Way Out West

So I'm on a family vacation in Montana. There is corn growing on the Interstate and a glass building running alongside it that seems to go on forever. "But we're Out West!" I say, and the building disappears.

I've forgotten my binoculars.

My dad says that maybe I could buy new ones.

I sit George under a tree with his cheese Cheerios and chocolate wafer cookies, and when a dog (or perhaps it was a bear) tries to take them, I teach him an important life lesson: give the food to the dog (or the bear, either one); Mommy will have packed more cheese Cheerios and chocolate wafer cookies.

Road Trip, Scholarship

So Wayne decides to take us down a dirt road, and it suddenly gets dark and we're being chased by two dogs--one black, one white--which may or may not be made of smoke. We hurry to get to the light up ahead and discover a farmyard filled with cartons of eggs. (Wayne doesn't like eggs.)

Then we're drving around an island off the coast of Wales and discover an enclave of hotels and diners that are still operating under the assumption that it's the 1950s. We haven't brought any luggage, but we decide to stay the night anyway. Mostly, I spend the evening looking for a bathroom. They're all out of order.

[Intermission to go pee and try to figure out when George got into the bed.]

It turns out, this island takes in fifteen people each year on a kind of scholarship. Wayne and I fill out applications. They require algebra. I do pretty well.

[George kicks me and laughs in his sleep, so I don't know if we got accepted or not.]

Grammar Kills

So I come home each day to discover that someone has broken into my house and left me a gift--a quilt here, an embroidered pillowcase there. By the time the intruder has left me a shoebox diarama (horses made out of cottonballs painted blue) I've discovered that the gifts coincide with a string of murders. I write a letter asking the intruder to stop; he returns it with grammar corrections.