The days of well-crafted blog posts are behind me, I fear. When I have time to post, you're going to get stream-of-consciousness, which may or may not actually be sensical. But it will always be streamy. It just may stream up your windows. Yow!Shannon and I took Grace to Amman's Citadel, which crowns the tallest "jebel", or hill, in town, last weekend. Grace was so fascinated that she almost woke up.
As we poked around the ruins, a middle-aged Arab in a Penn State hat droned to a group of tank-topped European tourists who were probably trying to cram in as much touring in as possible before they died from skin cancer.
We were accosted by a pleasant policeman who really wanted to give us a tour. I tried to send him the non-verbal message that I was really not interested by wandering in the other direction whenever he tried to shepherd us somewhere. Non-verbal messages must not translate into Arabic however, because he didn't get it, and he kept talking, and I kept not listening.
Shannon, as usual, was too nice to not be interested in his passably English spiel. I, on the other hand, found it difficult to focus on anything apart from the fact that he used the phrase "you know" way too much. Kind of like I'm using italics way too much in this post.
Shannon and the "tour guide" eventually became fast friends and wandered off together. It distantly occured to me how, if Shannon and I had been dating and not married for 5+ years, I'd be insanely jealous if she chose to hang with a strapping and musky young Arab over me. But I forgot to keep thinking about it. I must be totally secure that I'm the hottest guy in Shannon's life. I mean, I only have a few zits, and I can almost beat her in arm-wrestling. That's hot in anyone's book.
Incidentally, as we drove to the Citadel, we witnessed a fistfight between two Arab schoolboys. I thought about pulling over and breaking it up, but I imagined the following headline in the next day's international newspapers: "American tourist's butt kicked and lunch stolen by Arab tweens," and I just kept driving.