That’s nice
A woman I met the other day was telling me a joke about three women who were rocking on the front porch and chatting and one said, “My husband loves me so much he bought me a mink coat,” and the other two women said, “That’s nice.” And then the second one said, “Well, my husband loves me so much he bought me a big diamond pendant.” And the two other women said, “That’s nice.” Then the two asked the third what she had received from her husband and she replied, “He sent me to charm school when we first got married so I would quit saying Fuck Off and say That’s Nice instead.”
Similarly, I was at a neighborhood meeting the other evening presenting the bridge project, when an elderly woman walked up to me and asked me where I was from, and proceeded to tell me she has lived in this neighborhood for 79 years and nothing is wrong with those bridges and I have gone too far. I smiled, my own version of that’s nice, but when I came home I asked my uncle for some fact checking. Next time I see this woman, I plan to tell her the truth, which is that my maternal family came to Louisiana in 1592 and that way before she was born, in the 1700s to be exact, my great, great, great, great grandfather Hugh Sheridan was a ship captain who sailed on Bayou St. John in from Lake Ponchartrain bringing supplies into the city via the Carondelet Canal. And one of his wife’s siblings married a Loreins, ahem, related to Santiago Loreins who left his property to his daughter and son in law Jean Louis Allard who then sold it to McDonough who gave it to the City, the property that is now New Orleans City Park.
Yes, my dear, my family was here way before you and so next time one of you old blue hairs corners me and asks me what my pedigree is, I’ll just have to whip out my distant grandpa Hugh and the rest (some were pirates I must warn you) and so combined with my father’s heritage from Cuba via Constantinople, Turkey via Toledo, Spain I am not only from here, I brought all the stuff with me when I came.
Isn’t that nice?