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epitome of incomprehensibility
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"Remind your mother and me to drink more during this heat wave," Dad said to me this evening. "Water, I mean."
"Not gin?" (teasing)
"No, gin would make it worse!" (or something similar)
"But I have tonic water." I do; it was left over from J. and K.'s birthday party. On Thursday, I made myself a "mocktail" with that, orange juice, and a few mint leaves from the yard. Today I tried adding iced tea to it, but it tastes better without; the iced tea dilutes the orange taste.
...
Dad went upstairs. I'm left alone with my thought of how everything_reminds_me of David.
Specifically this: I'm in his apartment and I open his fridge, see a thin rectangular prism of a bottle. "Oh, you got some gin!" I enthuse. He had mentioned getting some to make gin and tonics.
The funny thing? I pronounced it with a hard "g," like the second syllable of "begin." My excuse? I was doing a German class then; in German, it's pronounced [g] and not [dʒ] no matter what letter comes after. In English, I may not be a big drinker (I drink more in other languages), but I know how to pronounce "gin."
But he found this funny enough to remember afterwards. Several times he teased me by calling it [gɪn] and not [dʒɪn].
(IPA above. As in International Phonetic Alphabet, not India Pale Ale. Correct me if I make any mistakes, though.)
...
Anyway, this is a good memory, if now bittersweet (like a gin and tonic). See, sometimes his teasing unwittingly poked at my insecurities. Other times, like this one, it proved that he remembered things about me that no one else knew or cared about: it was sweet.
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