Tales from the Mothership

Richard Bonomo's mother has lots of great stories. In fact, I will tell you the best one today.

When the Bonomos lived in the Mideast many years ago, they knew a British man who once gave a wealthy Bedouin a ride home. This Bedouin tried to thank him by giving him a sheep, and it wasn't a cute little fluffy white sheep like what we are used to, but a big, smelly sheep with long, stringy fur like dreadlocks. Of course it is bad form to refuse a gift in the Mideast, so the British gentleman, thinking quickly, said that he was a very poor person who lived in a small apartment instead of a large tent, and he had no land and no sons and only one wife, so he had no way to care for the sheep. All the Bedouins were very sympathetic: "No sons! Only one wife! You must be a very poor man!" and so they agreed to care for the sheep for him.

Now in reality, this British gentleman was quite rich and lived in an expensive apartment in an exclusive neighborhood, but as he told the Mothership, he had nowhere to put a big, smelly sheep. The Mothership, who is Sicilian and not British, said her father once kept a lamb in the bathroom in their apartment for several days, and he even butchered it in the bathtub. She said that proved you could keep a sheep in an apartment. She was laughing so hard at him that the British gentleman exclaimed, "If you do not desist in this unseemly laughter, I shall be forced to retrieve my sheep and place it in your bathtub!" (Imagine someone with an East Coast accent imitating someone with a stuffy British accent saying that.)

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