Of Miles Rausch

Let Me Tell Ya…

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So, when I left Big Stone this morn­ing, I had every inten­tion of ask­ing Holli Gregg to be my girl­friend. I did not, how­ever, have any sort of agenda to that effect. This made for an inter­est­ing day. We met up at Kinko’s where she was print­ing a present for her brother’s girl­friend. We got into her parent’s car (a PT Cruiser!) and headed to a reli­gious gifts store for Dad. He needed his Fontanini nativ­ity sets for the God chil­dren, and there was a lot to buy. It was some $350+. We even got to pick out mis­cel­la­neous fig­ures, so Holli picked Esther, because it’s her favorite Bible story, and I picked Samuel and Judith because I like the nick­names Sammy and Judy. Dad informed me that there are more than 2,000 fig­urines in the Fontanini set, and Holli joked that she would like to see a pope fig­urine. I think if they can put Indian War Ele­phants near the Baby Jesus, then JPII should be near there somewhere.

They boxed it up, rang it up, and we drove to the mall. We walked around because she needed to find a present for her sis­ter, Marissa, and we started the name game. The name game goes like this. You get points for see­ing peo­ple you know or rec­og­nize. You get one point if you know that person’s name, or if you can express “car­nal” (Bryce’s word for it) knowl­edge of the per­son. The sec­ond part is up to the opponent’s dis­cre­tion. You get two points if you actu­ally strike up a con­ver­sa­tion with that per­son. In this game, the dif­fer­ence in scores is all that really mat­ters, so if you see some­one that you both know, it effec­tively can­cels out. When Bryce and I played this yes­ter­day, we ended the day with me ahead by 8 points thanks largely to the 2 point rule.

The game started off with Holli run­ning into her brother’s girlfriend’s grand­mother, and it didn’t get any bet­ter from there. She found some­thing for Marissa, and I (in turn) found some­thing for my aunt Karin with aid from Holli on the idea and Britty on the ver­i­fi­ca­tion (by phone). By the way, paren­the­ses are the new com­mas (boyee).

My first oppor­tu­nity to ask her was lunch in the mall. But, I couldn’t get the courage. That and I kept look­ing around for more peo­ple I knew. When we play the name game in the mall, I look a lot like I have no idea where any­thing is. Fin­ished lunch, back in the car, and off to Best Buy. She was look­ing for a cam­era mem­ory card for her Florida trip, but she felt we could do bet­ter at Wal-mart.

She remem­bered that she had a whole list of things to get at Wal-mart, which made this my sec­ond oppor­tu­nity. We were push­ing a cart around, look­ing cou­ply, but how do you just launch into that? We ended up in a clock aisle, when she saw that she had a voice­mail. I took the oppor­tu­nity to call Holly Smith, who was expect­ing
me to “come back with a girl­friend or else”. Long story short, I wasn’t very smooth, and Holly informed me that ask­ing her out in Wal-mart was a bad idea. It was decided to head to Falls Park.

A cou­ple things helped me out here. One, it was cold, and she didn’t wear her coat. Two, there was a fam­ily tak­ing pic­tures (and they looked really cold, too), so we had some­thing to laugh at. And three, there was actu­ally water mov­ing, so it gave us a nice ambi­ence. We sat on a bench, and I put my arm around her, and I think I asked her how she was, like, three times. Then I just went for it. I told her I liked her a lot, and she said that she liked me, too. I said that that was good because that leads into my next ques­tion. Then I asked her if she, maybe, wanted to be my girlfriend.

And there was a pause.

I swear there was. I turned and looked at her, because up until that point I had been avoid­ing eye con­tact like Ray Charles (that was a Bryce sim­ile, there). Then she smiled and said, “Yes”. Then I said, “That’s great. Good news.” She asked me what I would have done if she would have said, “No”, and I said, “It would have been a really awk­ward drive back to my car.”

From there we drove to aunt Karin’s place. I fig­ure, I’ll get brownie points for show­ing up unan­nounced to visit the day after Bryce and I “snubbed” them. We didn’t really snub them, we just took too much time shop­ping for gifts and had to get going. I also fig­ure that I’ll get brownie points for show­ing off the new girl­friend, and you know how Grandpa is with girls new to the fam­ily. Imag­ine my dis­ap­point­ment when I got there and no one was home! I called Karin, she gave me the key­code, and we let our­selves in. Even­tu­ally Grandma and Grandpa returned, sto­ries in tow.

