We were just getting acclimated to our new bungalow in Kinkajou Springs, and our new crop of Zoysia Grass (TM) promised to look a treat once the winter was over. Did you know Zoysia Grass turns brown after October 1? The guy in the ball cap who advertised Zoysia Grass on the back of the Sunday supplement for 45 years never let us in on that bit of information.
Anyway, the kids were getting settled in their new school (St. Vacance of Fonsonby’s) after many fits and starts. It took months for their new uniforms to arrive (the only vendor is a Dark Satanic Mill some 40 miles away; it did a thriving business during the Battle of Gettysburg but has not upgraded its facilities since, save for a few bare electrical bulbs hanging from the ceiling) and now the children Fit Right In, no longer objects of wonder and ridicule as they wander the corridors in party dresses and shirtsleeves.
The children have also figured out the arcana of lunch. To wit: nobody buys the Hot Lunch except for the weirdoes who sit at the weirdo table over by the janitor’s closet. The done thing is to bring your lunch in a brown paper bag specially designed for the purpose. No re-used grocery bags or old cut-down Little Brown Bags from Bloomingdales.
For children in the third grade and below, lunch boxes are also permissible. However, they must be made of metal, not plastic, and if they carry the image of a television program or animated cartoon character, that character needs to be current–no Hopalong Cassidy or Ding Dong School lunchboxes, please. Oh, and they are not to be called lunch boxes. They are lunch “cans,” unless you are from Exdale Township and thereabouts, in which case you say “lunch kettle.” (I would love to know the origin of that!)
In the local twang, the actual pronunciation of “lunch can” comes out something like: lay-unch kee-yun. The children have been picking up this patois rapidly. You learn so quickly when you are young!
I mention all this so you’ll have some idea of how we have struggled to adjust these last few months. And now here we are, forced to move again. Well perhaps “forced” is too strong a word. We were offered a better home, one where we could put down roots and own our own domain. Yes, presenttension.net suddenly became available, so we phoned the realtor and snapped it up. Even now we are still living in two–three!–places, unsorting our lives from the jumble of tea crates and wardrobe boxes we’ve been living in for what seems like an eternity.
Sallie, the youngest, tells me that the children hereabouts had no idea what she was talking about when she asked them what kind of layunch keeyun they carried. She seems to be very upset. Though we lived there for only a few months, Kinkajou Springs is the only home she remembers. Ah well, she will adjust in time!
(Postscript: In a later, expanded, version of this farce the town name was Kinkajou Springs. I did not realize till now that it hadn’t always been Kinkajou Springs. “Kinkajou” just doesn’t sound right. So I’ve amended it here. Aug. 31, 2016)
