Delray Beach Dog Walk II
© Thomas Wilson Shawcross 1 Oct 2005
Author’s note: This is the second story in my Delray Beach Dog Walk series. The first story in this series was written 29 May 2005.
Peanut Max Shawcross
White Parrot
Friday evening I was talking on the phone with my friend Eric Hollowaty about “in-scope / out-of-scope” work issues. At the conclusion of our conversation, I wished Eric a good weekend.
“What are you doing this weekend” he asked. I told Eric that my kids’ dog was staying with me, so I would probably go home and take Peanut for a walk, and maybe later this weekend I would help my son study for some high school tests.
The silence at the other end of the line was deafening. I could tell Eric was disappointed with my plans. Like most people who live in Chicago, he probably pictures my South Florida weekends as endless rounds of Latin Grammy after-parties or non-stop parties with lingerie models on my custom-made Cigarette racing yacht. Oh for sure, I would be busy next weekend, when as part of my annual Salute to France, I plan to dress up as the Sun King, Louis Quatorze, and create an aerial photograph in which I shall direct three thousand local school children to form into clusters of letters that spell “Greetings From Delray Beach.” But that would be next weekend. This weekend was planned for doing a bit of deep thinking.
So anyway, I drove home from Fort Lauderdale and took Peanut for a walk in downtown Delray Beach. As we approached Louie Louie’s, I noticed a quirky looking couple sitting on a sidewalk bench between Louie Louie's and Starbucks. I was looking at them as we approached. Suddenly, I realized that Peanut had stopped in his tracks and was staring at something. It took me a second to see what he was looking at. Perched on the arm of the bench, next to the quirky woman, was a large white parrot. It was almost as big as Peanut.
Peanut stared at the White Parrot for a while, and then he sat down on his haunches in front of it and continued gazing. He began wagging his tail. The couple and I stared at the white bird and the white dog. Peanut seemed really happy. The bird was harder to read.
I said, " My dog likes your chicken."
I knew it was a parrot, but I felt like messing with them. They laughed, and said their bird was a parrot. The quirky guy observed that the two animals were enjoying an "encounter." He laughed.
Then I laughed. Then their chicken mimicked my laugh to a tee - (spooky, but also funny).
But then I thought, “Wait a minute, is this parrot mimicking me, or is he mocking me? “ I had never been mocked by a bird – what is the correct response? I decided that Peanut and I should just keep on trucking.
Anyway, I had some deep thinking to do. I had to try to figure out when women stopped wearing slips. I had recently realized that women’s slips, like the inner tubes in car tires (see my 30 Jun 2005 story Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Hershey Bar) had disappeared from the every-day world.
This thought had been prompted when I looked at Brenda Lee’s website, Who Was Who in Ava, IL. I had noticed that some of the postings there were too small to read, and I was thinking about how to let Brenda know this in a nice way, so that she wouldn’t think I was criticizing her work. It occurred to me that I was doing this in the spirit of being helpful. It would be sort of as if I were pointing out to Brenda that her slip was showing. But then I realized that people never said “your slip is showing” any more. I couldn’t remember the last time I had said that, because, frankly, I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen one showing.
For my younger readers, I will explain that a slip was something that women used to wear under their dresses or skirts. Slips were made of some thin, slick material, and they were not supposed to be seen, but occasionally a bit of the bottom of a slip would stick out past the bottom of the dress or skirt. No big deal, really, but if you ever noticed that, it was considered proper etiquette to let the woman know, so she could hike up her slip to where it could no longer be seen.
The girls in my classes at Concord Elementary School wore slips. My mom wore slips. Somewhere along the way between the 1950’s and now, women seem to have stopped wearing slips. Or did scientists come up with some new technology that keeps slips from showing?
I don’t have a girlfriend at present, or else I would ask her about this (and she would probably tell me, unless she was mad at me about who knows what). So, I decided to ask my daughter Lauren about this. Lauren is almost twenty years old. Lauren has heard of slips, and Lauren says that “slip dresses” were popular a few years ago (I missed that fashion happening), but Lauren says that women her age don’t wear slips. Suspicions confirmed.
The proper scientific approach now would be to find some woman who is older than twenty and ask her about slips, and then keep working my way up (age-wise) until I find a woman who is old enough to remember when slips went the way of the Dodo bird.
Unfortunately, I suspect the women at my office would not react in the proper spirit of Science if I asked them their underwear preferences, so I am afraid that this is doomed to be one of those bits of knowledge that has “slipped” into the black hole of the unknown, and I will never know the answer to this – similar to my question, “why did the dinosaurs die?”
Nevertheless, I wonder . . .
Author’s note: This is the second story in my Delray Beach Dog Walk series. The first story in this series was written 29 May 2005.
