stop. start. stutter.

I've been slacking on getting books into my GoodReads, so this morning I sat down and caught up. (We're up to $3.29 pledged per book, which is awesome -- if you're still thinking about pledging, operators are standing by!)

Meanwhile, a funny story to tell: one of the books that I added a review for was Gunga Din and Other Favorite Poems by Rudyard Kipling, which I'd pulled out to read out loud to Sarah the other night when she had a migraine. Why Kipling, you might ask? Well, a few weeks ago she'd discovered, at work, that none of her (highly-educated! highly intelligent!) coworkers had ever heard of either Kipling or "Gunga Din", and she'd boggled about it at the time.

Fast-forward to Saturday night, while we were out to dinner for my birthday with two of our friends; she related this story again, and we killed a few minutes happily trying to remember the entirety of the poem. (For the record, I lose it after the first chorus.) I mentioned "The Ballad of East and West" as one of my favorites for recitation ("Ha' done! Ha' done!" said the Colonel's son; "put up the steel at your sides!" -- I mean, seriously, just say it out loud!) and she hadn't heard that one, so I resolved to read it for her at the soonest opportunity. (She likes hearing me read things out loud; it's the last vestiges of my theatre training. I did a good half of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead for her last month.)

The waiter, an adorable floopy-haired nineteen-year-old, came by partway through to bus the table. I pointed a finger at him. "Have you ever heard of Rudyard Kipling?" I demanded.

"No," he said, and as I theatrically (and tipsily) mourned the lack of education -- what do they teach in schools these days, to borrow a phrase -- he shot back, "Well, do you know what a CRX-500 is?"

I didn't know, but Sarah said, "It's a car. A Honda."

He slunk off, chastened. I firmly resisted the urge to cap it with "she's a better man than I am".