Brilliant … But Bouncy

I Wish I Could Remember All of Shane’s Quips.

One day, I whined about something via text to Shane. He texted back to me: 2bad. He was being funny – I mean, he wasn’t really being cruel and saying “too bad” because he didn’t care. But he was also being clever in using the number “two” for “too bad.”

The next morning, on our way to school, Shane said, “Three bad.” This was at least 14 hours after the initial text, which we’d never even discussed.

“What?” I asked, completely confused.

“I said, three bad,” he told me. “I thought you would recognize it after my text yesterday.”

Later, I was trying to get the germs off of my hands. “I need some serious hand sanitizer,” I told Shane.

“Well, I didn’t think you wanted the sarcastic hand sanitizer,” he said.

Both times, I laughed – because sometimes Shane takes me completely by surprise, and whacks me with this weird Shane lingo, that only Shane would invent – like sarcastic hand sanitizer. And I can’t help but suddenly wonder, without even a moment’s hesitation, what the personality of hand sanitizer might be.

I wish I could remember all of Shane’s quips, because it is very consistent fun. His taking things literally plays out in such interesting ways! I find myself laughing out loud more at Shane than I ever expected to – especially given his serious facade.

But sometimes, I am honestly confused. I can’t figure out how he got from one thing to another.

So one morning, when I was contemplating all of these crazy little quips, I said, “You know, Shane, sometimes you can be really hard to follow.”

“Hard to follow?” he repeated with a drawl. “I ain’t even going nowhere.”