Author Archives: tim

On Friday night, my Aunt Nancy stopped by Madison on her way to LaCrosse with my Grandma. They came to our house and we talked for a while; we showed them the impressive scrapbook Aunt Pat put together; and then we all went out to Monty’s Blue Plate Diner for dinner.

We had a booth right by the front window, allowing me a view of Atwood Avenue and the Barrymore Theater just across the street. Nancy was in the middle of telling us a story when I looked out the window and saw a red-haired, bearded guy wearing a fishing hat bend over on the sidewalk and pick something up. He then started crossing himself and turned and came straight toward the restaurant window. Just outside the window, he stopped again and bent over the cigarette receptacle outside. It was one of those that looks like an upside-down top, like this

The guy opened it up, took out about 5 butts, and put each one in his shirt pocket, and then walked away crossing himself again. Thank God for butts.

So today was the first day of school for freshmen, and as part of the day’s introductory program, a large team of seniors lead the newcomers through a school tour and several icebreaking activities. I had a freshman homeroom, but because of the “senior citizens,” as they’re so cleverly called, I didn’t really do much of anything in my homeroom. The seniors did it all, and I just observed them. It was funny to see how they kind of stuttered their way through the various activities and speeches. A lot of rules to games were changed halfway through, and more than once, they found themselves in the position of being a few minutes ahead of schedule and needing to fill the empty space with some variation on BS.

At one point, they were doing the M&M icebreaker — the one where you pass around M&Ms and everyone grabs a few and then each person needs to introduce themselves and say one “interesting” thing about themselves for each M&M they have. Here was the introduction, roughly:

“Ok, so, we’re gonna pass around these M&Ms. Take as many as you want, but don’t take all of them cuz . . . well, should we tell them? No. Okay. Well, take however many you want, you know, like within reason. Yeah take like four or five . . . or, yeah. Or just one.”

This past weekend, Eileen and I went to a wedding down in Kenosha. Kris Dressler married Leslie Rattan. Kris goes by the name “Dress” to the extent that the guy who married them said something like, “Dress, do you take Leslie to be. . . ” On the way home from the wedding, Eileen and I were discussing how Leslie’s new name, Leslie Dressler, sounds a little strange not just because of its slant rhyme, but because “Dressler” is essentially the first name of the man she married.

“Leslie and Dressler sounds okay, but Leslie Dressler sounds really strange,” Eileen observed. “It would be like if my name had become Eileen Tim. Now, Leslie Kristofer sounds alright. . .”

Sounds good to me, too.