On a bus ride from the hotel to one of the parks, we were seated behind a short, fat hayseed with an enormous head . . . we passed a number of landmarks and attractions, none of which seemed to capture his interest.
Then, just as we arrived at the Magic Kingdom, he jumped halfway out of his seat, pointed to a clearing in the woods and shouted, “Turkeys! Wild turkeys, right there!”
My son and I were in one of the Japanese pavilions at Epcot looking at Oriental massagers — basically sticks with beads and rollers attached to them — when a mentally challenged man walked by and said quietly, almost confidentially, “Don’t . . . knock me one with that.”
Then to my son: “Don’t . . . knock me one with that.”
He started to walk off, then doubled back and again said, “Just don’t knock me one with that.”
If he’d come back one more time, I was ready to knock him one . . .
Observation: Modesty has vanished as an American virtue. You’ve probably noticed this already, but if you find yourself amidst a throng of people in a hot climate, you can’t help remarking on it.
Is this entirely a good thing? I pondered that in the American Adventure pavilion at Epcot, as four young men and women in Civil War period dress performed a selection of folk tunes. How thrilling it must have been to unwrap a woman in one of those Scarlett O’Hara frocks!