his idea...

...of amusing from the viewpoint of The Man Who Lives Here. He had a birthday recently, and was invited to have lunch with the daughter who lives in Decatur. She asked if he would be willing to drive for an hour to meet her halfway between where he lives and where she lives. It is not a difficult drive on this end, and one that I have done many times for the express purpose of meeting for lunch, just hanging out, a walk in the park to talk. I will never get over despising the traffic in metro, and meeting half-way after a pleasant drive through the piney woods is preferable to forcing oneself to drive into the pit of hell that describes interstates in Atlanta. Practically no traffic at all heading north on I-185 that literally 'dead ends' on the military post here - amazingly easy traveling with clean landscape: not even one billboard, never any noticeable litter, very few big trucks.

He was born in the years of The Great Depression, which was the worst economic downturn in the history of the industrialized world, lasting from 1929 to 1939. It began after the stock market crash of October 1929, which sent Wall Street into a panic and wiped out millions of investors. These lean years had a profound effect on everyone who lived through that time, both adults and young people who grew up in those years of scarcity.

I don't know specifically how it affected his family, when he was growing up in a town where steel mills were the primary employer, but that crash where banks failed affected the entire nation, as well as others around the globe. I have an amateur/personal theory of how living in a time of financial fear affected him, but that is for another day. He was too young to feel the full brunt of constant anxiety, but overheard conversations expressing concerns, doubts, worries would have had a trickle down effect. The abbreviated history lesson is just to give you an idea of his age, as his birth was right smack dab in the middle of those years.

The daughter asked him to meet her for lunch, on a Sunday after church. His response was something along the lines of 'maybe', with an invisible shrug, even though the invite was issued weeks before the actual day. She asked again, after a reasonable amount of time had passed. His response was 'I'm waiting to see if I get a better offer'. 'Wow!' was my reaction when she told me what had transpired through text messages.

When I returned home and saw The Man Who Lives Here, I told him (after he had been fed!) that if someone liked me enough to say 'meet me for lunch', even without knowing it was a birthday, I would jump at the chance. My response would be to immediately clear my calendar, check to see if my slip is showing, and start putting on  my party hat. The answer should never be 'let me wait and see if something better comes along'. The conversation went on a bit longer, with me trying to understand how he could think an insulting response was amusing or appropriate. It has become obvious over many years that his sense of humor does not align with mine: any number of times I have made a serious inquiry to be met with a flippant answer. Baffling until I remind myself of how thankful I am that God made everybody different!

She later reported that I had 'shamed' her dad into accepting, actually making a call instead of the impersonal texting method. Agreeing to make the drive to meet her an hour up the highway, halfway between her home and his. Without knowing there was a second daughter invited to come along, one he rarely sees, meant to be a surprise when they arrived at the Cracker Barrel for lunch.