Loose Leaf Notes

My Asheville, North Carolinian, potter son, Josh, who is also a closet super-hero, turned me on to New Castle Beer, a dark but not Guinness dark beer made in Great Britain. Around the same time he showed off – what he would call “flash treads” or more informally “kicks” – his new pair of New Balance sneakers. For about a year after these incidents, whenever I was in a restaurant ordering a beer, I would ask for…“a New Balance, please.” Someone would usually laugh. Someone else would look confused.
The mix-up is understandable, if you know me. More recently Josh hand-built a treadle wheel, a pottery wheel that you operate like an old model sewing machine, with your foot. I kept calling it “the tread mill.”
My language confusion is not due to a lack of intelligence. I know this because last year I took my first IQ test and was surprised at my respectable score. I then challenged my husband, Joe, to take it. What was I thinking?! I might just as well have asked, “Shall we play with fire now?” (The IQ test story is one for another day.)
Joe is a master at translating me. Like yesterday morning. I was looking out our bedroom window that overlooks the driveway when I made this remark, “Except for the fact that it’s dirty, my car looks pretty clean.”
Translated: “My car is usually dirtier.” We live in the country on a back dirt road, so clean cars are relative.
And when Joe gets home from work and asks how I’m doing, and I answer, “My normal abnormal,” he knows I’ve had a pretty good day.