Short shorts, Emus, and Gelflings

Here is a younger Vince Lanier wearing China’s version of “Daisy Dukes” 🙂

This photo is of her and  her friend, Jo Fan, visiting somewhere in China. Seeing this photo this morning reminded me of a treasured memory of a day from my honeymoon.
I remember well, while on our honeymoon, Vince and I were visiting Disney World (of course!). It was my very first visit to the happiest place on earth. Vince was wearing some really short shorts on this particular day. (I should mention that I’m the one who actually cut these shorts for her. I can’t recall why I did this…but I was probably a little more depraved in my thinking back then…and it WAS my honeymoon, afterall!). As it was my first visit to Disney World, and I was always an avid Disney fan growing up, you can imagine the overwhelming sensations of walking through the gate into the Magic Kingdom’s Main Street USA.

I was so overwhelmed with the swirling and alluring flood of vibrant sights, sounds…and of Vince standing before me in Daisy Dukes with Cinderella’s Castle on the horizon…that I had to sit down on a bench just across from the candy store.
Vince said, “Why are you already sitting down? We JUST got here!!!”
I said, “Baby, I need to sit down. It’s a guy thing. You wouldn’t understand.”
Vince retorted, “What?!?! What does sitting down have to do with being a guy? Let’s go! We’re already late.” (Always rushing me…still to this day. Curiously, she is never in a rush while at home. But on vacation…it’s always time to pound the pavement and go go go!)
“Honey, just let me sit a little while. It’s your shorts. You’re not going to be able to walk in front of me today. Stay beside me…or, like a good Asian bride, walk 3-feet behind.” smile emoticon (I still ask her to do this today…just to get her goat.)
During exchanges like this…those in which I am talking in veiled indirect facetious codes in response to Vince’s prodding demands…Vince consistently displays a look that is strongly reminiscent of the cold hard stare of the emu.
The emu reminds me of the Skeksis from “The Dark Crystal”. My first experience with an emu was at Lazy 5 Ranch. I was seated in a truck’s open-air bed, looking forward to this expedition as a first-timer, holding a bucket that apparently exudes a siren’s call to all animals in the park, and an emu suddenly appeared, gliding into my personal space and stood solid, still, and close. It’s dark, pinched and impressive sized cranium framed an expression that starts with the full canvas of the face and draws you to the cold hard expressive eyes that say, “Fool, you are in imminent danger should you decide to not comply with my reasonable request and submit to the obviousness before you that I possess the ability to do memorable harm to you.” I threw the bucket of food at the bird who was unmoved by either surprise or gratitude. The bird simply released me from the stare and descended like a rain cloud on my scattered food pellets.
Looking up at Vince from my park bench into that foreboding expression, I complied with a slightly more direct response.
“I have to sit here for a little while longer until my biological reaction to the view of your Daisy Dukes framed in Disney subsides, abates, diminishes.”
She cocked her head with the cool precision of a mounted weapon while maintaining that Skesis-like glare. Suddenly, my condition that I was attempting to politely describe to her, dawned upon Vince. And with slightly less disdain than a Skesis holds for a Gelfling, Vince said, “You’re an idiot.”
She joined me on the park bench. We sat, together, taking in the sights and sounds of Main Street USA in Disney World…and I was a happily married man in the happiest place on earth.
(For the record, Vince never wore the Daisy Dukes again…much to my dismay.)