The Walters

 1. Sitting in a restaurant at the MCI/KCI (whatever your name is) airport. Group of 4-5 enters restaurant and sits behind our small family unit. My back is to this crowd the entire time. They order double Jack ‘n’ Cokes…it is just after 11 AM. The main speaker in this group (every group has one) is male and has the EXACT SAME VOICE as Dale from King of the Hill. I kid you not. He also happens to have the exact same lack of volume control, and any potential control he had has a correlating relationship with his Jack ‘n’ Coke.

In my mind he is talking about pest control and government conspiracies, but in real life he is talking about whiskey and golf. Very loudly. I keep wondering how much strained, WASPy, lock-jawed type of enthusiastic golf clapping it would take to drown this man out. I keep wondering if he looks like the ‘real’ Dale.

2. After eating  one of those airport ”my compliments to the chef” meals, the gnome gets a diaper change and we sit down for some family togetherness time. Reid goes to the bathroom. The peppermint gnome fusses a bit. I get out my Hooter Hider and I am in the process of putting it over my head when I hear an exasperated sigh. I look up and I see an older woman, like maybe 65, slam her bookmark into her paperback (yes, from this incident, I have gleaned the knowledge that one can slam a bookmark), glare at me and my hungry child, grab the handle of suitcase and wheel herself over to a new seat.

I will be the first to admit that the gnome has lungs and he will use them. He, however, was not using them and had only fussed for about a minute and a half. Reid came back and I told him the little story, partly because I thought it was humorous and partly because I was offended, at the end of this telling Reid looked at me expectantly…and I looked back at him questioningly…and he said, “So then you mouthed FUCK OFF?”

3. Then Dale walked by and he looked nothing like the ‘real’ Dale. I was so disappointed.