reconstitute swim blood sample banana
wimple g-string cricket hamster
“I hate bananas,” Elsa said rather vehemently. And she meant it, too.
“That’s rather a strong statement, don’t you think?” Sue Ellen asked with genuine surprise.
“It’s the truth is all.”
“Elsa, what’s your favorite fruit?”
“Peaches.”
“Would you say you love peaches?”
“No, of course not. That’s ridiculous, Sue Ellen. I love my kids. I love Alan. I even love you. I don’t love peaches. They’re just my favorite fruit.”
“Well, hate is the opposite of love,” Sue Ellen explained. “If you don’t love peaches, you can’t hate bananas.”
“Says you. I know what I feel, Sue Ellen.”
“Okay, you say you love your kids and Alan. Who do you hate?”
“I’ll tell you who I hate. Barney Miller!”
“Barney Miller? The detective on that old TV show? He wasn’t even real.”
“He was to my dad. When that show was on, you couldn’t make a peep in our house. Dad would be glued to the TV like it was life support. He thought those guys were the funniest people ever. And that was without having a beer after dinner.”
“Okay, you hate the fictional character Barney Miller. What about someone in the real world.”
“That damn Sister Mary Katherine. Remember her?”
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! Elsa, watch your mouth! Anyway, our calculus teacher in eleventh grade? I haven’t thought about her in years; no, decades. Why do you hate her?”
“Oh, come on!” Elsa defended herself. “She was the biggest bitch. She was always reporting us to Mother Superior for every stupid little thing. I swear she had it in for all us girls with pretty hair. To her, my long ringlets were like a red flag to a bull. She was always having Mother Superior send my parents notes about how a meek and pious child should wear her hair. `Elsa’s hair is getting too long.’ And, `The meek don’t call attention to themselves with pretty ribbons.’ She didn’t have any trouble being meek. I bet she was as bald as Kojak under that wimple. Child of God my ass; she was the daughter of the Devil. I always wanted to take a blood sample to prove it.”
“I think she was a little jealous of us,” Sue Ellen said with sympathy. “She was only a few years older than us, remember? And even under that habit, you could tell she was well endowed. And they made her the swimming teacher that year. Remember that? All the boys kept trying to spy on our swim lessons. It wasn’t us they were trying to see.”
“Do I remember that!?” Elsa added. “My brother’s friend Saul used to draw pictures of the nuns. He always drew Sister MK with Pamela Anderson breasts and a tiny pink g-string. I just knew that boy was going to Hell. For a while there, I actually prayed Robby wouldn’t be sent with him. I mean, I couldn’t stand the witch, but I didn’t go misrepresenting her bride-of-God figure nearly naked.”
After a momentary pause, Elsa retracted a little. “But she wasn’t all bad though. She could have made us all do penance when Timmy hid that cricket in the classroom.”
“And she didn’t punish Jimmy Doogan when he let Billy the Hamster out of the cage,” Sue Ellen added. “And it got stuck in the AC duct and died.”
The two women paused in their reminiscences and sighed.
“Well,” Sue Ellen spoke first. “That was some fun reminiscing, but I gotta go. I guess you don’t want this cereal then. Carly doesn’t like it because…” She trailed off.
Elsa raised an eyebrow in question.
“Okay, here is the thing,” Sue Ellen continued. “When you pour in the milk, it reconstitutes the bananas.”