Bold statements going where no intelligent woman has gone before

I am the queen of inviting myself places. "Geri," I texted yesterday morning, "Sydney needs to test her SCUBA equipment in your pool so if Greg is home, we should play some euchre." To friends we haven't seen for a few months, I locked in our evening plans, typing, "The Mosimans want to see goats, chickens, puppies and the Kelleys (not necessarily in that order)."

When raising animals for meat, I believe that the
subject of their inevitable ends should NOT be
discussed in front of them.

 Visiting the Kelleys is tricky business as my intelligence level tends to plummet around my friend Jon. I am also the queen of the bold statements and most polite people tend to ignore them if they sense an discrepancy. Not Jon. He is a relentless bloodhound on the trail. Early on in our relationship, I was showing off our local area and announced that, translated from its original Native American dialect, Oatka means "Valley of the Black Squirrel." After rudely laughing for far longer than necessary, Mr. Kelley then forced me to admit that I couldn't even identify the supposed tribe from which this word originated. He had a field day when I naively repeated the urban legend that Mr. Rogers wore his signature sweaters to conceal his Navy Seal tattoos.

Ditto for chickens. As Jon has constructed the Fort Knox
of chicken coops, his birds have a warped sense of well-being.

Yesterday was par for the course. My family watched, horror-stricken but not surprised, as I spiraled out of control. Admitting my disappearing ink science experiment failure wasn't a brilliant way to start. Jon's son tried to reassure me that it wasn't actually a complete failure as I had succeeded in getting the lemon juice ink to disappear. I just couldn't get it to reappear again. He couldn't redeem my utter ignorance about anything pertaining to World War I and he finally gave up and left the room when I couldn't remember the term "prostate" so began doing word association and, at one point, mimed my meaning, inaccurately and inappropriately, with two fingers. Mrs. Kelley won this sick version of charades, hopping up and down in her chair and yelling "prostate" while Mr. Kelley hurriedly adjusted my fingers from two to one.

Seeing the puppies almost made up for appearing foolish.

"Well, that was fun," my husband said, driving me home. "You certainly didn't show any bias. You equally insulted every group out there regardless of race, religion, culture, gender or sexual affiliation." I sighed in the darkness. "Why do you even let me talk," I moaned, leaning my forehead against the window, "I look like a total idiot whenever I'm around that man." The silence in the van was chilling as I waited for comforting words. My daughter's voice finally floated up from the rear. "How does one confuse probate with prostate," she asked.