Nose to the grindstone, Mrs. Strawberry! January 25, 2008

After several less-than-subtle hints from my encouraging friends and family I am – at last!- going to write a new post! I’m constantly formulating entertaining and important things to share on here, but then I get nervous and can’t do it. I think the last semester killed any sort of joy from writing for me, but maybe if you all are a very kind audience it will become fun again. Deal?  

 I am reading (or rather, suffering through) Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur  at the moment. I think one of the most hilarious recurring themes is that the knights frequently venture out into the forest and come upon a forester and say, “Fair fellow, knowest thou in this country any adventures that are hereby?” I might ask the forester where I could find a gas station, but Sir Kay and Sir Gawain ask where they could find an adventure, as if an adventure were a concrete and quantifiable thing. (Incidentally, the forester will always reply in the affirmative and point the way to dragons and other enchantments.) How can you be so guaranteed of an event that you can call it an adventure before it has even happened? However, I stand corrected about the intangible nature of adventures after today. This morning my mother-in-law called and asked if I could accompany my younger brother-in-law to Elkton, Md., to a traffic court trial for which he was subpoenaed as a witness. She promised me it would be an adventure so I agreed to it. I arrived in Elkton at the appointed time and called my brother-in-law to find out where I should meet up with him. He told me he was in the parking lot of the courthouse, and I told him I was also in the parking lot of the courthouse….he told me he was standing up and waving, and I likewise told him I was standing up and waving…but we couldn’t see each other. I told him go on in and that hopefully I would be able to see him once he was inside. I went on into the courthouse, was cleared through security and looked around for him frantically but I still couldn’t see him! In desperation I asked the security guards who informed me that I was at the wrong courthouse for traffic court. After finding the correct courthouse I finally found him inside and we had a good laugh because apparently we had each parked at a different courthouse and he had apparently made the same mistake I did but had a several-minute start on me so that we kept crossing paths. And in the end he didn’t even need to testify. The judge explained that the defendant (who hadn’t yielded the right-of-way to my brother-in-law and consequently totaled his car) had apparently been charged with the incorrect violation for her offense so he had to declare her not guilty, even though she obviously was. We were confused, to say the least. And it was quite an adventure as promised.