I guess it’s a tradition now. For the third year in a row I was dragged kicking and screaming (OK, I’m exaggerating AND kidding! I have to lay down some kind of cover for my Chicago friends.) to a scavenger hunt for love birds at the District in Tustin.

The first year we did all of the challenges and I think set a record for how long it took us. Though we were got to the finish line well past everyone else, my inner lawyer tried to argue we won on a technicality because our limerick appeared to be the only one done in the correct meter and rhyme. Um, judging by the reactions from organizers, I think they thought I was kidding. And I was … sort of. No, I was. Really. I’m not that competitive.

Anyway, we gold-bricked through most of it last year, but we ended up doing most of the tasks this year. There was NO way I was getting face-painted, OK? Though I did volunteer to get the lipstick, announcing that Dennis Rodman once said, “Real men wear pink.” I may or may not have been kidding then. I haven’t decided.

Anyhoo, we outdid ourselves with the limerick portion of the contest this year. We came up with five, count ‘em, five! Mona wrote one and handled the rest of the tasks on the list while I kept scribbling four more poems.

WATCH THE CLIP OF MY READING THE WINNING LIMERICK!

The guy in hysterics as I read them aloud in the video above certainly got the last laugh – he and his partner won the grand prize! But Mona and I will always have our limericks…

The first one has some ostentatious and obscure literary allusions to fulfill the English major nerds in us. Enjoy!

My Mona’s my Maud Gonne
Of her my lyrics fawn.
But unlike Yeats
I’m grateful to the fates
For her heart I have won.

Mona’s middle monicker’s Dilip*
Me heart she’ll fill up
When she coos
Come to me my beboo
Just in time to shtup.

My Mona’s such a princess.
Her love I must confess.
She made a boy here smile
For a little while
When she gave him her scepter, no less.**

I went to the mall in Nantucket.
It was nothing like the District.
The shoppers were hicks,
Too fond of the sticks,
And nowhere could I find a bucket.

There once was a boy from Chicago.
He dreamed of visiting Key Largo.
He saved his money.
It was pretty funny,
And stowed away on a ship as cargo.
–By Mona Shah-Anderson

*It’s customary in Indian culture to take your father’s first name as your middle name.

**As part of the scavenger hunt, the Ballusionist made a balloon crown and scepter for Mona. Mona gave away her balloon (and mine) to a few children at the mall Sunday.

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