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Am I the only one that’s still feeling the effects of New Orleans? What effect? Well, inappropriate thoughts that want to come out your mouth as actual words, and do. I’m not usually that good at quippy double entendres, except on paper, but there must be something in the air in New Orleans that gives you this questionable ability. (It has to be the air and not the water, because none of us used tap water while we were there. We met a local that had been hospitalized from giardia recently. Not at a major hotel, but we decided not to chance it.) So something in the air makes you a little more verbally quick on your feet, and most of the quickness is all the stuff you normally don’t say out loud. But something about New Orleans takes that little conductor in your head that goes, yes or no, on what you’re about to say, and ties him up and puts him in the closet. Or at least Jon, Charles, and I noticed this effect. I even noticed it with Florence. But I thought once we got home it would fade. It really hasn’t. Is this some permanent change in my defenses. You know, those walls and gates that keep all the things you’re thinking from slipping out. I don’t know whether to be afraid, or relieved, if it stays. I started by blaming Charles, because he is very quick on his verbal feet, and only our friend Richard could keep up with the double entendres. Jon and I get better at quips in pure self-defense. But here we are a few days away from New Orleans, and only e-mails from Charles, and still those thoughts slide through my head. They dance around my lips, and come perilously close to spilling out. Is it anything that’s not true? No. Is it anything that I need to share with that many people, um, no. I have been reduced to utter silence by the presence of my own child, because thought after thought is inappropriate in front of her. The inside of my head is still echoing with an energy from the Big Easy. Heck, I didn’t even drink while we were there. So what is it? What is it about New Orleans that just makes you come back, and be a little looser in your own skin?