Valley Circle Lane Halloween

        On Halloween, in my grade school days, we took our UNICEF containers trick-or-treating with us. At school we were given what looked like empty milk cartons – the one-cup size like they had in the cafeteria at lunchtime – they had that size and shape to them. There was a slot in the top, like a piggy bank. When we went out on Halloween, we were supposed to yell, “Trick or Treat! And change for UNICEF!” and when we held out our bags to collect the candy, we stuck our milk containers in front of us and shook them to make a jingling sound. I thought it was embarrassing to ask people for money, even in a costume, but no one seemed to mind how much or how little was in the milk cartons when we took them back to school after Halloween.

          I do not remember trick or treating until I was grade school age, and I think my outings were only while living on Heinrich Road, which would be until I was 10. One year I was a horse – not the front end or the back end, but an entire, albeit, bipedal horse – and yes, I had a long face both inside and outside the mask. Another year my Mom bought me a lady mask –  I did not think the lady mask was was a good costume at the time – I'm female, and the mask was female – where's the disguise? But when I walked into my best friend's house with the mask on, Diane laughed and laughed – so that's when I learned that any kind of mask is a good disguise.

Uncle John with our Halloween mask

          Our trick-or-treat route was usually Valley Circle Lane and a few houses on Heinrich Road. It seems like it was always very cold – the desire to wear a winter coat over the costume, or maybe even not go out at all, was very strong – of course, our parents made sure we were not under-dressed for the weather. Most people answered their doors, gave us our candy, and we would be on our way.

          But there was one family, way in the back of the Circle who would insist we come into the house – just the kitchen – and we had to chat a while and tell them who we were (introduce ourselves!) before they would give us any candy. I knew they were being neighborly with their forced etiquette, but it was totally out of my comfort zone.

          Another family, this one on Heinrich Road two houses past Diane's, invited everyone in one Halloween! Their basement had a door to the outside, and they served apple cider and powdered doughnuts – lots of people were there, and that was fun. It is a Halloween scene I've always remembered and often wished I had the energy and social ease to duplicate for my neighbors during today's Halloweens!

304 20151031 Valley Circle Lane Halloween

What's For Dinner?

        It seems that most storytellers who have children have a story about the child saying something and then the parent looking around hoping that someone outside the family did not hear what was said and take the meaning out of context. Sarah mentioned recently that Horatio was calling to her from the bathroom one day – H is three years old – the comment was a reasonable one, and as Sarah responded, she suddenly realized how odd the conversation would be if someone else were hearing it.

        This brings to mind my own story in a similar vein. Amanda was a pre-schooler and Sarah was in kindergarten. It was dinnertime, I was cooking, and both girls were vocal and ravenous. I can picture the kitchen where this took place – the new house in Texas – so Sarah was 5 and Amanda just past her third birthday. They asked what I was preparing for dinner.

        Does it bother you when someone asks “what's for dinner?” or “what are you cooking?” The question makes me nervous. I would rather put the finished meal on the table, and if there are going to be complaints, well, they can begin then. If I tell people what I'm fixing, and they are not okay with the menu, then I would have to hear the complaints while I am cooking and continuing until the completion of the meal! Not revealing ahead of time what the food is going to be just lessens the duration of negative comments I might be forced to hear. I rarely told the girls what I was preparing even if they asked.

        On this particular evening, Sarah and Amanda were hungry and inquired as to what I was cooking. I did not tell them. Good thing, or my fears would have manifested. When the food was ready and I put it on the table and onto their plates, the negative comments from the girls came. And the deflated feeling of whatever is the opposite of “motherhood is so rewarding” swept over me.

        One especially wearying exercise the girls liked at the dinner table was bargaining for dessert. How many green beans would one have to eat to get dessert? Half a dessert? A spoonful of dessert? Could one get any dessert if no green beans were eaten? Eventually I would tell them no negotiating, clean the plate!

        I cannot recall the other specific comments the girls were making about the dinner – only that they were unyielding and a tad loud. At one point I looked out the window next to the dinner table and realized the window was not only open to the screen, but it faced the road which was not very far away at all. Gasp! Neighbors could probably hear Sarah and Amanda carrying on! I reached over and closed the window.

        “See what you two have made me do? I have to close the window so the neighbors won't hear your loud complaints and call the police!”

        Silence.

        Then, “Why would the police come, Mom?” Sarah was very serious.

        “Well, if the neighbors can hear you, they might think that I'm doing something terrible to you and that is why you are being so loud. So they will call the police. And the police will come and say that I have been abusing you, and they will take me away!”

        “Oh,” Sarah said with a sound of relief that surprised me, “They will take you away?”

        Sure – why would the kids be afraid of the police? They would only be taking Mom off to jail!

         I sat there feeling sorry for myself.

        Then in my mind I played out the scene the way it would really happen:

        The neighbors hearing a racket coming from my kitchen would call the police.

        The police would knock on the door

        “What seems to be the disturbance here, Ma'am?”

        “Well, you see, Officer, it is like this. I was fixing dinner for my two little girls, and when I put the food on the table, they loudly let me know that they would rather I cooked something different, and so they have been bitterly complaining about it ever since they sat down to eat.”

        “What kind of food are you trying to serve your daughters?”

        “Well, Officer, let's see – tonight I made mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, and turkey.....Gosh! I am just horrible! You'd better handcuff me and take me away!”

        And just maybe they would take me away because they'd realize I would prefer jail to my kitchen just then.

        That is when I reached over and reopened the window.

303 20151030 What's For Dinner

Hearing Margaritaville

       Another story from the archives, this one written in February of 2009, and I've left it as if it were today.

        Sometimes in a movie someone will enter an empty room and there will be sounds from the past – parties or music or children playing. Memories from things that had occurred in that room come flooding back.

        That is what happened in real life today when we walked into, of all places, the Mexican restaurant near our house. Even though it is Saturday today, Mike was working all day – first going to Johns Creek and the lab to analyze samples he had collected yesterday, and then Mike had to drive to Lilburn to pick up an instrument he's going to need for a job in North Georgia tomorrow – which means he will be working all dang weekend. So it was not too surprising when he got home this afternoon that Mike offered to take me out for a beer.

