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Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gauguin who wrote (41152)	11/5/1999 9:44:00 PM
From: E	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71178

Your hiding in the laundry room reminds me of something that happened to us a few summers ago. We were having lunch on the porch. Our house is situated on the side of a small mountain, and the house sits on the uphill edge of the property, and the porch faces downhill onto the yard, which gives way after about 40 yards to woods. The woods are ours, too, or at least l.89 acres of them are ours. We gather firewood and kindling there, and in the summer, at the end of the yard and into the woods, wild raspberries, sometimes. So there we were sitting on the porch, and we became aware that something was stirring in the woods. We listened and watched as the sounds drew closer, and soon realized that there were people in the woods. We couldn't see them at first, but they were moving through the trees closer and closer to us, and we could hear them talking, but couldn't understand what in the world it was they were talking about. The reason for this became clear when they emerged from the woods into the yard itself, where most of the raspberry bushes were, along the lower edge of the yard, because we recognized them as the four adults of the German-speaking family who lived on the road at the foot of the mountain in a completely round house they had built themselves over several years, to the fascination of all. (It has a completely round garage next to it and the house and garage look like a large brick flying saucer next to a small brick flying saucer.) Anyway, when we figured out who they were, we understood that the reason we hadn't been able to make out what they were saying was that it was in German, but it took us longer to realize that each of them was carrying a container, and that what they were doing was picking our raspberries. Well, we watched for a couple of minutes, thinking that they would soon realize that we were sitting right there, and that it really wasn't entirely polite for them to be stealing our raspberries while we were watching. Then we realized that that they knew we were sitting there, and didn't care. They came right up into to the yard, and turned their backs to us and kept picking along the row of raspberry bushes. The only sign of embarrassment on their part was that they stopped speaking to each other and just picked silently. We were really mystified as to what could possess anyone to do something so odd, and we were mainly just so embarrassed for them that we got into a kind of hysterical laughing fit and ran into the house and hid, laughing and peeking out the windows at them until they finally went away taking our raspberries with them. Later we wondered why it never even occurred to either of us that we might have suggested that they shouldn't do that. Basically, we had no rules for behavior in that situation. Imagine if some Germans just showed up in your garden and right in front of you began boldly picking tomatoes. Would you be so embarrassed for them and so amazed that you would hide in the house until they were through? If not, you are less crazy than we are. One thing I should probably acknowledge is that unlike tomatoes, wild raspberries aren't very good. They're tiny and sour. You need thousands of them to make one little not-good tart with. I only did it to get that Quakerish, good-values feeling.