Back Barrel Fever
Chapters (20)
  1. Barrel Fever
  2. Barrel Fever
  3. Barrel Fever
  4. Barrel Fever
  5. Barrel Fever
  6. Barrel Fever
  7. Barrel Fever
  8. Barrel Fever
  9. Barrel Fever
  10. Barrel Fever
  11. Barrel Fever
  12. Barrel Fever
  13. Barrel Fever
  14. Barrel Fever
  15. Barrel Fever
  16. Barrel Fever
  17. Barrel Fever
  18. Barrel Fever
  19. Barrel Fever
  20. Barrel Fever

Lonnie Tipit went so far as to suggest that we hire him as Khe Sahn’s English tutor at, get this, seventeen dollars an hour!!!!!!!!!! Seventeen dollars an hour so she can learn to lisp and twitter and flutter her hands like two small birds? NO, THANK YOU!!!!!!! Oh, I saw right through Lonnie Tipit. While he pretended to care for Khe Sahn I understood that his true interest was in my son Kyle. “How’s the schoolwork coming, Kyle? Working hard or hardly working?” and “Say, Kyle, what do you think about this new sister of yours? Is she the greatest or what?”

It wasn’t difficult to see through Lonnie Tipit. He wanted one thing and one thing only. “If not me, then I can suggest another tutor,” he said. Someone like who? Someone like him?

Regardless of who the English teacher was, I am not in the habit of throwing my money away. And that, my friends, is what it would have amounted to. Why not hire an expensive private tutor to teach the squirrels to speak in French! It would be no more ridiculous than teaching Khe Sahn English. A person has to want to learn. I know that. Apparently, back in Ho Chi Minh City, Her Majesty was treated like a queen and sees no reason to change her ways!!!! Her Highness rises at around noon, wolfs down a fish or two (all she eats is fish and chicken breasts), and settles herself before the makeup mirror, waiting for her father to return home from work. At the sound of his car in the drive-way she perks up and races to the door like a spaniel, panting and wagging her tail to beat the band! Suddenly she is eager to please and attempt conversation!! Well, I don’t know how they behave in Vietnam, but in the United States it is not customary for a half-dressed daughter to offer her father a five-dollar massage!!! After having spent an exhausting day attempting to communicate a list of simple chores, I would stand in amazement at Khe Sahn’s sudden grasp of English when faced with my husband.

“Daddy happy five dollar shiny now, OK?”

“You big feet friendly with ABC Khe Sahn. You Big Bird Daddy Grover.”

Apparently she had picked up a few words while watching “Sesame Street.”

“Daddy special special funky fresh jam party commercial free jam.”

She began listening to the radio.