We ran a couple of errands first, and then we stopped at the Mexican restaurant – which I am going to call Muy Grande. We had not been to Muy Grande in years, ever since that second cockroach incident – but I happened to mention that I had a 20% off coupon, and so there we went!

        Since it was late afternoon, the place was near empty. If it had been full of socializing people and bustling waitstaff, I don't think I would have experienced what I did. But as it was, nostalgia came over me in waves.

        The girls and I had come to Muy Grande so many times over the years. The first time was on a Saturday night during the World Series one October. The restaurant was packed. There was a band playing, and the tvs in each corner and over the bar were showing the baseball game and the volume was louder than the band. It was so noisy we couldn't talk, and we decided maybe we shouldn't go back there again.

        But we did.

        Today the waitress sat Mike and me at the same booth that the girls and I sat at one early week-night evening directly across from the platform where the band plays. And that time with the girls, a guitar player arrived and set up all his stuff and tuned and started to sing Margaritaville. Sarah and Amanda and I then had a new family expression “sooner or later, the live entertainment will sing Margaritaville.” We started a new tradition after that – we can't leave until we hear Margaritaville – and we always did!

        It is also the same booth we sat at one time with my friend Angela and her kids, Ashley and David. Ashley had ordered pizza which she saw on the menu and assumed was going to be a Mexican-style pizza. Haven't we all wondered about the pizza listed on the kids' menu section at the Mexican restaurants? When it arrived, the pizza was Italian and looked like something microwaved from the frozen section of the Publix which is in the same plaza. Angela had the pizza sent back, and Ashley ordered something else.

        And the booth behind the one we were sitting in today is where Mike and I sat one afternoon and watched as a cockroach nonchalantly crawled up the wall behind the band platform. It looked right at home next to the mandolin hanging there. There was no band playing at the time – so a waiter and a waitress tried to also look nonchalant as they used broom handles to try and get the bug off of the wall.

        The bug won.

        On the other side of the restaurant is a long narrow room with booths on both sides and one row of tables down the middle. The girls and I came in one crowded Friday night and were squeezed into one of the booths in that area. The tables down the middle were lined up end to end, and one party was taking up all of them. It was really noisy that night – but fun to watch. In one of the booths across from us we recognized a man from church. He later made he was through the chaos to come over and say hello. Above and beyond the call of duty!

        One time Eric and his family were in town. And we decided to get take-out from Muy Grande for dinner. We were going to call-in the order, but the last time we did that, the order was not understood correctly and came out all wrong. So Eric and I went to Muy Grande to order the food in person and wait for it. I pointed to the bench where people wait for their take-out orders, but Eric asked if I would like to have a drink at the bar while we waited?

        Oh my gosh! In all the years I had been going to Muy Grande, the bar was always something other – it would never have occurred to me to actually sit at the bar. And have a drink! What an absolutely novel idea! I felt like it was my eighteenth birthday or something.           The girls and I have known probably every booth and table in that restaurant, but that was the first time I sat at the bar!

        There was the time we went to Muy Grande after the first day of school one year. We sat in a booth and the girls excitedly told the events of the day. After a while we realized that one of their new teachers was sitting in the next booth and probably heard everything. And even though I have in my memory the teacher's profile as she sat there that day, I do not recall now which teacher she was.

        It was during their high school years that Sarah and Amanda were vegetarians, and I still coerced them into frequenting Muy Grande. There is not a whole lot on the menu for vegetarians – and there were other Mexican restaurants with wider vegetarian selections and better tasting food that the girls preferred. The good old days of Muy Grande were waning away.

        Then there was the final outing a couple of years ago when a cockroach was about eye level with me on the wall of our booth. In a reflex move, I flicked it. I thought it would be enough of a flick to transport the bug across the room, but it landed on Sarah's food. She was not happy.

        Today, our hiatus was over. We sat in Muy Grande, and I looked around. The long narrow section of the restaurant was empty. The booth where the teacher sat that day had a family with kids and a baby enjoying each other's company quietly. The televisions were on CNN. There was no one at the bar. The bartender was in the kitchen – but eventually he came out and poured us each a beer. We did not see any cockroaches, but I have a feeling they were about. A man arrived with his guitar and got everything set up. The memories swept over me and I waved my arm about to point out different places in the restaurant where the old times had been and told Mike all about them. The feelings were intense – nostalgia for the happy times of an age now past.

        I can point, but I can't grab.

        Who would have thought that our nearby Muy Grande would provide me with all that on a Saturday afternoon with a 20% off coupon? I was overwhelmed with the effect the place had on me today. As we were finishing up, the guitar player sang his first song. It was not Margaritaville, but Margaritaville was what I heard.

302 20151029 Hearing Margaritaville

Powdered Doughnuts

       This is the Powdered Doughnut Story, written a couple of times before.

          It was October of 1992. Amanda was five and Sarah was eight years old. We had gone to Pizza Hut to use some coupons and have a relaxing dinner with no cooking on my part. I had picked the girls up from Benefield Elementary right after school, and we went directly to the public library – the one on Highway 29 almost to downtown Lawrenceville. We spent an hour there, but being hungry, we headed from there to the Lilburn Pizza Hut – the one with the clock in the corner with a swiftly moving minute hand such that entire days go by during a single meal! 

          Sarah had her first Book It! coupon of the school year. This entitled her to a free personal pan pizza with one extra topping and a star to add to the Book It! pin she had on her backpack. Sarah asked for extra cheese as her topping. I had a coupon for two large pizzas – so I ordered a vegetarian to take home for us to graze on the rest of the week, and a pepperoni lovers special for Amanda and me to dine on at the restaurant. The waitress did not disguise her surprise at such a huge order for just the three of us.

          After the pizzas arrived at the table, it soon became apparent that I was guilty of poor judgement in my choice of restaurants for dinner that evening. Sarah had two loose teeth, and biting into pizza was not only difficult and uncomfortable, it was eventually undo able as Sarah put down her piece and said she had lost her appetite. Offering to cut the pizza into very small bits did not help, Goober just wanted to stop eating altogether.

