We are told that when Julius Caesar was 33, he wept at the sight of a bust of Alexander the Great, mourning that he had accomplished so much less than Alexander had by that age. Poor Julius. His problem was that he didn't have any lying friends to comfort him with mendacious tales of their world-famous exploits. Fortunately, I don't lack this consolation. So for this year's I Remember MrsDarwin challenge: Tell me what epic feats we accomplished before my 33rd birthday. Why should I have all the fun writing fiction?
As always, here are the rules:
If you read this, if your eyes are passing over this right now, even if we don't speak often, please post a comment with a COMPLETELY MADE UP AND FICTIONAL MEMORY OF YOU AND ME.Brush up on six previous years of egregious falsehoods.
It can be anything you want--good or bad--BUT IT HAS TO BE FAKE.
When you're finished, post this paragraph on your blog and be surprised (or mortified) about what people DON'T ACTUALLY remember about you.
Of course, given the birthday theme, I can't help recalling the time back when we were dating that you recruited me to help you throw a surprise birthday party for your friend Samantha. Our duty was to take Sam to the shi shi bar your and your girlfriends have picked for the celebration and keep her distracted while other friends gradually drifted in. Then you were supposed to call out, "It's my friend's birthday. Can we get a song for her?" and everyone would stand up and sing "Happy Birthday."
ReplyDeleteIn getting her situated in seat with her back to most of the room, we were successful, but as we strove to keep her entertained our fears grew because No One Was Coming. (How were we to know that there was a gay burlesque review with the same name as the bar halfway across the city to which innocent guests were accidentally being conveyed by taxi drivers?) I had been reduced to answering Sam's demands that we go somewhere more congenial with desperate suggestions that, "Something might happen!" when you decided your dramatic gifts were sufficient to get a bar full of well healed strangers to give Sam a rousing birthday chorus and party without prior knowledge.
You may not know this but the truth is that Mrs. Darwin and I are both time travelers from the past (in the future time travel is so hum-drum no one bothers). Daughters of nobility were so bored in Victorian London. Apparently she had nothing better to do than nose around at Mr. Wells' office where I was working as a fact checker, and trained time traveler, of course... you can see where the time travel thing comes up and how it got out of hand. The adventures were epic, I must say, and mostly successful. I'm still annoyed about the nose of the Sphinx, but we saved the rest of it at least.
ReplyDeleteProbably the most childish thing we did was when we made up this character "Alexander the Great" (seriously, couldn't we work out a more imaginative name than that?!?). Over a number of years we kept dropping stories of this guy, making it more and more unbelievable every time. We thought it was just some silly fun. Imagine our surprise when we jump into the future and find that he's an official, documented historical figure! Honestly, we should have gone back to clean that up, but Mrs. Darwin just loved the look on Julius Cesar's face so much we decided to leave it.
Sadly, our time travels ended when we tried to go too far into the future. As it turns out our time machine had a Y2K bug. So we're stuck living our lives now.
I remember when you stood up on the table (Vegas, all-night bingo, and what we thought were $1 slots were actually $1 shots) and vowed to through-hike the Appalachian Trail in flip-flops. Being a woman of your word, you did - of course. To this day I have never seen you in sandals again!
ReplyDeleteOh man. I just re-read last year's I remember Mrs. Darwin, and that may be hard to top. So I'll just say this: Back in our college days when when you revealed to me that you were neither precisely male, nor precisely female, but that a case could be made for either one (You were living as a man in those days), I sort of had a crush on you.
ReplyDeleteI remember the summer Mrs. Darwin and I went undercover for the Okra Grower’s Association, posing as illegal immigrants in order to get jobs with unethical Imitation Okra producers(“fokra” as we call it in the trade). We eventually got the goods on the bad guys, but not before Mrs. D had wowed the Jambalaya world with her award-winning cookbook, “500 Quick, Easy Okra Meals for the Ukrainian Kitchen”.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately she had to back out of the ensuing reality show contract (“The Pot Thickens”), when Ukrainian gangsters threatened to blackmail her, lest anyone find out her cookbook had in fact not been originally written in Ukrainian, but merely very bad Polish. She’s been going by the pseudonym “Mrs. Darwin” ever since.
The truth can now be told: Mrs. Darwin is actually my long-lost daughter. She was born during my sojourn as an undercover agent in communist China, smuggled out of the country on a tramp steamer loaded with cheap transistor radios, and eventually adopted by a family of devout Catholic whale-trainers. I have been searching for her ever since, as rogue elements of the CIA have tried to prevent me from finding her. Fortunately, coded messages from Jane Eyre, found in her recent novel, led me to this website and our joyous reunion!
ReplyDeleteI remember the way you held that machine-gun during the summer of the revolution, when you and Darwin fought your way through the guerillas in the jungle and right up to the stairs of the palace, demanding freedom and fair wages and french fries for all with your children clinging to your back like tiny little Spartans. I also remember how good those french fries finally tasted, when we got them at last. Thanks for fighting for us.
ReplyDeleteOh you kids... I'm blushing.
ReplyDeleteSteven K, that guy Aristobulus would believe anything we told him.
Rebekka, I've never played bingo since either.
Betty; oh, what could have been...
Jennifer F, I hoped I would never hear the word "fokra" again.
Anon: Daddy!
Calah, my children still complain that I hold them like machine guns.
Oh Betty, you met Mrs. D too soon in college. By our senior year, she'd fully embraced her feminine side.
ReplyDeleteI'll never forget the night we crashed the frat party and took it upon ourselves to "free" the team mascot. Then lecture the girls on modesty and virtue. Remember the chant we got started around the keg??
It became a protest march down Fraternity Row.
I'm so glad to have found you again. Imagine if you'd been wielding your machine gun back then?
I remember when Mrs. Darwin first got her gills slits removed. It had been a long and difficult process, starting with the partial lung transplant and gradually working up, in longer and longer intervals, to life outside the tank. The gill-slit removal was a powerful symbol of her decision to live as a drylander instead of within the constraints of nature.
ReplyDeleteI remember when we were visiting Michigan years back and stayed in the cottage on the lake that had no tv. We had no idea what to do with ourselves without the steady diet of OLTL and GH. So we rode bikes to the nearest KMart, shoplifted some Cover Girl makeup and Clairol Nice N Easy hair color, grabbed some milk duds and Mike and Ikes in the candy aisle and then proceeded to the TV section where we planted our fat butts in front of the 16 tv sets and watched the People's Court and some stupid show about puppets. This was way before cable was available. You must have been like 5? We grabbed some marlboro lights and split. Those were the days.
ReplyDeleteI would say something, but it would be REALLY BAD form to say...
ReplyDeleteOh flip, I missed it this year- I'm late, I'm late for a very important date. But I have a good reason: I was in a tent in Antarctica and got stuck in a blizzard for two weeks so had no internet access. Do you remember that tent Mrs Darwin? It's the same one we used that year we did research together on the Emperor Penguins. Gosh, we learned so much as we poked about in the colony on the ice. I hope you have told your children all about those wonderful creatures!
ReplyDelete