There was a rea­son­able amount of chit-chatting, then a cou­ple sto­ries, then some more chit-chat, then some more sto­ries. G’ma and G’pa were in prime form. At one point, they were telling dif­fer­ent (but related) sto­ries at the same time. That took tal­ent to lis­ten to. There was one story that ha-ha-Holli (with an ‘h’ and a PT cruiser) and I walked away with. I have tried to tell it in as try to Alyce Miles style as possible.

There was a fam­ily that lived next to the Miles fam­ily in Doland (that’s D-O-L-A-N-D) that was poor. I mean, they were poor poor. They didn’t even have a car, they would have to bor­row ours all the time, you know. Bright kids, too, all of them. There was one named Mary (Patty?) that went to USD, and she was just named Hon­or­able Alum­nus a cou­ple years back. She mar­ried a doc­tor from USD, and they moved, you know, and had kids. Well, one night she wakes up, and here her hus­band had had a brain aneurysm and was hav­ing a seisure. He never did wake up, and he died a week later. Well, she was very upset. She never quite got over it. So she moves to Sioux Falls, and she was just dev­as­tated, you know. Well, and one time, she was going to take Kevin and some of his boys some­where across town, and he offered to drive. She goes, “No, Kevin, I need to drive”, because she was a smoker and kept her win­dow down the whole time, you see. And Kevin said she was a hor­ri­ble dri­ver. Well, one win­ter she was dri­ving on the Inter­state, and she turned onto the exit, and she was smok­ing, of course, with her arm out the win­dow. And she lost con­trol of the car, and it rolled in the ditch, and cut her arm off. They had to ampu­tate it.

(I pause here to let that sink in. A depressed woman has her arm sev­ered in a freak auto­mo­bile acci­dent. It gets worse.)

Well, that made things worse, you know. And we, of course, brought flow­ers and cards to the house, but she wouldn’t answer the door. It was a beau­ti­ful house, just huge, and I don’t know why she bought a house that big, she would say, “Alyce, this house feels too big for me.” So, her sib­lings would come and stay with her for weeks at a time, and try every­thing to cheer her up. And I would think, you know, she had every­thing going for her. Her poor daugh­ter had grand­chil­dren this high, and how can you be depressed around that? But, I guess. Well, she would never smoke in the house, so she went out­side. And she had wrapped up in a blan­ket. And they think that she must have slipped and fallen into one of the win­dow wells, you know, and FROZE TO DEATH.

(I’ll pause again as the hor­ror sinks in.)

To add empha­sis, Grandma leaned over to Holli when she pro­nounced the words “froze to death”, as if to say, never smoke around win­dow wells. “And of course, you shouldn’t dwell on the hor­ror of it, but I pray, I pray, that she was uncon­scious when she froze to death in the win­dow well.” I tried to point out to her that by repeat­ing the words “froze to death” and recount­ing the death in greater and greater details each time, she was in fact mak­ing it more and more hor­rific, but she couldn’t help her­self. This goes to show that, while always enter­tain­ing, not all of Grandma and Grandpa’s sto­ries are meant to be funny. Some are meant to give you night­mares. Forever.

We talked with the G-rents for nearly two hours, which was much longer than antic­i­pated, but it was nice. I took the lead-in of “I could tell you some sto­ries about Miles as a lit­tle boy…” as a good enough rea­son to leave. I actu­ally started to say, “Well, I’d bet­ter be hit­ting the old dusty trail,” but short­ened it to “Well, time to go.” In the car ride to Burger King (yes!), we recounted the details of the hor­ri­fy­ing win­dow well inci­dent, how Grandma had begun call­ing her Polly and so my cor­rec­tion gave way to call­ing her “ha-ha-Holli with an h and an i”, how the fact that Holli was dri­ving a PT Cruiser reminded Grandma of just how much she wanted one just like it, how both made sure to recount how many Iowa peo­ple, or license plates, they had seen recently, and how since Grandma didn’t put her hear­ing aid in, we had to spell a strange num­ber of places, peo­ple, occu­pa­tions, and other things. We said good­bye, packed it up, and I headed home. to play Triv­ial Pur­suit and to save the world (with Lind­sey and Chris) from David (with Bryce, Peter, and Tyler).

All-in-all, a pretty good day. :)