          Amanda and I felt bad. It was all we could do to finish one piece of pizza each ourselves before we lost our appetites too. The waitress approached the table and said, “Well, I knew you weren't going to eat all that pizza, but I sure thought you would eat more than you did!”

          She picked up the trays to carry the pizzas back to the kitchen to box up for us to take home, and as she did, I commented, “Sarah has two loose teeth, and she can't chew on the food.”

          With that, the waitress set the pizzas back on the table so she could use her hands while telling us the following:

          “A friend of mine has a daughter, and one morning when her daughter was about the same age as your daughter here, she came down to the breakfast table and took a bite out of a powdered doughnut. With that one bite, her tooth which had been loose came out, and her gum started to bleed.

          “She went into the bathroom and dabbed at her mouth for a little bit to get the bleeding to stop, and then her mother told her to go finish her breakfast so she would not be late for school.

          “The daughter went back to the kitchen and took another bite out of that powdered doughnut, and then suddenly she went into convulsions!

          “As you can imagine, the poor mother was beside herself with panic! They got the daughter to the hospital where the convulsions stopped. After two days of tests, no one could figure out what had happened to her or why.

         “Finally the doctor asked the mother to tell him one more time the exact sequence of events the morning the daughter went into convulsions. The mother explained again about how the little girl had bitten into a powdered doughnut after losing a tooth. The doctor came to the conclusion that when the girl bit the doughnut, the sugar went into the wound left by the missing tooth and immediately entered the bloodstream and the blood took the sugar straight to the brain, and that's what caused her to have an epileptic fit!

         “So mind that your little girl does not eat any powdered doughnuts when her loose teeth come out!”

         With those words of caution, the waitress picked up our pizzas once again and headed toward the kitchen. As the three of us closed our gaping mouths, I said to the girls, “Well, you just never know what kind of a story you are going to get when you make polite conversation with a stranger!”

          And the take-home message for y'all is to mind those powdered doughnuts! They can pack quite a punch!

301 20151028 Powdered Doughnuts

Class of '71

   

    Entry 300 into my memory-a-day blog should have some special significance. So today I'll post a couple of pics from the day of my high school graduation and bring official closure to the remembrances of kindergarten through 12th  grade.

loved that dress!

       The school year in Western New York back then ran from the Wednesday after Labor Day in September until almost the end of June. We had four 10 week quarters with a report card after each one. And we usually had at least one day of school during the year being closed due to the snow – we never had so many snow days that we had to make days up by going longer during the year or sacrificing a holiday or spring break days. We had lots of snow – but the roads were cleared quickly, and the buses ran.

on Zimmerman

       Graduation day 1971 was a beautiful hot sunny day in late June. This cute daisy dress is what I opted to wear under the cap and gown during the ceremony. I loved that dress! Mom had made it. The daisies were perfect. I remember this picture of me in front of the back door of the school much more clearly than the picture is itself – especially after all these years. I was so happy. My thoughts were that I was about to get a piece of paper that was valuable – and no one could take that achievement away from me – no one can deny that I have graduated high school! Whew!

       The cap and gown, I see from the picture, were white. I would not have remembered that. Hamburg school colors were purple and white. And not that it fits in at all here – but our mascot was a bulldog. And the tassel was gold – to signify National Honors Society – la dee da!

can't take that away from me!

       We were all in the school auditorium and the seniors walked in alphabetically and majestically to the beat of Pomp and Circumstance – we had practiced this at length during a rehearsal. Then we sat in down. I don't recall my seatmates the way I did for college graduation. I was nervous because each of us would be walking on stage to state our name into the microphone and accept our diploma.

       I do not recall who the commencement speaker was or any of the other speeches. I do remember walking down the aisle and up the steps and to the microphone. I had cleared my throat ahead of time and tried my best to speak up and say my name so everyone could hear it. The whole time I was stressing over how not to trip and to clear my throat and to speak up, I was also trying real hard to stand up straight – something my parents were always nagging me about! It was a lot to keep track of!

      So the walking and talking and straightening my shoulders went all right, and the powers that be gave me my diploma! Mission accomplished.

part of the diploma Hamburg High

300 20151027 Class of '71

Promise You a Rose Garden

          “I expect you to behave like adults when I am gone. That means you will be quiet!” Mrs. M, my 12^th grade English teacher said this in class one day when she was called to the office. Well, adults would not run amok in the room or halls in the absence of the teacher. Neither would they terrorize any of their classmates or vandalize school property. But I really don't think they would be quiet.

           Adults might quietly attend to their homework or studies. They might, in today's world, silently check their phones and respond to emails. They may even leave the room without a hall pass because they have better things to do than wait for a teacher who apparently thinks something else is more important than the time of a classroom full of adults.

          But mostly, I think adults would not be quiet. They would chat with each other in the class until the teacher's return. The noise would not be disruptive – it would be what one might realistically expect from a room full of adults who are waiting for something.

           And so we behaved like adults, our class of senior advanced placement English students – we chatted.

           One of the girls mentioned a song that was popular on the top 40 radio at that time. Rose Garden by Lynn Anderson – you probably know it – the first line is I beg your pardon/I never promised you a rose garden. The classmate groaned and said “it's just one cliché after another!” which is a perfect description of the song. Yet it is so peppy, and I guess because of the cliches, the words are easy to remember and thus the song is a lot of fun to sing along with.

           Recently on a drive to Alabama, 44 years after senior year English, Rose Garden came on a country station we just happened to tune into, and Lynn and Mike and I sang at the top of our lungs all the way through! And Mike and I smiled and bounced and felt so good afterward! Even though life does not promise us a rose garden, the Rose Garden song was a lovely gift to the world probably because of the cliches! A good tip to remember should I decide to write that blockbuster song someday!

           Mrs. M returned to the classroom, her hands on hips and that familiar look of disdain on her face. “I had the P/A turned on while I was in the office. I could hear every word! I suppose asking you to behave like adults was just expecting too much!”

           Well, you don't find roses growing on stalks of clover/so you better think it over!

299 20151026 Promise You a Rose Garden

The AthHalf

Amanda 2014 AthHalf

       Today Sarah and Amanda are running the AthHalf – the Athens, Georgia half marathon – 13 miles. It was this same weekend last year that the girls ran the AthHalf, and I later wrote a story about it. And here it is.

