I want to be a moose. My mother always told me that I could be anything that I wanted to be. She was suffering from the delusions of the 60’s. Apparently she was not well versed in the rules of moosedom. They don’t let girls be moose. I guess they have some sort of female equivalent. Moosets perhaps. I don’t want to be a moosette. I want to be a moose. I find moose absolutely fascinating.
A good friend of mine is a moose. He invited myself and the family to the moose lodge for their weekly dinner. I was as excited as I have ever been about any dinner. I didn’t have to cook it, serve it or clean it. That makes it gourmet in my universe. The kids wanted to know all about the moose and their lodge. Of course, I can’t answer those questions. I must admit that I too was curious about the real goings on inside the moose lodge. I have visions of Fred Flinstone and Barney Ruble or maybe Ralph Cramden, even though he was a buffalo not a moose. Is there really a secret handshake? And what about the hats? Who picks them out? Do they have a committee of hat people? A secret handshake subcommittee that tries out all of the prospective handshakes and narrows it down to a few choices? Do they have a handshake-off? Who are the judges and are their decisions final? I was anxious to actually get to go inside the moose lodge.
We arrived and our friend, Chief, was waiting. He gave hubby some cute little things called moose bucks. Picture monopoly money with a picture of a mini moose on it. He was explaining to hubby about using moose bucks. Each moose buck is worth $3.00. You use them to pay for your dinner. Hubby didn’t understand why you had to turn in real money to get fake money and have to calculate back the dollar value of the meal and how many moose bucks it would take. We were all confused. Chief, who is well skilled in the art of moose buck calculations, helped us out. I laughed. One look at the money with the picture of the moose and I couldn’t control myself. The laughter came from out of nowhere and I couldn’t stop it. I tried. And then I would look at the fake mini moose money and loose it again. My children were giving me that “You are embarrassing us and we will hate you forever if you don’t stop right this instant“ look. The thing that would send me into fits of laughter faster than anything else is that on the moose buck is the notation under the lettering that says “This note good ONLY for purchases in your lodge” I am so glad they explained that to me. What if I had been confused and mixed up the moose money and Geoffrey money. I have visions of being carted off to jail as I try to make my purchase at Toys R Us with moose money instead of Geoffrey money. I can see the headline. MOOSETTE ARRESTED AT TOYS R US, PLEADS CONFUSION. I had to walk away. I finally managed to gain control of my senses and in we went. The tension was building.
The kids were excited. The mystery was solved. There in front of them was the inside of the moose lodge. It was a big dining hall. There were long tables with food set out on one side of the room and tables with place settings covering the rest of the room. They kept looking around trying to find something mysterious and out of place. They just knew there was something there that they weren’t being told. They watched and waited and ate. And watched and waited and ate. And ate some more. Then it was over. No mystery. No secret society. Just a group of people having a nice dinner together like old friends do. I felt kind of bad for the kids. They didn’t even get to see the secret handshake.
