I still owe the world a couple of good Pat stories. One is sticking in my mind about my date with the boy from the local regional, technical high school, i.e. the one Pat dubbed unworthy. No time to type it out now, since sleep is a good thing.

The other thing would be the Pat lexicon of words and phrases. Maybe I’ll just start with a Pat phrase of the day and it’s hidden meaning.

Pat would say: “Denise likes to go to the store and do her shopping here. She likes the choices down here better than near her house.”

The meaning: For a whole series of complex reasons and rationales and most importantly rationalizations, I am not really capable of managing grocery shopping entirely on my own. However, to admit such a thing out loud would be to admit defeat; I would feel weak and small, and in many ways I already do inside, so really why does the world have to crush me down any more than I feel like it has. I’m old and I fear my mortality. Can’t you just give me my peace and dignity and keep a good face on? Denise knows it means, hey, why don’t you come here and help me get food, what do you people want from me?

I also like to think that Pat’s wicked sense of humor loved the sheer prank of that one (I almost wrote “canard” instead of “prank,” then wimped out on my own pretension, but not enough that I’m not telling you I’m a pompous ass). Anyway, I think she knew how absurd it sounds to say that someone who lives in the city travels to the ‘burbs for the variety in shopping. Because, yeah, it’s the urban areas where homogeniety is king. The ‘burbs represent diverse, diverse, and diverse; Nothing whitebread about the suburbs. My sister was convinced there was something I could buy in a Braintree grocery store that I wouldn’t be able to find in Cambridge anywhere. That’s prankster poetry, my old mom selling that story.

I think she won twice on that story. She got her groceries and a chuckle.

Coming attraction:
Reasons why Pat might say she was “livid.”