          From the AthHalf of 2014 – in Athens, the home of UGA where both daughters went to undergrad school and the city where Amanda and Tony now live, Mike and I drove up to spend the two plus hours of the half marathon with John and Tony and the grand-kids while Sarah and Amanda ran.

          It was a beautiful Sunday morning, a bit brisk but just right for the runners. We were on our way into town when a policeman at Broad and Milledge stopped us – the runners were coming through. We had a ringside seat! After texting John we learned Amanda was in a gray tee shirt and Sarah was wearing maroon – that made looking for them a little easier. Finally we saw Amanda – and we hooted and cheered – she waved and smiled. There was a break in the runners, and the policeman motioned for our car to go by. So we did not see Sarah.                  We met the others at a 24-hour famed Athens establishment called The Grill – the staff was not expecting marathon-related patrons that day and they were out of a few items, like pancakes.

          We all squeezed into one booth – Tony's brother, Tommy, was there too, on fall break from West Georgia College where he is taking his senior year of high school!

          Horatio was excited to see Mike and sat on his lap for the food portion of the meal, and H explored the underside of the table at The Grill when we were done eating.

          Virginia was alternating between a highly doctored cup of coffee and a glass of chocolate milk. When I saw her sip the coffee I commented, “You are just like your Aunt Manda!” - Amanda was Virginia's age when she started to like week-end weakened coffee with her dad. But Ms V immediately turned to me and said, “I am not like Aunt Manda – I am right handed!”

Sarah 2014 AthHalf

          After The Grill, we walked down a few streets and then onto the campus. The kids ran after squirrels – expending a lot of energy and learning much about squirrel escape strategy. John talked about the different buildings we were walking by – we have always delighted in John's tours of UGA and were eager to hear more that day.

         The half marathon was going to finish up with a lap around the famous UGA stadium and then a brief run out of the stadium to the finish line.

          It was about two hours into the race when we ourselves walked toward the stadium. The plan was to watch the girls go by and then cut across a corner and hopefully get to the finish line at about the same time that the girls completed their lap and exited the stadium. The brisk of the early morning had warmed to a glorious day. Runners who had already finished smiled and walked by; families and other spectators chatted and got to know each other as the still running AthHalf participants passed.

          Finally, we saw Sarah! She smiled and kept moving. John and the kids started their trek to the finish line. Tony, Tommy, Mike and I were watching and waiting for Amanda. Mike and I walked up the street a bit – I was trying to get to a spot where the sun would not be in the way of my picture taking – dang that sun! And Mike was looking for a building that was open so he could use the bathroom.

          After a while, Amanda came by – we saw her go past Tony and Tommy and the guys immediately started through the crowd to get to the finish line. Mike said he was going to keep looking for a bathroom, and I kept my eye on Tony and Tommy as I followed them. We went down a street, then onto a sidewalk, down steps which led to a concession area, and then back up steps again. There was a huge building, I guessed it was the Tate Center that Tony and John had talked about. Tommy and Tony were way ahead of me – it looked like they were about to go down more stairs. A band was playing to my left – where the building was. The walkway was a huge brick expanse – lots of people, but I could still see Tony and Tommy – maybe if I ran I could catch up to them – or if I just walked a little faster.

          In the middle of this brick walkway expanse, is the seal of the University of Georgia at Athens – raised about an inch or so from the flat ground level – right in the path where I was walking, where I was looking straight ahead.

          Time slowed down as I tripped over the seal of UGA raised one inch from the walkway. My hair flew over my face and the thought that went through my mind was that it would delay the embarrassment factor a little bit. I heard glass break. The camera around my neck hit the bricks – my nose and mouth hit the camera and the camera then sprung out in front of me slightly to the left– (it was on a strap around my neck) – my sunglasses flew off a little to the right. My thoughts at that point were – oh the camera is broken, and the sunglasses, and my nose, and my nose is going to start bleeding, and I don't think I'll be meeting the girls at the finish line.

          By then there was a woman on each side of me each asking if I was okay. The band was still playing. I waited a moment, and then the drip drip drip of blood from my nose began – dripping onto the hair in front of my face. One woman handed me tissues, the other said she is a nurse and asked how many fingers I saw her holding up. The answer was one – the answer was that I had no concussion. They asked if I wanted to go to first aid. I thought it was someplace nearby – and I wanted to be out of the attention of the crowd – the bleeding might gross them out. So I said yes.

          They called for campus security – that was embarrassing. A very tall, polite man in uniform said he would take me to first aid. And we went into the Tate Center and walked across the lobby. Sarah and Horatio were sitting there! Sarah jumped up and yelled “Mom!” I said, “Oh Darlin! Congratulations on the run!” I was holding a wad of tissues to my nose. “I fell on my face; please text Mike and let him know I'm at first aid.” A few chairs down the lobby later, John and Virginia jumped up and yelled, “What happened?” I said, “I fell on my face – going to first aid.”

          It seemed like we were walking forever – why wasn't first aid, like, right there at the entrance to the building? The nice cop and I were about to go down a flight of stairs – I got the impression he was wondering if he should hold my arm for me, but he was also squeamish in case I did not want him to touch me, and then you know, there was the blood.           Just before the top step, Mike texted me that he was at the corner where we had been petting the lady's dog earlier. He had gotten the text that I was at first aid, he just had not gotten the message that I was in need of first aid – why would he think that I needed medical attention? I was just fine when he left me! Mike thought I was just sharing a location, so he shared his location!

          I looked at the cop and with one hand on the tissues and the other hand not on the stair railing as it should have been, I told him I was going to have to call my husband – and that is what I was doing with the other hand. We got down the stairs all right, and walked and walked and walked some more. And then we left the building!

          First Aid was at the finish line – it consisted of one EMT truck with two women inside who had not seen one single medical incident all morning. Until I came along. Amanda and Tony and Tommy were there. I said, “Congratulations Darlin'.” And Amanda said, “Always trying to steal the lime light from us, aren't you, Mom?”

