Addressing a crowd in Calgary, Canada, last month, for one of his first public appearances since leaving the White House, George Bush seemed relaxed and confident. So much so that he was in fine, jokey form, leaving the audience in stitches, according to Vanity Fair. Here are his best one-liners, from their upcoming story about his early post-presidency:
• “I’m a lucky man,” he said to open his speech. The crowd went wild, but once they calmed down, he added: “ … to have been married to Laura Bush. She’s awesome!”
• On his first day at his new home in Preston Hollow, Texas, he said he kicked his feet up and hollered, “Baby, free at last!” To which, he cracked, Laura responded, “‘Yeah, you’re free to take out the trash. Consider it your new domestic-policy agenda.’”
• He tells of how weird it felt to be able to go outside and take his Scottish terrier, Barney, for a walk. “Barney made a deposit in the yard,” he says, adding that when he bent down to retrieve it with a plastic bag, he got to thinking, “I was dodging this stuff for eight years — now I’m picking it up!”
• “I’m the only former president to have both parents alive,” Bush told his audience in Calgary. “I said to my mother, ‘Mother! I can’t wait to get back to the way we used to be!’ And she said, ‘Is this gonna be like when you were young?’ And she immediately checked herself into the hospital for open-heart surgery.”
• Bush went on: “My mother said, ‘I wish you hadn’t called me ‘a tough old bird.’” Here he snickered a moment, and added, “Sorry — but ya are!”
Wait, why didn’t he follow his dreams to be a stand-up comedian, again?
George in Real Life [VF]
