A wife takes her father to the doctor several times in the course of a year. The journey is an hour's drive one way. They always take the same route. On that route is a fairly new looking large house on the north side of the Amarillo Loop which appears abandoned. There is never activity of residence there, no vehicles, personal articles that make a house look like a home. Just weeds, Texas sized ones. For years. This bothers her father.
Every trip the wife complains about the level of annoying things her father says and does. She has to handle a lot of his decisions because of his level of reduced mental capacity and plain ignorance of how the universe works and how normal society functions.
Every trip he mentions, "I wonder who owns that house? I wonder why no one ever tries to live there? I wonder if its for sale? I wonder how you find out who owns it? ... ..."
After every trip the wife complains about her father to her husband - about his antics to the doctors and nurses, his silliness, the wonder moments.
So a few weeks ago both the wife and her father go to the doctor at the same time for the same test work and so the husband gets to be the chauffeur. They get a few miles from the house of great interest to the elderly man in the back seat. Just then husband is reaching in his pocket to get a cell phone to secretly record the inevitable "wonder wonder wonder" statements, as the wife is thinking along the same lines and make funny motions with her head and mouths silently to her husband that the w-w-w house is coming up shortly. He shows her the phone and turns on the recorder.
They wait.
In motion at 70 mph.
Silence.
Nothing.
The husband watches in the rear view mirror as his father-in-law looks at the house carefully during the approach. The father-in-law stares in a focused panning manner while passing over the bridge with the yonder wonder house just to the right and at a lower level looking down on the brown silent brick house.
Nothing.
A few miles pass and the recorder is turned off.
The husband and wife are silently mildly disappointed to have not captured his words.
They talk about it later when getting home that evening, wondering why he didn't talk about the wonderful house that fills him full with wonder. Perhaps it was because he was in the back seat instead of the front? Perhaps it was because the husband was in the vehicle?
Yesterday the husband takes his wife to the doctor, same journey. No elderly wonderer wanderer this time.
They get a few miles away from the loop entrance and pass a trailer house that is parked on the left side of the road. It has been there for several weeks or months, take your pick, the husband hasn't kept track.
The wife says, "I wonder why they put that building right there, .... " she starts to continue on but is interrupted by her husband's hysterical laughter, he is able to mention something about her father, 'like father, like daughter' words, he forgets exactly what was said in the intensity of the hilarity while trying to drive properly, but does remember calling her "[put father-in-law's first name here] Junior", which brings on more smiling red faced mock disgust from his wife. But she gets embarrassed and laughs too, only threatening him, "you had better shut up while you still can!" and pops her husband lightly on the arm. He moans in exaggerated theatrical pain clutching his right shoulder, with very poor acting on purpose.
The husband tells her "those are the exact same words that your father told me a few days ago when he threatened to beat me up while we were driving down the road (she wasn't on that trip) when I had an argument with him concerning his rude behavior of ripping out his own IV tubes at the hospital. At least he didn't hit me."
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