Things My Mother Heard (for Andy, who never gets tired of this)

Also, to be fair to Dad: cell phones and parents and I often make a hilarious misheard combo.

Six or seven years ago, when I was still working up in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, I had a 3/4-mile walk through a corporate park from my bus stop. In order to make the corporate park more scenic, a number of manmade ponds were added. In order to make the ponds hugely unappealing and less scenic, a bunch of fatass Canadian geese took up residence there year-round, making sections of sidewalk a veritable minefield (of poop, that is, not mines).

It was particularly tough in the spring, because birds, like any barely evolutionized lizard, are spastically protective of their nests. So not only did you have to hopscotch around poop, you had to be wary of the hissing, sometimes charging mama ganders (who were, and always will be, jerks, motherhood aside).

One morning, I was talking to my mom via cell phone on the way past one such pond. A mama gander hissed at me, even though, as I recall, I was not making eye contact or figuring out how to eat the delicious, delicious eggs in her stupid nest, and I said, mid-conversation, "Oh, shut up."

Mom: Who are you talking to?
Me: Oh, a goose hissed at me.
Mom: ...where was he sitting?
Me: By the pond.
Mom: Was anybody watching him?
Me: ...wait, what?
Mom: Didn't you say a goof hissed at you?
Me: (after 30+ seconds of solid laughter) No, no, no, a goose.

After Mom finished laughing, we had a discussion of what exactly constituted a goof and why he would be hissing at 8:00 in the morning.