Chad feels that I need to post more on this blog.  He told me this tonight as we took a drive, top-down, enjoying the fresh air, watching Lucy’s eyebrows sway in the breeze.  Chad likes to make pronouncements, and tonight, he pronounced that I need to post at least three times a week.  I explained first that there is not a soul in the world who cares how many times a week I post, and second, that I’d be happy to post three times a week if I had three interesting thoughts a week, or three interesting things that happened to me a week. 

His response: “You don’t need anything interesting.  Just write about stuff.  Anything.  Write about something that made you laugh.” 

The thing that made me laugh the hardest this week, so hard in fact that my mascara turned into black soup that spilled all over my nose and managed somehow to stain my forehead, came at Chad’s expense.  But if he insists...

Chad occasionally joins two of his friends for chicken wings.  And let me pause for quick second and say that Chad must have incredible karma because his guy friends from the past, present, and I’m betting the future, are remarkably good people.  Ok, so he occasionally goes for chicken wings with them, and this Wednesday, he invited me.  I worried a little bit about crashing this party, but then I remembered that the chicken wing place is right next to a shoe store.  So I was there.

After some time, when my fingers were thoroughly covered in barbecue sauce, the dinner conversation turned, as it inevitably does, to incredible-things-our-phones-can-do. In the course of that discussion, I learned about one of Chad’s new pastimes, and oh, how it made me laugh.

It turns out that Chad is playing a game on his iPhone that involves raising crops on his own feudal estate.  And my husband--my ironic, snarky, libertarian, anti-anti-establishment, no-nonsense husband--says that today he has harvested some strawberries. 

I turned to him, and said, “so you’re playing Farmville, now?” 

And he hung his head in shame, and said, “I guess it’s kind of like that, yeah.”

No offense to any of the lovely people who play Farmville.  It’s just that the idea of Chad--Chad who usually plays games that involve pretending he is killing terrorists, and Chad who mocks most things that involve imagination, and Chad who believes that about 90% of the world’s population is “Worthless”--finding a lonely pink sheep CRACKS ME UP IN A WAY I CANNOT ADEQUATELY DESCRIBE. 

I laughed so hard I embarrassed myself.  And then Chad shows me the screen, and on the screen is a field--where his strawberries grow, duh!--and a frog wearing a crown (I swear!) and a castle.  And I started laughing until I couldn’t breathe all over again. 

I could not move on from this topic.  Later, we talked about how playing games on your phone (I know, a lot of time spent talking about the phone) can seem like a big sign that says “you, person across from me, are not interesting in the least.”  And I told Chad that his forehead should now read, “I’d rather be harvesting strawberries than listening to your bs.”  I promise that for weeks I will be questioning Chad about brown cows and his tomatoes and whether his chickens laid any eggs.  It will not get old.  Later, when Chad announced that he hopes to be the mayor of some place on four square (I think), I asked him if he had completely lost his mind. 

So tonight, when Chad pronounced that I need to post more about anything, something that made me laugh, I looked over at him (lovingly, of course!) and said, “speaking of...did you harvest any strawberries today?”

And my husband shook his head, indignant, and said, “No. (pause) Pumpkins.”