          The first aid ladies put on gloves and cleaned up my face so they could have a look at it – the top of my nose had a cut, but probably did not need a stitch. The inside of my nose had stopped bleeding, and there were no mouth injuries. My left knee hurt – it was sore, and my left wrist hurt a little – I did not mention those two items to the nice ladies because if the knee or wrist were broken, the pain would have been much greater, and if they were not broken, I did not want a lot of fuss over them. A female campus police person came by to write up the incident report. By then Sarah and John, Virginia and Horatio had joined us.

          My camera was not broken! I took a picture. My phone was not broken, and neither my sunglasses nor my regular glasses in my purse were broken. Mike arrived. We told the policewoman we did not think I'd be requiring any hospital or further medical attention, and she gave us a case number and her name so we could follow up.

Celebrating AthHalf

          On our way back to our car by The Grill, we walked near the scene of the incident so Mike could understand exactly what had happened. The band was still playing. Sarah said she walked right up to the spot and could see my blood there. We should have taken a picture.

          After that, we all went to Amanda and Tony's to clean up before heading out to a victory lunch. My nose was a bit swollen and kind of purplish – especially at the tip. There was brushburn down length of the nose. Sarah’s legs were aching, and Amanda said she had had stomach issues throughout the whole race.

         The next morning, I sent a company-wide email so all the co-workers would know what happened before they saw me.

          A week later, my nose still looked brush-burned – with a scab on either end. During the week two bruises appeared on my cheeks where the bottom of my sunglasses had banged into them. And what about the sound of the breaking glass that I heard when I hit the ground after becoming airborne? Well, a guy at the lab, who is a runner and knows about injuries, explained that the sound most likely came from either my knee hitting the ground or my nose hitting the camera or both – busting cartilage sounds very much like breaking glass. Oh my gosh!       

Mom Stealing the Limelight

       The girls are not sure if I should go to Athens with them again this year – but I'll be there – looking to see if my blood is still on the seal, and directing others away from the hazard!

298 20151025 the AthHalf

Famous Fables

          When I was growing up, The Buffalo Evening News had an article on the comic page called Famous Fables. I don't remember if it was there every day or just once or twice a week. But it was just a paragraph or two long – usually an anecdote involving a celebrity or politician or someone else we comics readers would likely know from the news. I would read Famous Fables even if I did not know who the anecdote was about – it was a way of entertaining myself, procrastinating, before leaving the comic page and getting back to whatever needed doing around the house – chores, homework. The comic page was kind of like the internet today – one more incredibly important bit of trivia I just have to read about, and then I'll do my work!

          One day in senior year English class Erma B, Mrs. M, was ridiculing us on our ignorance of cultural references. Now there were a lot of bright students in the class – I would have thought she was just directing the insult at me, but from the look on her face and her stance at the podium, Mrs. M appeared to be ticked off with everyone. “I'll prove it to you!” she said.

          Then she took from her desk a piece of newspaper page and held it before her. Mrs M said it was Famous Fables from The Buffalo Evening News. Things started to look up for me! She was complaining about cultural references, and yet I read Famous Fables – perhaps I would be the exception to her complaint in this particular instance!

         Well that hope was quickly thwarted when she started reading. The story was completely unfamiliar to me. Either I had missed it when it appeared in the paper, or it was from a time before I started reading the comics – Mrs M might have had the article from years past.

          I will paraphrase what the Famous Fables article said. A famous person, I do not recall who, was asked to introduce a speaker at an important ceremony. His speaker was going to be the third one to talk. When the first man got up to introduce the first speaker, he said that his person would light up the audience's evening even more brightly than the full moon shining outside that night! Well how does one top that? The man who got up to introduce the second speaker said that his person would light up their evening even more brightly than the sun that shines during the day! Wow – you don't get any brighter than that! When the third man got up to introduce his speaker, he stood at the podium and simply said, “Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you.....Joshua!”

          And that was the end of the Famous Fable. Mrs. M ended with a flourish and just glared at us. Her look was hostile – she seemed to truly despise us for our ignorance. The room was quiet. If anyone actually got the Famous Fable – and I'm thinking now that some of them did, I was unaware of it at the time. My brain was totally blank. What the heck did it mean?

         Mrs. M was kind enough to then explain. It was a Biblical reference – Joshua was fighting a great battle and he prayed to God for the sun and the moon to stand still – and they stood still until Joshua and his armies had victory over their enemies.

         So in the Famous Fables – the third speaker being introduced as Joshua implied that he was more powerful than the first two speakers who had been introduced as the sun and the moon – who else has ever made the moon and the sun stop their motion through the sky?

          Wow! That's a pretty good story!

          Mrs. M was upset that we did not know the simplest of references from the Bible. Even if we aren't particularly religious, we should not avoid the books that learned people talk about – we are ignorant otherwise!

         After that I decided my first son would be named Joshua – greater than the moon and the sun!

        And my children would know the Bible – not just for the cultural references, but also so they would know what everyone else around them is talking about historically, politically, religiously – and then they can also use if for their own faith if they so choose.

         Neither of my children is named Joshua, and I do have stories for how they, my daughters, got their names – both inspired by the Famous Fable tale.

       Would any of this have come to pass if not for Mrs. M and her disdain for a class that did not meet her standard of excellence?

297 20151024 Famous Fables

Monkey Business

so cute!

     

    One day in September of 2009 Mike and I went for a drive to the city of Gainesville, and we took a walk around the city square. Mike had a plan, and he already knew what was on the square – a to scale replica of our solar system! On the far corner is the sun; a little ways into the square is a tiny Mercury; then there is Venus, and at the opposite far corner is earth. The other planets are outside of the city square at corresponding distances from the square's sun – with Pluto, which was still a planet back then, somewhere in the middle of Lake Lanier. What a neat concept!

the sun on the square

            And then Mike asked me if we should get married at the sun! He is so awesome!

           We were already engaged – the date and details of an actual wedding, however, had eluded us for months. But one certainly can't beat a proposal like that – let's get married at the sun! 

           We decided the ceremony would be on the anniversary of our first date – October 23^rd – less than a month away.

           Plans were thrown together. Someone was found to perform the ceremony. Anyone who wanted to attend was welcome. Mike's sister from Alabama and his sister from Florida said they would be there! Our children and my Mom also said they would not miss it!

