Wednesday, July 14, 2004

Goosepimples Herbert Day!

Goosepimples Herbert was sitting on the couch with his wife Eileen watching television. When Eileen looked down at the cushions for the remote, she noticed that Goosepimple Herbert's left arm had broken out in Goosepimples.

"Oh, God. Herbert look," Eileen said.

Herbert looked down at his arms, then up at Eileen. "Don't panic," he said. "Get out to the car and wait. I'm going to put on pants."

They raced to the airport where their son, Roy, was about to board a plane to a Marching Band Competition in Chicago. Goosepimples Herbert and Eileen were not allowed to go to the gates without a ticket, but they had Roy paged to meet them at the security gates.

"What's up?" Roy asked from behind the metal detectors.

Goosepimples Herbert held out his bare forearms, which had by now turned beet red.

"Oh crap," said Roy.

"Go back and get your stuff," Eileen told Roy. "And tell the rest of the band that the plane might go down."

Roy marched sulkily away from the gate. Goosepimples Herbert and Eileen waited for twenty minutes with no sign of Roy's return. They started paging him again, with no response. With just minutes before the flight's departure, Goosepimples Herbert and Eileen began to beg and shout at the security desk, warning them that the flight to Chicago was in danger. They were both detained, and somehow the flight was allowed to take off.

The plane is in the air right now and Roy is on it. He is sick of being pulled out of trips and events every time his father's goosepimples erupt. Half the time, the goosepimples predict tragedy. The other half, they predict nearly nothing at all. Roy refused to back out of the trip and he certainly wasn't going to warn everyone else on the trip based on his father's half-baked psychic ability.

Goosepimples Herbert and Eileen are no longer being held but they've yet to leave the airport. They're watching the clock, waiting for their son's flight to land without incident, at which point they're going to rent a car and drive to Chicago to pick him up.

Happy Goosepimples Herbert Day!