Since I lack the time for my usual careful analysis of 80s rock and heartfelt narratives about your mom, I'm throwing down a handful of vignettes, which is one of my new favorite words, despite the fact that not very much rhymes with it. I guess "peregrine yet" rhymes with it. If I were to write a couplet with those words, it would go "Oh, sad little falcon you fly slow because you're reading a dumb vignette/And that is why you are not a peregrine yet."
Vignette 1: We recently moved into our fifth home in six months. We aren't the only people who move this much; other people do as well. They're called "hunters/gatherers" and they wear coats made out of prairie dogs.
Vignette 2: Saudis are really into late dinners. Last week I had two dinner meetings and at both of them I started eating after 9 p.m. I've never been very good at staying up late, and this is why the edgy girls never liked me in college. They were like, "Let's go to an edgy dance club and dance inappropriately close together and I'll show you my tongue piercing." And I was like, "It seems weird for you to show me your tongue on purpose. Can we be home by 9:30? I start getting sleepy at 9." And they were like, "The thought of going out with you makes me wince."
Vignette 3: I decided to buy a thobe, which is a long one-piece garment worn by Saudi men. It's like a dress shirt that continues into a dress instead of stopping at your waist. The look has really grown on me. Some Saudi friends told me about a hip thobe store where all the cool kids get their thobes, so I went there, because obviously I'm hip. I took a thobe into the dressing room to try it on, and it was there that I almost died.
I couldn't decide how to put it on, so I just threw it over my head. The bottom part that is like a dress is big enough, but the garment narrows into a standard dress shirt at the top, so it was like trying to get into a dress shirt from the bottom, without unbuttoning it, plus there is all this extra material from the bottom dress-like part of the garment mucking things up. I got myself stuck with one arm partway through one sleeve, elbow bent and unable to move, the other arm straight through the other sleeve, my head jammed into one of the shoulder bulges, the baggy dress-like portion of the thobe folded over on itself and wrapped tightly around my upper back. Then I got claustrophobic and I kind of panicked a little, and I hopped up and down as if hopping would dislodge me, which doesn't, if you're wondering. Finally I had to call in Arabic to the sales associate to help me escape death by polyester. All in all, it sucked pretty bad.
Vignette 1: We recently moved into our fifth home in six months. We aren't the only people who move this much; other people do as well. They're called "hunters/gatherers" and they wear coats made out of prairie dogs.
 |
| 2006: "Kiss me. Please?" "No, that sounds gross." |
Vignette 3: I decided to buy a thobe, which is a long one-piece garment worn by Saudi men. It's like a dress shirt that continues into a dress instead of stopping at your waist. The look has really grown on me. Some Saudi friends told me about a hip thobe store where all the cool kids get their thobes, so I went there, because obviously I'm hip. I took a thobe into the dressing room to try it on, and it was there that I almost died.
I couldn't decide how to put it on, so I just threw it over my head. The bottom part that is like a dress is big enough, but the garment narrows into a standard dress shirt at the top, so it was like trying to get into a dress shirt from the bottom, without unbuttoning it, plus there is all this extra material from the bottom dress-like part of the garment mucking things up. I got myself stuck with one arm partway through one sleeve, elbow bent and unable to move, the other arm straight through the other sleeve, my head jammed into one of the shoulder bulges, the baggy dress-like portion of the thobe folded over on itself and wrapped tightly around my upper back. Then I got claustrophobic and I kind of panicked a little, and I hopped up and down as if hopping would dislodge me, which doesn't, if you're wondering. Finally I had to call in Arabic to the sales associate to help me escape death by polyester. All in all, it sucked pretty bad.