           We found a bar just off of the square and arranged to have a small reception there after the vows were exchanged.

           The bar was called the Monkey Barrel.

           They serve beer and pizza.

           Sitting on the bar was a really gross anatomically correct ape.

           Mike returned to the Monkey Barrel a few days before the wedding to make contingency plans in case it was raining – could we do the ceremony inside?

           Inside the bar, in front of the windows was a raised platform, a kind of stage, where bands could set up and perform. That would do just fine for a wedding ceremony.

           If it was raining on the big day.

           And rain it did!

we did it!

           On the corner, by the sun, on the afternoon of October 23, 2009, I was standing, right on time, in a beautiful dress, waiting for guests to arrive. Instead of a groom waiting next to me, I was all alone. Rain was pouring down, and I held an umbrella and watched each car as it passed by the square. If I recognized people in the car as friends or family coming for the wedding – I walked up and told them the ceremony would be at the Monkey Barrel and pointed to it.

cake the next day

            Such a different picture of a bride on her wedding day than anyone could have ever thought up!

            But I was oh so happy! Just a few steps away, people were gathering – to be a part of our wedding celebration.

            Vows were exchanged, and everyone ordered pizza.

           Amidst the revelry and what appeared to be bottomless shots of tequila, Mike's sister, Martha, whispered in my ear, “You got married in a bar! Daddy would be so pleased! Welcome to the family.”

           How cool is that!

296 20151023 Monkey Business

Red Hot Momma

    Senior year high school English was a stressful experience. Mostly, I was terrified of the teacher. Mrs. Meisenheimer was kind of third in command over the whole school after the principal and assistant principal. She ruled the yearbook and was strict on the dress code for school pictures – so I already had three years of interacting with her and her demand for white blouses with buttons down the front and Peter Pan collars. My clothes were not good enough for her – what would happen when she found out I was a fraud in AP English?

      The class was right after lunch every day. I could hardly eat – my anxiety levels were so high. Worrying about what might happen in class got my stomach all tied up in knots. Why did I choose AP English? It was a question I asked all the time. Would she use something I wrote to ridicule in front of the class? Would she sooner or later tell me I didn't have what it took to be considered on the same level with the other kids? I dreaded the end of lunch period every day, and I watched the clock all through English.

       There were two times my answer was among the batch Mrs. M singled out as not worthy of 12^th grade English – one was the title for an essay - The Day We Lost – and rightly so, it was a crummy title since it gives away the story. Another time we had just finished Hamlet and were beginning Mourning Becomes Electra. Mrs. M told us to get out a piece of paper and write 5 things both plays had in common. Given enough time I could have come up with thoughtful answers, but I felt rushed, and my brain would not think – one of the things I put down that both plays had in common was – they are both tragedies! Yeah, there were a few chuckles in the room with that one. Mrs. M said that it was obvious they were both tragedies. Now in my old age, I think I would contend it was a legitimate response. But at the time I know I was merely being brain lazy.

       One time we were put on the spot when Mrs. M was irritated with cliches that we were using in our writing. “Red as an apple is too trite.” She seemed so miffed with our lack of originality that, in what looked to be a move of total spontaneity, Mrs. M told us each to get out a piece of paper and complete the expression Red as a...... being as creative and yet as accurate as possible.

      Not only was the pressure on to get the brain working and fast, but Mrs. M was walking up and down the aisles reading other kid's answers out loud as they wrote them down – her voice as she read, was critiquing them! Oh no! And the only thing I could think of was a variation on the apple. Would she mock me for completely missing the point? But my brain could not get past my first thought. I'd have to trust that she would appreciate that my apple painted a different picture.

       Mrs M saw my answer. She said to the class, “Red as a candy apple.” Then she straightened up (she was a tall woman) and commented, “That is a different kind of red than a red apple, isn't it? And it conjures up images of childhood.” Her voice was soft and sounded satisfied. Whew! I had super lucked out on that one.

      Red as a candy apple has stuck with me forever – the phrase that is, I don't particularly care for candy apples to eat. The words do however bring to mind thoughts of childhood.

     One summer when Sarah and Amanda were still in grade school, we sat together at the dinner table a few nights in a row and came up with three pages of statements that filled in the “red as a....” . We envisioned being at a storytelling event and each sitting on a stool on the stage – taking turns with the red as a...... story we had written – red as the sand on Mars, red as the traffic light that just changed from yellow, red as our Red Hot Momma!

       We never did present the story in public – but I still have it, so maybe one day we can. I do know we had a lot of laughs putting it all together.

       And I have Mrs. M to thank for that.

295 20151022 Red Hot Momma

Perchance to Choke

       Senior year English class was World Literature, and the advanced placement class was the same except perhaps just a tad more intense. And this memory is a rewriting of the story-a-day version from 2009.

         Everyone knew long before actually arriving at 12^th grade English that we would be studying Hamlet and we would be required to memorize Hamlet's famous To be or not to be soliloquy. Would we have to get up in front of the class and deliver the speech in order to prove we had memorized it? Thank goodness, no. Instead, on the assigned day, we would be writing out the soliloquy, word for word and handing it in.

          On our very first day of 12^th grade, walking into English class, Roy said that he had spent the summer memorizing the speech. He already knew the whole thing! Roy was proud of this accomplishment. I was kind of surprised – because you know, the assignment was not a done deal. Things could happen and assignments can get changed. Why would someone expend brain cells on something that might not come to pass? But Roy went ahead and memorized To be or not to be – and the rest of us still had that big task ahead of us.

          Well, the curriculum did not magically change over the summer, and the assignment came very early in the school year. Soon everyone except Roy was sweating the memorization of Hamlet's famous speech. Roy smiled and offered assistance. Did anyone want to practice with him? We all wished we could be as sure of our mastering of the soliloquy as Roy was.

          The day of the test, we all wrote out the speech on clean sheets of paper to the best of our ability. Almost everyone received a perfect score.

          Roy did not.

          There are two places in the speech that have the phrase “To die, to sleep...” - the first time and the second all in the space of just a few words - “to die, to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end the heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay there's the rub...”

