homepage Forums Air Combat & Civil Aviation Wings: Over Flanders Fields The Barmy OFFers Club: Have you what it takes to be one of the daft, the touched, the Barmy?

I kinda dreded it being boring. Pick my mom up from the Lutheran home and went off nto the party. Got her home a little late for supper, no biggie as she had controband food.

I wanted to set the paper airplanes afire and launch of the back deck. The adults didn't like that, and it was windy with freezing rain.

Had fun driving my mother, great gramadma she is, home.

Her dementia is setting in, but boy did we chat up a storm on the way home.
Kinda reminda me of a Truman Capote short story.

I like paper arplanes and kites.

"A Christmas Memory" is about a young boy, referred to as "Buddy," and his older cousin, who is unnamed in the story but is called Sook in later adaptations. The boy is the narrator, and his older cousin � who is eccentric and childlike � is his best friend. They live in a house with other relatives, who are authoritative and stern, and have a dog named Queenie.

The family is very poor, but Buddy looks forward to Christmas every year nevertheless, and he and his elderly cousin save their pennies for this occasion. Every year at Christmastime, Buddy and his friend collect pecans and buy whiskey � from a scary American Indian bootlegger named Haha Jones � and many other ingredients to make fruitcakes. They send the cakes to acquaintances they have met only once or twice, and to people they've never met at all, like President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

This year, after the two have finished the elaborate four-day production of making fruitcakes, the elderly cousin decides to celebrate by finishing off the remaining whiskey in the bottle. This leads to the two of them becoming drunk, and being severely reprimanded by angry relatives.

The next day Buddy and his friend go to a faraway grove, which the elderly cousin has proclaimed the best place, by far, to chop down Christmas trees. They manage to take back a large and beautiful tree, despite the arduous trek back home.

They spend the following days making decorations for the tree and presents for the relatives, Queenie, and each other. Buddy and the older cousin keep their gifts to each other a secret, although Buddy assumes his friend has made him a kite, as she has every year. He has made her a kite, too.

Come Christmas morning, the two of them are up at the crack of dawn, anxious to open their presents. Buddy is extremely disappointed, having received the rather dismal gifts of old hand-me-downs and a subscription to a religious magazine. His friend has gotten the somewhat better gifts of Satsuma oranges and hand-knitted scarves. Queenie gets a bone.

Then they exchange their joyful presents to each other: the two kites. In a beautiful hidden meadow, they fly the kites that day in the clear winter sky, while eating the older cousin's Christmas oranges. The elderly cousin thinks of this as heaven, and says that God and heaven must be like this.

It is their last Christmas together. The following year, the boy is sent to military school. Although Buddy and his friend keep up a constant correspondence, this is unable to last because his elderly cousin suffers more and more the ravages of old age, and slips into dementia. Soon, she is unable to remember who Buddy is, and not long after, she passes away.

As Buddy says later: "And when that happens, I know it. A message saying so merely confirms a piece of news some secret vein had already received, severing me from an irreplaceable part of myself, letting it loose like a kite on a broken string. That is why, walking across a school campus on this particular December morning, I keep searching the sky. As if I expected to see, rather like hearts, a lost pair of kites hurrying towards heaven."

oops that was from wiki and I didn't say so.

Gentlemen, I would request admittance into your august assemblage, even though it be only January. In my defense, I would OFFer up any of my challenge videos and say "If they not be barmy, then not barmy be I!" I should wear the badge with pride, if in the future I should ever be so fortunate as to do something that would warrant "pride"! What say you, my daft overlords? and (W)OF(F) course, , followed directly by ...

I have to agree. Some of those challenge videos were the barmiest things I've seen.

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Rick, your WOFF challenge videos have certainly demonstrated that your grip on reality is tentative at best. AYE!

Tony, your lunacy goes back years with OFF so I know you qualify. AYE! again.

Thanks to these most recent lapses in good judgement it appears we'll have another trio soon sharing our traditions what with MudWasp, Rick, and Typhoon throwing their collective mad hats into the ring for consideration. Barmy love company.

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I say, if I could find the cockles of my heart, or knew what they were, I would thank you from them for your faith in my lack of lucidity!

Rick, do you have any more challenges for this year?

Excellent - just in time for the drinks - welcome to all new members to the club

Aye! And aye to more drinks.
Starting to get crowded in here. How much barmy can a thread hold?

Ok, so today while roping a cow, with the wind in my face, I saw myself as a winged aviator sitting in his Sopwith Triplane and my quarry was an Albatross scout. I made my way to his six and let loose my riata.......I mean Lewis, and sent him down in flames!

The aftermath of being accepted into BOC

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MFair, you clearly did not drink enough during the festivities as those antlers are still on the wall and not on your noggin. Next time.

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MFair, I love that classic style chapeau you are wearing! Reminds me of an old Tom Mix movie! The whole outfit, pants and boots fit the same look! Very nice in deed sir! Just one thing out of place! That Jack Daniels should read "Rot Gut"!

Oh well, can't blame you for choosing a better tasting poison!

??? ??? ???

Olham Rot Gut was a term commonly referred to by cowboys for the very poor quality whiskey normally sold in the saloons out west. The good stuff was expensive and saloons made more profit on the cheap whiskey because most cowboys couldn't afford the good stuff.

Ah, thank you - I thought it was meant to be German:
both words exist in German too, and in English this would mean "red good" or "red well" -
but it wouldn't make any sense.

Sho... <hic!> I need another bar, drink-keeper <hic>! I mean, another drink, beerkeep! err...<HIC!>

shish we've been handin' out theesh fanshy BOC badges'n'shtuff, err.. how cn these poor daft sots show'em off? Over at CA? We got shome trick to mirror threads?

Another pint o' me old Guiness, pleashe!