While at work Thanksgiving 2004
I was loading the oven with pumpkin pies (648 total, and that was just the
pumpkin ones) with my boss and he was talking on and on
as he does at times.
He had a stroke about 12 years
ago that caused partial paralysis and also affected
his ability to speak clearly. As he gets more tired,
he becomes harder to understand.

Anyway, he was telling me about a fellow coworker named Mark who was going to spend a bundle of money to have a tattoo removed. He turned to me and said, “So I told him the story of the squirrel who shaved his nuts in the
wintertime.” I was confused about why a squirrel would
shave his nuts, especially during the coldest months, so
I asked him, “Why did the squirrel shave his nuts in
the wintertime?” And he turned to me with angry eyes
and a horrible red face and yelled, “Saved his nuts! He saved his nuts in the wintertime! I was telling Mark to save his money!”

“Oh”, I replied, and tried to keep working. Filling pumpkin pies takes a steady hand and a certain amount of speed because you stick the crusts in the oven and then fill them by hand, without overflowing, but before the pie shell
melts. I couldn’t stop laughing, and there was no one
else around so I just tried to contain myself. My boss
is in his late 60s, a very conservative Christian. I
can’t believe that I said that.
I considered telling him that I once read that squirrels never can find 95%
of the nuts they stash for winter but the mood had
somehow changed, and the kitchen grew silent.