          When Roy wrote out the speech on his clean sheet of paper and got to the phrase “to die, to sleep” he went right into the “perchance to dream” completely skipping the words in between the first “to die, to sleep” and the second “to die, to sleep”! Oh my gosh! I don't know if Roy had been practicing the speech incorrectly – why didn't any of us offer to practice with him? Or if it was a slip up just when he was writing it for the test. But that poor guy! Roy had been the one who took the assignment the most seriously, and he was the one who ended up making the biggest error!

           There is not a lesson to be learned from this story, I don't think – it is just something that happened that I have never forgotten. And it is a cool speech whether you skip the words between the To die, to sleeps or not!

294 20151021 Perchance to Choke!

Killing Them With Science

         My senior year high school had two science classes available for me to take – microbiology and AP chemistry. Mrs. Morgan was my microbiology teacher. I remember the class was big – but I do not recall anything else. So sad considering micro was my favorite biology subject in college!

            I was excited about chemistry class because if I scored high enough on the final exam, my college might exempt me from inorganic chemistry freshman year! My teacher was the same one I had for regents chemistry in 10^th grade, Mrs. Gilmore. And it was here we discovered that the first chemistry class we took our sophomore year was just the smooth easily traversed surface of an incredibly huge subject. Just digging a smidgen below that surface revealed a whole new intricate, complicated world! The class was challenging, but I managed to stay on top of the material, for the most part, and ultimately I was able to leap right into the sophomore organic chemistry course my freshman year of college.

           What got a tad convoluted for me besides the material in the chemistry textbook was my schedule. Since I wanted to take two science classes and Spanish 2 (there was no Latin 4) – my whole day was filled and there was no room for a study hall. This was good for me because as I've said before, I really did not like study halls. But it was not good for AP chemistry. The class had a lab that met once a week – we were required to take study hall when we registered for the AP chemistry. I disobeyed the rules and asked the powers that be to put my gym class where everyone else in AP chemistry was taking study hall – and once a week I could get out of gym to do the chemistry lab – I knew this was doable because that was how we did the labs for the other science classes like biology, regents chemistry, and physics.

           The powers that be were concerned about this decision because that would mean putting me in a gym class with sophomore girls. Wouldn't I be uncomfortable in gym with girls I did not know and who were younger than I was? I told them gym class was uncomfortable no matter who was in the class with me, and anything was better than a study hall. Mrs. Gilmore was the only one who was still concerned when the school year started.

           Well everything went fine for most of the year. Gym class was about as weird as predicted – yeah the girls were all new, and I was certainly the odd person in the group, and felt it – but really, it was just like any other gym class with the exact same feeling of oddity. I was able to get out of gym once a week to go to chemistry lab – and that was great.

The one and only glitch came when Mrs. Gilmore wanted to have a study session so we could study as a group for the final exam. She asked the class to come to her classroom instead of study hall one day when it was not lab day. Then she looked at me and said I could ask the gym teacher if that would be okay for me to miss one more gym day that week.

           Well, my gym teacher said absolutely not!

           What should I do? Mrs. Gilmore might be upset that I missed the study group and be upset also that I did not register for the class the way I was supposed to in the first place – in conjunction with a study hall. I thought about not going to gym class anyway. But attendance would be taken, and then my name would go to the office for skipping class. And my parents would be called and told that I had skipped a class, and they would worry wondering where I was – especially since I had never done anything like that before. I would not be able to communicate to them that I was okay, just studying for a chemistry exam. So I would be in trouble long before they would hear the explanation and by then they would not want to hear it. Remember way back before I started kindergarten, my parents said I was to never get in trouble at school and if I did, they would not bother to hear my side of the story?

            Ultimately, I went to my gym class when everyone else in AP chemistry had a group study session.

It was not until probably I was out of college when I happened to mention to my Folks one night about the one class in high school I almost skipped. I was being glib, but then they asked me for the details. I told them and gave my reasoning for why I had wanted to just not show up for gym that one day, and then explained quite meticulously how I got to the final choice to stay out of trouble and not skip class.

            Dad looked at me as if he could not believe his ears. “What kind of trouble did you think you would be in if you skipped a gym class to study for a chemistry exam?”

I think this was one of those times when he came right out and said I had no common sense at all!

           Sure, it seems obvious now!

           The unknowns of the microscopic world can be scary; scratching the surface of the world of chemistry can be daunting; but crossing a phys ed teacher? That's the kind of stuff nightmares are made of!

293 20151020 Killing them with Science

Solving for X and RR

        When senior year of high school started there were four advanced placement, or AP, classes available. These days there are tons of AP courses offered in high schools and some can even be taken freshman year – so a lot has changed.

          For me, the AP math class was out of bounds because I had been removed from the honors math track back in eighth grade – the AP course was a beginning calculus class, but I took advanced algebra. I don't remember much about it now except my teacher was Mrs. Dye – a different, much taller Mrs. Dye from the one I had in 9^th grade English. I do not recall the class being too difficult, but neither was it as easy as regents algebra.

          The social studies AP class, when I think back on it now, may have been split into two courses of one semester each, (and each with its own final exam!) - and one was economics and the other I cannot remember – but I think we had to be invited into the AP social studies curriculum, and alas and not too surprisingly considering my poor attitude and track record for these classes in the past, I was not asked to join AP social studies. Economics would have scared me too much anyway – it still does. So the two classes I did take were sociology and Russian history.

          Mr. Huen, the Russian History teacher, used to give pop quizzes, which meant memorizing my notes every night, and one time when I did not memorize, I did terrible on the quiz which seemed to delight the teacher – his way of letting me know that he knew I was not absorbing the material, just bouncing it back at him.

