Dude, Where's My Hair?

First of all, thank you all for sticking around and commenting this past week. I was away in suburban Boston for about a week for Honey's father's family reunion.

• A few cousins and I kicked a ball around and decided to have a friendly four-v-four game of soccer. I learned a few things: 1. I don't know the meaning of a friendly game (sorry, Steven). 2. I'm very very old. The game started with me running up and down the field, passing, blocking, kicking... like I was ten-years-old again. Two minutes later I said I had to become the goalkeeper. A minute later, even that was too much. I was lying in the field waiting for the vultures to collect. And here was this Steven, a man in his forties, running like it was the most normal thing in the world for a grown man to move about freely. I'd like to think the kicks he got from me were genuine attempts to get the ball and not just products of my tired body and jealous soul. I need to get in shape.

• About a hundred people there, most of them strangers to me and many of them strangers to each other, each standing up in turn, introducing him/herself and explaining the connection to the family. I had about twenty minutes to think about what to say. I was going to say my name and then say it had been almost exactly ten years since I met the first member of the family (Honey), and how great it was to be a part of the family, and all that, but before I got the mike, it was Honey's turn. "My name is... I'm the daughter of..., the granddaughter of... [standing up], and as you can see, I'm on my sixth month, soon to give birth to the newest member of the family." [Applause]. So what's a man to do? Was there anything else I could have said other than, "My name is... [now pointing at Honey's belly]. And I put it there."

• A distant cousin, on the way back home:

"I heard you lived in England for a while. What were you doing there?"
"Nothing much. I was playing in a band."
"Oh, really? What instrument?"
"Bass guitar."
"Ahhh, that's great. Me and my brother were talking the other day about how each part of the female body is a different musical instrument. Like, the head is, you know, and the breast is a snare drum, Tss, t-t-tss, t-t-tss, t-t-tss, you know? And the ass in like a bass guitar, gau, gau-gau, gau-gau, doom doo-doom doom doom. Know what I mean?"

And we still had 700 miles to go to Baltimore.