Horn o' plenty

Submitted by email to cj@thiscrazytrain.com

Hi CJ... found this incident I had funny and figured I'd write you. Last Wednesday (Dec 1) I was on 6:03 train to Clarkson. There was a woman across from me with this hideous sculpture that looked like a tuba. Along with carrying it, she also had several bags of fruit with her, particularly grapes, some squash, a turnip and some other veg I had no idea was. She also had some oranges, the smaller kind, like tangerines. Finally curiosity got the better of me so I asked her about her tuba. She told me it was a paper-mache horn and that she had her sister make it. She said she's a supply teacher and her goal for Thursday was to teach the class she's subbing for about American Thanksgiving and the tradition of the horn o' plenty. Ahh, gotcha, I said. Then I was quiet for a second and asked her to repeat when she said she would do this, stuff the thing with fruit and all that. She said tomorrow, December 2. I had to break it to her. American Thanksgiving (I work with world markets so I know) was last Thursday, the 25th of November. She says, get out. I said yep. Then she went all kinds of shades of red. I also told her the pilgrims would never put tangerines in the horn o' plenty. I don't think it was on the menu. She said, what about oranges? I said I don't think there were pilgrims in Florida at the time and that there's no way they got oranges up to New England. Then she says, it doesn't matter, the kids are in grade 1, they won't know the difference between this Thursday and last Thursday. Then she changed seats. I don't know if she'll ever see this but I thought she was sweet and it was an honest mistake on her part (provided she doesn't have the internet) and I didn't mean to embarrass her.
Still funny tho. Might as well throw a couple of big macs in there if "it doesn't matter"!

- Mark