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The weather was good enough for us to do what we should have done a lot more. We went down to the park by Winona Lake and sat on the sand (or under a tree) and relaxed and had fun. There was a water feature where you fountains and jets sprayed out at you from all kinds of angles and occasionally tiny buckets of water were tipped from high above you and Phoebe had a lot of fun getting wet. After quite a few days where we weren't able to get too active it was fun to be making sandcastles and dicking about and she was in her element. She also spent about ten minutes following a duck around so she could give it some cantaloupe melon (which surprisingly it wanted). She's a delight at the moment. Even signs of her growing understanding of herself as an individual entity are (for the moment) amusing. When she wants something she says “Me, me, me†which is, I suppose, humanity boiled down to its essence. Tonight at dinner she was grabbing my phone and holding it tight and when I tried to take it off her she's insist, quite angrily “Me, Me, Me!†and then each time I gave up trying to get the phone off her, she'd hold it to her chest and then say with quiet self-satisfaction “Me!†It was a little play about existence. That final solitary Me was said with such Mr Burns like glee. She'd won and she was happy, and my phone was hers. Even when I pointed out that the case clearly contained my driver's licence she still insisted it was hers.
After we'd had a couple of fun hours on the beach, the lake looking rather beautiful in the sunshine, our friends here walked us down to a rather Bohemian part of the town, which we had been totally unaware of, where boats were moored up near beautiful houses and a quaint bridge crossed the river and there was a lovely looking bistro, an arts shop with tattooed women in dungarees looking very cool and a sweet shop (they call it a candy store and to change both words just shows how contrary they are being).
This was another amazing experience for Phoebe and me, because there was shelf after shelf of chocolate bars, sweets and fizzy pop (they call it soda, which is stupid because that's what you call fizzy water, though pop is what you call a bubble bursting so what do we know?). But the AIOTM gods were kind to me as as I looked around I came across a single bottle of brown pop, featuring a picture of a wide-eyed Osama Bin Laden, which was called “Seal Ya Laterâ€. It also bore the legend “Knock Knock, who's there?America!"
It was good to see an historical event celebrated through the medium of a fizzy syrupy drink and in many ways I think that is what Osama would have wanted. I am not sure whether that exchange is a verbatim account of what happened on that fateful night. But I hope it is. I like to think that the Navy Seals knocked on the door, having come up with this great joke, all planned out. It did depend on Osama saying “Who's there?†but who could really resist that? I mean it's almost innate. But you'd want to know who was there.
The problem with the Seals joke though is that, a) Osama Bin Laden might not say Who's there? and then they are just left downstairs knocking whilst he makes good his escape and b) more importantly, if he does say “Who's there?†and then they deliver their brilliant (if pre-planned) punchline America, then Osama Bin Laden would surely say, “America who?"
And the Seals were not prepared for that. They thought “America†would do it. But now they've got to think up a punchline on the spot. It sort of looks like it would be easy, but it's not, certainly not in the heat of the moment. You might go for “A merry car is fun to drive†but Navy Seals (who aren't even seals - what is wrong with the American language) call cars, automobiles. Americans must have thought they were very clever when they decided to change the word car to automobile for no reason other than to piss us off, but it really fucked up this knock knock joke for them. Maybe another Navy Seal might say “A mere icasaurusâ€, but I think Osama Bin Laden would say, “Isn't it aucasaurus? And there's nothing mere about any dinosaur turning up at your door and again the terrorist leader would have outsmarted the foolish Man-seals. “I meant a mere icarus†he might say, but the impetus would have been lost and it's still a rubbish knock knock joke.
Anyway, I am going to perpetuate the rumour that “Seal Ya Later†is the only soft drink available in the US and that it is compulsory to drink it at all times and anyone who doesn't drink it will be visited by Navy Seals all primed to do a brilliant knock knock joke on them before shooting them in the head. But if you just don't say “Who's there?†there's nothing they can do. That's the Navy Seal tragedy. They're like vampires. You have to invite them in. But why would you? Unless you really wanted a cartoon of yourself on a pop bottle.
