landsharking

i thought i was going to have a great blog post all ready for you guys after this past weekend. i went up to nj for a visit, as my cousin & her new baby & her baby daddy were coming for a visit from ca. they're all lovely, my family are all big fans of that little clan. it was the 14 jehovah's witnesses who were also coming who i thought would provide some good fodder.

so my mom is one of seven kids. it's a crazy family... no one sibling speaks to all 6 others, although my mom i think comes closest at 5. (the sister she no longer speaks to is worthy of a post all her own - and that's just based on the stuff i've managed to overhear about her.)

anyway. one uncle who my cousin currently speaks to lives about 1 hr away from my parents, and she asked if he could come over for a meal to meet her new family. we'll call him jehovah's witness uncle, or JevWitCle for short, seeing as he converted to fervent witnessdom long ago. his wife is a witness as well, of course, as are their three kids, each spouse, and their six grandkids. so... jevwitcle + wife + 3 kids + 3 kids-in-law + 6 grandkids = 14 witnesses. in my parents' house. which is typically filled with highly liberal, non-religious types (that would be me, my sister, and our parents). heck, we're gay-lovin', blue state heathens, we are! my sister is majoring in biochem, which narrowly beat out molecular genetics, and practically froths at the mouth when people bring up teaching creationism or intelligent design instead of evolution in schools. i was sure that there was no way everyone would escape the weekend unscathed.

and yet... absolutely nothing happened. we had actually debated whether or not my sister should bring up evolution just to spice things up (or perhaps mention her research this summer for the first effective lou gehrig's disease treatment in decades, which happens to require lots of cell work and gene therapy), and i had threatened to bring home a girl friend instead of my actual boyfriend and claim we were dating... but in the end everything was very normal, pleasant even, and we kept the conversation free from jehovah or homosexuality or stem cells or anything incendiary.

in fact, the most awkward moment was one that never happened, thanks to the presence of mind of my boyfriend. my mom had asked me to bring my frisbee up with me so the grandkids could play with it in the yard. so i did. i recently lost my highly-treasured college disc (augh.. it still pains me to talk about this. i'm so not over that disc) so i got the current w&m girls' ultimate disc to replace mine. william and mary's (my alma mater) women's team was called the "mother huckers" when i was in school. see, this is all clever and funny, because there's a type of throw in ultimate called a "huck," but clearly that's an awesome word to make naughty-sounding phrases with. so. we were the mother huckers, tougher than a bunch of truckers, catch, throw, lay, flow, we are the mother huckers go! go! go!!! ..and my disc had a sweet looking girl driving a semi, with her arm out the window flicking a disc. but that one is (sob) gone, and i have the new w&m disc to replace it. which looks like this:


er. yeah. so there's this seldom-used tradition in ultimate, called "land-sharking." it's customarily performed when you score your first point in a real game or tournament, and it involves being hoisted up on people's shoulders, prone, face down, and carried around the field.... naked..... with a disc between your ass cheeks. like a shark fin. sort of like that charming illustration above.

i've only seen it done once. perhaps the w&m team is bringing the tradition back? i'm not sure. i just know that the boyfriend pointed out once we were in nj that perhaps this was not the most appropriate disc to give to highly-religious, impressionable young children. good thing i keep him around. :-)

incidentally, i ADORE the idea of doing a stick figure/crayon drawing of the traffic altercation! thanks walter! i'll see if i can get that done sometime soon. anyone want to volunteer to do some of my mind-numbingly-boring-yet-copious work??