“Dad why is there a pair of panties hanging on the front door?” Chelsea asked after entering the house last night.
“I don’t know Chelsea,” I reply sitting on the sofa ending a phone call. “Why is there a pair of panties hanging on my front door?”
“Seriously Dad,” she says looking at me as though she is the parent.
I shrugged my shoulders. This is Tybee Island. There is a long history of underwear abuse here. I believe that there is a support group for underwear abusers that meets on Tuesday nights at Chapel by the Sea Baptist Church. (I once read that the more conservative one’s religions views are, the more likely that they will eventually be underwear abusers. Maybe it was alcoholic? One of the two. I can’t recall.)
A few minutes later we were off to McElwees for dinner. Kristen works there and it is rare that I get both of my daughters at the same time. When we walked outside, sure enough there hung a pair of burgundy thongs with black lace.
Chelsea eyed me suspiciously while I inspected them. They were mediums. I shrugged my shoulders again. Chelsea rolled her eyes at me. I left the panties on the door and off we went.
Whenever Kristen sees us she shoots across the room as though out of a cannon with little concern of who or what is in her way. She slams her body into ours and you cannot help but feel her love. After a few intense moments she is back to being all over the place doing a thousand things at once. Kris works hard and consistently until she is exhausted and then she gets sick. After a few days in bed she’s back at it again. She gets it from me and I hope that she forgives me one day.
“There’s a pair of panties hanging from Dad’s front door,” Chelsea says.
Kristen looks at me before shrugging her shoulders. She is a Daddy’s girl.
Chelsea and I talk as we consume flounder and shrimp. She steals my hush-puppies but she’s my daughter so I left her without retaliation. We tell stories and laugh a lot. Kristen darts in and out wanting to know what she’s missed.
The place fills and Kristen is too busy to pay us much attention so we finish up and leave. In the car Chelsea hits play on the CD and “A Glee Christmas comes on”. I’ve watched Glee once with Chelsea called and ordered me to so. It was the Rocky Horror Picture show theme. I loved it! Then I forgot about it.
My friend Karen sent me the Glee version of “Imagine” and if you haven’t seen it, stop reading this, go to YouTube and find it, cry for a while, and then resume reading.
Chelsea plays me the two gay guys singing “Baby it’s cold outside” by Savannah native Johnny Mercer. I LOVE IT! So Chelsea and I are just riding under the Christmas decorations on the island listening to music. All three of my kids share my love of music. We make one another CDs and are forever introducing one another to new things.
“STOP” I yell. “Park!”
Chelsea has never been to Bernie’s to listen to Sam Adams and Gordon and they were doing their Christmas concert in the outdoor courtyard.
“Rev!” Gordo said in his Sling blade voice as we entered, “is it true that you also go by the name Micheal?”
I shrug my shoulders.
Now this is in the middle of their version of Feliz Navidad except that they’ve changed it to Feliz Navi-down. “Christmas sucks!” Gordon says.
Chelsea smiles as we grab two stools and Gordon wails on the harmonica. Then they launch into “Santa Claus is coming to town.”
“I’ll tell you why,” Gordon says in the middle of the song, “he knows where the bad girls live. God I love bad girls.”
Chelsea and I crack up with laughter.
So…all of that to say, a bad girl evidently got away from Santa Claus last night and made their way to my house and left her panties on the front door knob. I’m not sure why she didn’t come in.
Either that or Johnny O is trying to get me back for the time that Chelsea and I wrapped his truck in multiple layers of cellophane so that he had to carefully cut it off with a razor blade so as not to damage the paint job.
