An Alternator with Fava Beans and Chianti?

If I did not know better, I would swear that my wife is the Hannibal Lechter of automobiles.

The new van wouldn't start this morning, necessitating another trip to autozone. Hopefully it's just a low battery charge, but with my luck...

On the good side, I think that I'm going to nickname the new car Clarisse.

"You might think you're a sports car, with your fancy wheels and V6 engine; but you're really just a bad oil change and a lower wheelbase away from being a poor, tan, station wagon! Phtppppphtpphtphhht!"

Laugh or cry. I'm kinda on the edge.

Yesterday's post reminded me of a couple of classic family stories that ought to be recorded for posterity. It was the trip to the buffet that triggered 'em.

The first and foremost was a trip that we took right before the Boss and I got married. My brother had just gotten home from his mission and with my grandparents in town, mom and dad took everybody out to eat. The Boss had just had her wisdom teeth pulled and was not in much condition for an all-you-can-eat, but came with us anyway.

It was a nice dinner with lots of jokes and stories, and we were all having a good time. My brother and I got up to go get ice cream. When we got to the dessert bar, there was this little, old man who looked to be about a thousand and ninety years old, holding a cane and an empty bowl. He had this frustrated look on his face and either out of plain frustration or because he mistook us for employees, he shouts at us, "You wanna tell me just where in the hell they put the damn rice pudding?!"

I fell on the floor; I was laughing so hard. My brother kept it together long enough to help the old geezer out, but by the time we got back to the table, neither one of us could control ourselves. When we told every one else, the whole table was in hysterics.

To this day, I have no idea why that old man asking for "Damn rice pudding" was so utterly hilarious, but it was. More than fifteen years have passed and we cannot have any family function involving dinner without someone asking if there will be "Damn rice pudding" on the menu. Whatever you do, don't call it rice pudding. That just wouldn't be right. Everyone knows there is no rice pudding but "Damn rice pudding".

The other story is just as good. Right after my brother got married, we had one great mass family vacation to Florida and Disney world. Haggis was maybe one or two, and we flew fourteen people to Orlando. It was one of those unforgettable trips that become eternal legend.

Just to give you an idea of how great a trip this was, we flew from Salt Lake to Orlando on a red-eye, and sitting right next to my dad was none other than Bill Goldberg and Diamond Dallas Paige from professional wrestling fame. These were the days before cell phone cameras but Dad did get DDP to autograph a barf-bag. Says he was one of the nicest guys you'd ever meet.

And the trip only got better from there.

But for this post's purpose, I'll just tell about our trip to the Crystal Palace Buffet in Magic Kingdom.

Now, my grandmother started a tradition long before our trip to Florida when we went to a buffet in Jackpot, Nevada. During that meal, Grandma came back from the dessert bar (Sorry, this was pre-Damn rice pudding days) with a plate full of cookies. You have to understand that my grandmother is a woman of great presence, but small stature. So we were all kind of amazed at the quantity of dessert she was planning on putting away.

We had no idea.

A few minutes later, she excused herself from the table and we were stunned to see nothing on her plate but crumbs. When she came back with another stack of cookies, curiosity got the better of manners and someone jokingly asked her where she was putting all the cookies.

"In my purse", she said, pulling out a ziplock baggie now half full of chocolate chip deliciousness. "I bring a ziplock, and take a dozen or so home with me so grandpa can have them for late night snacks."

Well this was far too practical an idea for everyone at the table to NOT adopt, so when we went to the buffet from then on, we always had a "Bag man" for a little take home treat.

Well, the food at Disneyland is...um...pricey. Having a sugar pick-me-up in a purse was a really good idea. So when we ate at the Crystal Palace we made my sister M the "bagman".

To avoid ostentatious displays of greed everyone would get one extra cookie when making a trip to the buffet. It became a bit of a game. We'd go "secret agent" while casually slipping M the loot for storage.

The giggles were getting louder and louder, and to be honest, a dozen people each nicking a couple of extra cookies really does put a dent in a buffet line. By the time we filled the bag, we noticed our waiter was studying us suspiciously. The giggling stopped, and we all started wondering at the ethics of covert cookie capers. We finished eating and everyone was nervously teasing M that if the "heat" came, we'd run interference while she made a break for the door.

Imagine our surprise when the waiter motioned for the manager to come over and then whispered something in his ear while gesturing in our direction. Now I was actually sweating.

The manager walked over to us, cleared his throat and said, "Excuse me a moment."

Everyone froze.

"Were you the people looking for a mail drop to send postcards home? The waiter wasn't sure if it was you or another family that had asked."

Everyone busted up laughing. "Yeah, that was us."

"I'd be happy to take those for you and see that they are mailed."

"Thanks a bunch. The postcards are right here in M's purse...um...."

Needless to say, covert cookie operations were red lighted from that point on.

Now I gotta go, the Boss just pulled bananna bread from the oven and it's calling my name.