at my expense...again

The other night my friends Bill and Marlene had a party for those of us who helped them build their deck. It was a fun party, complete with burgers and dogs and chips and dip and beer and wine and Diet Coke and two kinds of brownies. And lots of laughing. LOTS of laughing.

We were all standing around the table talking, and Marlene and Debbie were standing over near the sink talking quietly. All of a sudden Marlene steps back and says, "Nooooo!!!!" as if she JUST CANNOT BELIEVE what Debbie has just said. We all stop and silently stare at them as if to say, "Um, excuse me. Please share with the whole class."

Marlene informs us that OH MY WORD DEFFENBAUGH HAS RAISED THE PRICE OF TRASH PICK UP IN DEBBIE'S NEIGHBORHOOD. I mean, really. The nerve. But it gets us laughing again and now on the subject of trash and Deffenbaugh, the monopoly on trash pickup in the greater Kansas City area.

We were all saying how we didn't like Deffenbaugh, but Marlene says, "Well, I like them because they take just about anything I put on the curb. Oh, and they took my rabbits."

Everyone seems to understand. I'm flabbergasted. Jason is standing next to me and I look at him completely confused. He looks slightly confused as well, so I feel better. We sort of mumble something to each other indicating that ah—we must've misunderstood. Marlene must be talking about some form of inanimate rabbits, like wooden cutouts or metal sculptures, that she set out by the side of the road. I turn back to Marlene, who is saying something about peacocks and emus—which confuses me even more. What do peacocks and emus have to do with trash pickup? Then she says again that she was very glad that Deffenbaugh took her rabbits, because while they were cute as babies, she couldn't keep them as adults. Okay: inanimate theory now completely out the window. I look back at Jason for help, but he seems to be completely on board with her story now. Finally I say, "Are you talking about live rabbits? Or dead rabbits? You put real animals on the curb and Deffenbaugh took them away? Are you SERIOUS?"

Everyone looks at me in silence for a millisecond and then bursts out laughing. Apparently what I had missed (it was never actually SAID, clearly everyone who has grown up in the suburbs of Kansas City knows this already) is that the Deffenbaugh family—the family that owns the trash company—has a yard full of strange animals. Hence Marlene talking about the peacocks and emus. They took her live rabbits to live with them. Not in a trash truck, but in the backseat of their car.

Jason kindly put his hand on my shoulder as if to say, "It's okay. There's no way you could've known," except for the fact that he was laughing hysterically with the rest of the people in the room and looking at me like, "Oh, dear friend. If it weren't for you, at whom would we laugh?"

"Great," I said. "This is JUST LIKE the time I walked in on the middle of Tales From The Crypt and thought it was a documentary. I almost had a heart attack."