Artfully Stubbly

Oh man I love me the smell of a Monday morning.

If you know me at all you know that this is a blatant lie. Blatant.

I'm trying to be chipper. I'm not very good at it. But I think that this week its a little easier to pretend, if only because this is a 2 and a half day work week. They should all be like this. Except we'd probably get greedy and start asking for a 1 and a half day work week.

I'd be OK with that.

But back to 2 and a half day weeks. Awesomeness no? Yes. I love me some two and a half day weeks.

And to celebrate I have a treat for all of you that love Maurice. Well the character of Maurice anyway. Although, aside from his name, none of Maurice is made up. He's 100% natural baby. Which is so gross to say. If you knew Maurice.

I wonder how many times I can naturally say Maurice? Maurice.

Anywhoodle. Maurice and I have been getting closer. And by closer I mean that we have gotten to the point in our relationship where I can mercilessly tease him all the time and follow up with "just kidding Maurice! ha ha ha" and he thinks that its all in good fun. But mostly, I mean everything I say. I'm serious. Like the plague serious.

So Maurice has a Blackberry that he cherishes more than the parents that bought him an apartment. And I have an iPhone that is basically my firstborn child. Obviously we all know that iPhones are superior (it pains me to admit this, but even Veronica knows this) yet Maurice clings to his Blackberry like Rose held onto the plank of wood as Jack floated away to the bottom of the ocean. I put a poster of an iPhone ad on the Cubicle wall as a constant reminder of its greatness and the Blackberry's inferiority.

And Maurice defaced it.

I wrote him a note telling him that this ad listed 16 more reasons why the iPhone is better than the Blackberry. And always one to be eloquent, Maurice responded with "Ya right! You wish". I said that jealousy does not become him and he responded with "The Truth hurt dosen't it!".

And no, that is not a typo (well it is but...) that is exactly what Maurice wrote down. Its not even an exclamation, its a question. Sort of. I mean, I know where he's going with it but...well, you know. Don't worry Laurie, I didn't point it out. That would have been rude. Except that I'm sort of pointing it out now. But you guys needed to know!

So Friday afternoon, its 4 and Maurice has packed up his stuff and is coming into the lunch room to wait for his bus companion. I'm there. Maurice let Anna go into the lunch room ahead of him and Anna, with a significant look at me said "Oh Maurice you're so chivalrous!"

Maurice: "What? I'm not cold."

So he hasn't learned anything from me. I feel kind of like I failed him.

After the laughter had died down, I said that its a shame that he didn't have an iPhone because he could download the dictionary app and he would be able to look these words up all the time. Anna said that we could probably just get him a real dictionary and someone else chimed in that he could just look at dictionary.com because they also have a thesaurus. Maurice, clearly unimpressed by his Blackberry's failures, told us that we could just "get me a book that reads and stuff".

Laughter. More laughter. Some more laughter.

Me: You mean like a Leap Frog?"

More laughter.

And Maurice left.

I'm pretty sure we laughed some more. I've relayed this story to people since. I even wrote the quote down for posterity. It was just too good.

I would like to leave you with some more Maurice faux pas: Maurice does not even have a basic knowledge of who Milli Vanilli is. Doesn't know about the Grammy fracas. Or even their greatest hits: Girl You Know Its True and Blame It On the Rain. I tried to enlighten him by showing him the youtube videos on my iPhone (seriously, is there anything it can't do? Nope) but I think I just confused him.

Finally- he has no recollection of Full House. No enjoyment out of phrases like "How Rude!" or knowledge of Danny Tanner cleaning mania. He doesn't understand Uncle Jesse hair references or have any recollection of those comforting life lesson moments with the instrumental music in the background. Its like he didn't have a childhood.

Which maybe explains more than anything else ever could about Maurice.

Finally (actually finally this time), in case you are wondering about the title of this post, I just talked The Boyfriend out of growing a beard until New Years Eve when he planned to shave. I said that I didn't want his mother to think that I didn't take care of him by allowing him to look like a homeless man. I told him that I wanted him to be "artfully stubbly" for NYE and he said that he thought I should work the phrase into today's post. Always one to please, I did just that.

~ Fin ~