Toe my Show! To Ma Shoe! Tomah Sho'!

My very first real job, gotten the summer of 1986, was bussing tables at the finest restaurant that Wahpeton, ND could offer: Kelly's Fine Dining. It was right down the road from the drive-in movie theatre, next door to the bowling alley and owned by a funny Greek guy named George, who ran the place with his inexplicably hot, young North Dakotan-born wife named, of course, Joy. Due to my lack of perspective, working there had been a dream of mine for a few years and so, there I was.

Even though my family had been going to Kelly's for years, when I first started working, I had no freaking idea what George was saying to me for the first couple of weeks. Interpreting George had additional points for difficulty: he pretty much had a mild case of Tourette's. So, basically, you're 16 years old, at a new, your first job, and your new boss comes up to you and gives you what sounds like an order in a crazy thick Greek accent all while snorting, adjusting his tie and swearing a couple of times.

It took a few months but, eventually, I came to understand George as if he spoke perfect English.

All these posts about Max talking get a new twist when we run into someone who doesn't spend as much time with the boy as we do. Which is pretty much everyone. Max says, quite clearly, to our neighbor, "Hi! Today, with my parents, I went in my mother's car, to see the excavators near Costco, where my Father works." What our neighbor hears is: "Ni-Ni! Aggle Flaggle Plaggle Snurp!!" Katie and I stand there with these proud looks on our faces. What a complex sentence! We look at our neighbor and she's standing there with a look that says, "Uh, what the F did your kid just say?"

He's our little Greek restaurateur, stuck in the wilds of Eastern North Dakota.

Here's a video of Max making absolutely no sense at all. It's some catch phrase that he's been repeating. And don't ask me how the mini kung fu ties in. He's headed for his own 36th chamber, I guess.