"Allie, Henry and the Ghetto Retard Picnic"

Here we see a pretty photo of a scene from my neighborhood. It has nothing to do with my blog post. The weather is just outrageous and the leaves are pretty and I felt like showing everyone. Anyway, moving on.

So I spend a lot of time with this kid Henry. He's adorable and precocious and hilarious and I talk about him entirely too much and everyone is getting horribly sick of it. His mom basically pays me to get cracked up while he's awake and to study while he naps. He does bratty 2-year-old stuff a lot because he is a human being but that gets overlooked when he asks me if I want a glass of wine. What kind of wine, you wonder? Bordeaux, he says- it's his favorite. He's too much.
ANYway, I'm now going to continue talking about Henry. Because nothing else in my life is cute or exciting. I mean I read a really fascinating article in the American Journal of Public Health for school about an intervention that will change the way women view the female condom, but no one cares about that. They care about the Ghetto Retard Picnic*.

Pause to absorb

Here is where this little blog of mine is gonna get all kinds of scandalous. Because I tell it like it is. And Henry and I, well, we were the guests of honor at the Ghetto Retard Picnic. We were playing at the park when a huge white van pulls up. You can picture it- the kind of van that has but four functions: transportation to Korean churches, getting old people from the nursing home to the mall for field trips at Christmas, making deliveries for the Michael Scott Paper Company, and taking the mentally challenged out on excursions. Anyway, out comes the most funky bunch a fellas I've ever seen: They are dressed head to toe in ghetto chic, from sideways hats and gold chains to sports jerseys and baggy shorts. And they are...to put it kindly**... mentally challenged. So just close your eyes now and try to imagine the show put on for me and Henry. Bonafide gangsta-dressed men skipping around gleefully with plastered-on smiles and seemingly not a care in the world. Golly, one even decided to take off his pants next to the shed.

And then I had to take poor innocent Henry home.

But when you study too much and your main social interaction involves singing with a small child, stuff like this becomes It-Made-My-Week material. And it did.

* In fact, no one cares about anything I write. This blog has no meaning and no purpose except to be a way for bored college friends to pass the time at work and for me to feel like I do more in my life than read for school. And that is that.
** It takes a lot out of me to put things kindly