an unexpected christmas

   I traveled back to my before-college home a couple times in August to visit my family, and during one of my visits we pulled an old memory out that I just had to write about.

   My little sister, and only sibling, went through a phase about five years back in which she really, really wanted a doll house. Not a Barbie Dreamhouse, but an actual wooden dollhouse with wooden dolls and wooden furniture. I thought that was really lame, to say the least, and asked Santa for a 2006 AmericanGirl stone-age-looking equivilant to today's touchscreen devices. So cool.

   Christmas Eve, my parents were setting up all the gifts that Santa had brought my sister and I when they made a discovery that will forever make me laugh.

   They had looked high and low on the internet to find the perfect wooden dollhouse and family. They ordered everything, getting excited about my sister's expected reaction to her dream present, and the package showed up shortly after at our little home. They didn't even bother to check inside the box, trusting that everything would be just how they had ordered.

   Well, the night before the big day, my mom was unwrapping all the parts and pieces when she gasped.

    "Uh, honey?" - my alarmed mother

    "Hmm?" - dad

    "This family is black."

    "Black?"

    "Yeah. And there's no dad. We got a black family with no dad."

   Inside of the bubble wrap sat a mother, two children, and an infant.

   I don’t in any way intend this post to sound racist. But seriously, a black family with no dad? How much more stereotypical could you get? I can just imagine the person whose job it is to wrap up mass manufactured little wooden families looking at my parents’ order form and thinking “Another perfect little white family, eh? Suck on this!”.

   My parents couldn’t exactly give my sister a dollhouse without any dolls, and not many stores in our little town stay open until the crack of dawn on Christmas Day, (or stay open the week of Christmas, period), so they had only one choice: act normal.

   The next morning, my sister was completely elated after seeing her new house and its inhabitants. She didn’t mention their color at all! It was actually really cool; look how far we’ve progressed, America! When my mom asked where the daddy was, she simply replied “the war”.

   I didn’t get the pleasure of hearing this story until a couple years ago, and it’s by far one of the funniest tales I’ve heard. Lesson learned: check to make sure the dolls you ordered are what you ordered. Or, better yet, raise your kids to not care! Acceptance is essential.

warning: bear spray

   In my mind, I pictured only one use for bear spray: spraying bears. You could throw it at an attacker, I guess, but I don’t think that was the intended strategy. You could also attach it to a sort of rope and swing it around, aiming to smack your aggressor in hopes of discouraging him/her/it, but that’s similar to the aforementioned plan. I feel comfortable saying that spraying the bear spray in the face of your assailant is the best bet, preferably in the eyes or other orifices.

   However, this weekend a new use of bear spray was revealed to me. It can also be used as a small bomb! How neat is that?

   This discovery was definitely not intended, to say the least. My boyfriend had been in the midst of the moving process and must have forgotten that his giant can of bear spray was laying on his dashboard. In the direct sunlight. In August.

   Needless to say, the can exploded. Luckily, he wasn’t in his truck at the time of the attack so no one was hurt. His truck, however, is a different story. Now he gets to look at this when he cruises around in his sexy spray-painted 1985 F150! 

   I should also mention that, yes, us Montanans do own giant cans of bear spray. My boyfriend got his from his mom as a generosity before a backpacking adventure. I presume we’ll be hitting up REI today to refuel.

the word “definitely”

   It is the bane of the English language’s existence. Yeah, I said it.

   For some completely unknown reason, we as English-speaking humans struggle with this simple word seemingly more than any other combination of letters known to man. Ok, that might be a slight exaggeration considering there are plenty of other complex words, such as exaggeration, that are much more difficult and which I would struggle to spell if it weren’t for some handy help. Thank you, auto spell corrector. But still, it really shouldn’t be that challenging.

   Let’s look into the word in a laidback manner:

   The base of the word “definitely” is “define”; that’s a pretty easy word, right? Spelled just how it sounds. We could even break it down further for all you dyslexics: “de” as in to undo something, and “fine” as in how I look.

   Alright, so now we have the simple “de” and we slide “fine” in right next to it. Now comes the tricky part. Somewhere along this process, we must move the E in DEFINE. We put the word “it” where the E would usually be if whoever created this god-awful language wasn’t so cruel. So now we’ve got DEFINITE. Hey looky there! That’s a word! Not quite sure how to use it, though…

   Moving on, we add the most integral part of our process: the end. Stick an “ly” to that sucker! We don’t, under any circumstances, add any other letters. Where people pull A’s and extra I’s and take E’s from, I do not know. But I do know that it thoroughly pisses me off.

Definately  = what??

Definetly = nope…

Definitiley = just stop.

Ending result: DEFINITELY! What is so complicated about that???

   I am a Facebook frequenter and there is nothing that I detest and resent more than watching someone repetitively misspell this common word. Ok, another exaggeration. I also resent animal abusers, but somehow that seems a little too deep for a blog post.  Each time I happen upon this gross error, it becomes a mental battle over whether I should correct the mistake and make the post-er feel stupid, or do nothing and allow it to be seen by others who will think “Oh so that’s how they spell it…huh. Welp, I’m gonna spell it that way now, too! ‘Cuz I’m dumb!” Yes, that was mean.

   Thus far, I have refrained from correcting the numerous pathetic attempts at spelling a simple word and I feel good about it. I would hate to really hurt someone’s feelings by saying something along the lines of “Who taught you how to spell? Helen Keller?” Because that would be just plain unkind.