakfast badly enough to make it himself. The pups sleep in these days and Brett tries to get an hour of reading in before he goes into the sunny room to clock in. But one morning ritual has withstood the test of quarantine. Brett and I still have our coffee chats about any and everything before we start our day. Admittedly, some mornings I sleep through coffee hour or Brett's book is too good to put down. These are the new luxuries of having nowhere to be so it's easy to let them slide. But most mornings we choose a chair and settle in to discuss the day ahead, the blunders of the day before, politics, cuisine, weird dreams, dogs, etc. 

This morning we both discovered that we had school dreams which led us to tales of high school heros and bullies and general idiots. Brett went to a private prep school in Charlotte called Country Day. The local public school kids and subsequent arch-rivals called it Country Gay. Brett told me about a friend who had some high ranking in the class who went to Stanford and then became a Navy Seal. I told him how we had so many girl fights in school that there were tumbleweeds of hair weaves in most of the hallways. Tumbleweaves. 

Brett graduated with 108 kids who all headed off to esteemed colleges and universities. I graduated in a class of 240 who's destinations could be grouped into tech school, state school, or straight to the construction site. My two hour drive to college in Savannah was one of the more farfetched fates. Only six us left the state. Dream big, kids.

Brett played lacrosse. He won't tell you but he was quite good at it, though it took such a distance to get those long legs to reach their max acceleration that Brett was described as "the sloth"- a player that was "deceptively slow." One time, Brett got knocked in the head and had a concussion. Unbeknownst to anyone else, the play continued and while all the other players ran across the field, Brett woke up and staggered around and ran the wrong way and tripped over his feet. His coach yelled, "Eisenhauer! Get your thumb out of your ass!"

Meanwhile I had a brief stint as a flag twirler. I didn't want to do it but one of Ellen's bossy friends needed people to go to tryouts - something about the school only renewing the flag twirling team if a certain number of people were interested. I agreed to go to tryouts but I would not join the team. Well I'll tell ya, I was born to twirl. My command of the flag was astounding. I could toss it, flip it, roll it across the back of my hand and then whip'er back with a flap flap flap in a grand crescendo of ostentation. Unfortunately I made the team, so I politely attended a few practices and then bowed out before the first football game performance. Everyone knew the flag twirling girls were bimbos. It was only the beginning of their long careers with poles.

Here is Big Tan Lu and her petite blonde friends in 2007.

And here is little Shaved-head Brett in 2006.

In 2006 Brett and his Dad actually came to Charleston to go to Jump Little Children's last concert in a tiny theater downtown. Ari and I were also at that concert, probably just a few rows over, and Brett and I like to think about just how close we were to our spouses without knowing it.