It may seem that I can't do anything without it producing strange, halting conversations in which I have no idea what I'm expected to do, and in which very clearly I'm not giving any kind of answers that fit in the conversational partner's universe. So it was that after I left my mother with her jacket and the strong hint to get something to eat that I passed the security guard's desk and turned in my Visitor's Pass. He asked whether he should save the badge. I didn't have any strong opinions on this; he said that if I was coming back, then he could put the badge to the side so there wouldn't be any need to re-print out the bad photographic identification later today. This seemed sensible to me and finally, with my father waiting impatiently for my report, agreed that he should save the badge.
It will not surprise anyone to learn that when we got back in and I wanted to go back to my mother, it turned out the security guards had changed shifts. If any badges had been saved by that point, they were cleared out and we had to start from scratch. That could have theoretically saved me the time of figuring out what the first guard should do about my badge, except that I'm certain that even if I knew they were going to be wiped out and recycled that I'd have suggested saving it anyway in order to not be wasteful.
I told my father that my mother was going in for tests and she suggested we go find something to eat. Naturally, we then went to the waiting area and the start of a House episode that I think I've seen before on the TV there. I repeated to my sister-in-law the suggestion that we get something to eat, and she agreed that was a good idea, and we didn't quite do anything after all that agreement. A bit past the first commercial break my father said if he thought it was all right he'd like to get something to eat. I repeated my mother's urging that we get lunch, and he said if only my mother thought that was a good idea. So I repeated it again and he said, well, if it's an order then let's go eat.
Trivia: Ideal X, the first containerized cargo ship, left on its inaugural voyage 26 April 1956 from Berth 24 at the foot of Marsh Street in Newark, New Jersey. Source: Box Boats: How Container Ships Changed The World, Brian J Cudahy.
Currently Reading: Twinkie, Deconstructed: My Journey to Discover How the Ingredients Found in Processed Foods Are Grown, Mined (Yes, Mined) and Manipulated into What America Eats, Steve Ettlinger.