Peanut Max Shawcross
White Parrot
Friday evening I was talking on the phone with my friend Eric Hollowaty about “in-scope / out-of-scope” work issues. At the conclusion of our conversation, I wished Eric a good weekend.
“What are you doing this weekend” he asked. I told Eric that my kids’ dog was staying with me, so I would probably go home and take Peanut for a walk, and maybe later this weekend I would help my son study for some high school tests.
The silence at the other end of the line was deafening. I could tell Eric was disappointed with my plans. Like most people who live in Chicago, he probably pictures my South Florida weekends as endless rounds of Latin Grammy after-parties or non-stop parties with lingerie models on my custom-made Cigarette racing yacht. Oh for sure, I would be busy next weekend, when as part of my annual Salute to France, I plan to dress up as the Sun King, Louis Quatorze, and create an aerial photograph in which I shall direct three thousand local school children to form into clusters of letters that spell “Greetings From Delray Beach.” But that would be next weekend. This weekend was planned for doing a bit of deep thinking.
So anyway, I drove home from Fort Lauderdale and took Peanut for a walk in downtown Delray Beach. As we approached Louie Louie’s, I noticed a quirky looking couple sitting on a sidewalk bench between Louie Louie's and Starbucks. I was looking at them as we approached. Suddenly, I realized that Peanut had stopped in his tracks and was staring at something. It took me a second to see what he was looking at. Perched on the arm of the bench, next to the quirky woman, was a large white parrot. It was almost as big as Peanut.
Peanut stared at the White Parrot for a while, and then he sat down on his haunches in front of it and continued gazing. He began wagging his tail. The couple and I stared at the white bird and the white dog. Peanut seemed really happy. The bird was harder to read.
I said, " My dog likes your chicken."
I knew it was a parrot, but I felt like messing with them. They laughed, and said their bird was a parrot. The quirky guy observed that the two animals were enjoying an "encounter." He laughed.
Then I laughed. Then their chicken mimicked my laugh to a tee - (spooky, but also funny).
But then I thought, “Wait a minute, is this parrot mimicking me, or is he mocking me? “ I had never been mocked by a bird – what is the correct response? I decided that Peanut and I should just keep on trucking.
Anyway, I had some deep thinking to do. I had to try to figure out when women stopped wearing slips. I had recently realized that women’s slips, like the inner tubes in car tires (see my 30 Jun 2005 story Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Hershey Bar) had disappeared from the every-day world.
This thought had been prompted when I looked at Brenda Lee’s website, Who Was Who in Ava, IL. I had noticed that some of the postings there were too small to read, and I was thinking about how to let Brenda know this in a nice way, so that she wouldn’t think I was criticizing her work. It occurred to me that I was doing this in the spirit of being helpful. It would be sort of as if I were pointing out to Brenda that her slip was showing. But then I realized that people never said “your slip is showing” any more. I couldn’t remember the last time I had said that, because, frankly, I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen one showing.
For my younger readers, I will explain that a slip was something that women used to wear under their dresses or skirts. Slips were made of some thin, slick material, and they were not supposed to be seen, but occasionally a bit of the bottom of a slip would stick out past the bottom of the dress or skirt. No big deal, really, but if you ever noticed that, it was considered proper etiquette to let the woman know, so she could hike up her slip to where it could no longer be seen.
The girls in my classes at Concord Elementary School wore slips. My mom wore slips. Somewhere along the way between the 1950’s and now, women seem to have stopped wearing slips. Or did scientists come up with some new technology that keeps slips from showing?
I don’t have a girlfriend at present, or else I would ask her about this (and she would probably tell me, unless she was mad at me about who knows what). So, I decided to ask my daughter Lauren about this. Lauren is almost twenty years old. Lauren has heard of slips, and Lauren says that “slip dresses” were popular a few years ago (I missed that fashion happening), but Lauren says that women her age don’t wear slips. Suspicions confirmed.
The proper scientific approach now would be to find some woman who is older than twenty and ask her about slips, and then keep working my way up (age-wise) until I find a woman who is old enough to remember when slips went the way of the Dodo bird.
Unfortunately, I suspect the women at my office would not react in the proper spirit of Science if I asked them their underwear preferences, so I am afraid that this is doomed to be one of those bits of knowledge that has “slipped” into the black hole of the unknown, and I will never know the answer to this – similar to my question, “why did the dinosaurs die?”
Nevertheless, I wonder . . .
posted by Tom Shawcross | 4:06 PM
1 Comments:
Actually women DO wear slips, but they serve multiple purposes. Spanx, a relatively new company founded by a woman, offers slips that "contour" a body. It is just another piece of clothing and most women would rather not wear one. Then again, some people who SHOULD wear one don't, but that is a fashion no-no that deserves its own story!
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