          Sociology was a class of easily forgettable material but a few memorable moments. One day while the teacher was lecturing, I put my suede purse on my desk and started playing with the long fringe on the bottom of the purse – eventually I put each strand in a curlicue shape – each bending in a different direction. While lost in my designing, I did not realize the attention I was getting – finally the teacher commented about how beautiful the design was – well I was mortified! I scooped up all the fringe, destroying the pretty pattern it had made on my desk. The teacher was silenced by my totally hostile reaction to his attention – and he went back to his notes. I do not know why I did that – it was too difficult to mutter out a humble thank you – what if he was going to follow the comment with something negative like stop playing in class – then he was not really complimenting the fringe pattern at all and my thank you would have been presumptuous – so to avoid embarrassment in that direction – I decided to preempt him with my own very real negativity. But later in the day, one of the kids in my class, the teacher's pet actually, walked next to me in the hall and asked why I had responded that way to the compliment? I stuck my nose in the air, refused to acknowledge his presence or his question, and hastily walked away from him. Years later I saw this classmate in a different town, in a gift shop of sorts. We recognized each other, and I was going to say hi and apologize for being such a jerk that day back in high school – but he looked away after we made eye contact, and it was clear he wanted no conversation.

           The sociology teacher one day said something about “the wrong side of the tracks” and how those tracks were very clearly defined in our school district. This perked up my ears, and I looked up – eager to hear the teacher make a huge mistake in revealing the wrong side of the tracks to a class full of kids, some of whom might be from the other side of those tracks! (Being from another town altogether, I felt I was from neither side of the Hamburg town tracks, so I didn't have to worry about this teacher's definition hurting my feelings!) Well, there must have been a few of us who looked a little too eager to hear the teacher's observation on where the “wrong side of the tracks” were in our school district, because just before he took a breath to tell us, the same student as before, the teacher's pet, said out loud, “be careful!”

            I was immediately deflated. That classmate took all the fun out of my day! I was so sadistically looking forward to the teacher screwing up big time. But the teacher heeded the advice – realizing at once what he needed to be careful about.

           Shucks – but I guess that encompasses the field of sociology as a whole, doesn't it? – one can say there are obvious lines that define us and separate us, and over time we have gotten better at understanding people and behavior, and we can tell you the where and the why of the wrong side of the tracks, but when it comes right down to it, we can't actually draw those lines after all!

292 20151019 Solving for X and RR

Bad Cats and the Rich

        The final story, or rather memory, I have from that summer twenty three years ago when the girls and I read The Parables of Jesus together has to do with one evening when I was fixing dinner.

          As I recall, we read the Parables at lunch time and would talk about it a little afterward. In the afternoon we read from Ivanhoe – which we enjoyed immensely and had a lot of laughs over. At bedtime there was yet another book – several of which we went through those wonderful months.

          It was that summer that Amanda began reading on her own. While fixing dinner every night, Bodie would bring a book, usually Dr. Seuss, to the kitchen, plunk herself on the kitchen floor at my feet – we were still at the rented Georgia house, on Realm Lane, and the kitchen was long and narrow, so I could easily move around Amanda and still be near enough to hear her.

          I remember this all so clearly because one night when Amanda was reading The Cat in the Hat, she suddenly looked up and exclaimed, “Mom! This is a really bad cat!” And I just had to shake my head to think that it took reading the book herself to realize the Cat in the Hat was full of uncomfortable mischief!

          So, throw into the mix of my fixing dinner in the kitchen and Amanda at my feet reading out loud, Sarah making conversation at the kitchen table. At some point Goobs mentioned something she was going to do someday, and I quite glibly, a reflex action to be sure more so than anything I gave any deep thought to, said to Sarah, “When you grow up and get a job and get rich, you will be able to do just that!”

         Which triggered an immediate response from the Goobs:

         “Oh I will never get rich, Mom! Not after what it says in the Parables about rich people never going to heaven!”

         Whoa!

         Oh my gosh!

         That stopped me in my tracks!

         What kind of subversive mother was I?

         How dare I let my children read the Parables and get such strange ideas from them!

         Talk about a plan backfiring royally!

         “You know,..... if you were to get rich, I'm sure you could be the exception rather than the rule!”

          I kind of stammered out the words, but with one daughter reading from a book, and the other telling me her dreams of the future, I don't think either of them heard.

291 20151018 Bad Cats and the Rich

Martha or Mary

         The question came up for discussion one day in Sunday school – which are you, Martha or Mary?

         This is not from the Parables, but rather the story of the time Jesus went to visit Martha and Mary. Martha was the whole time bustling about making sure the place looked presentable and getting food and drink ready for her guest; she was still fussing even while the guest was there. Mary, however, sat at Jesus' feet as soon as he arrived, and she did nothing else but engage him in conversation and listen. After a while, Martha, playing the long-suffering martyr, asked Jesus what he thought of someone who just sat around while she, Martha, did all the work? Jesus responded that it was apparent Mary was the one who knew what was more important!

         I do not recall this story from my Sundays at Catholic mass. It was a new one for me when I started attending Sunday school at Presbyterian churches when my girls were young. Well, I was definitely a Martha: the house and food would never be completely ready for guests, I would have to bustle the whole time company was around, and if the family were not helping me, well, why not act the martyr? – I just thought that's the way it was supposed to be.

          But if stopping everything once guests arrive – giving attention to everything other than their food and lodging – well, wouldn't that merely be an excuse to get lazy, not lift another finger? Kind of a dangerous yet appealing Bible story for someone like me!

         Perhaps if I could groom that laziness into something more constructive – having as much as possible ready around the house and kitchen ahead of time, and then when the guests arrive stop everything else so as to become a better conversationalist, and, in the best of all possible worlds, a good listener?

         That would be doing what is more important indeed.

290 20151017 Martha or Mary

Prodigals All

         Once a year in the Catholic Church calendar the gospel is about the Prodigal Son. As a kid, I did not get this parable. Year after year, the message I was hearing was that the good son was being scoffed at for feeling slighted while the wandering son got rewarded for having returned to the farm – so why not be the prodigal child? I could not get past that. Why was the son who followed all the rules the one who was in the wrong? Why is it being suggested that we run off and squander our inheritance and then come back and expect more? There was something wrong here.

          So when Sarah and Amanda and I started on the chapter in The Parables of Jesus that was going to discuss the Prodigal Son, I said to the girls, “I'm anxious to hear what this author has to say, because really, I have not gotten this parable up to now, and it would be nice to understand it once and for all.”

          And the ultimate understanding, it turns out, is truly very very simple.

          The gist of the Parable of the Prodigal Son is this – we ain't none of us the good son!

          We aren't any one of us the one that follows all the rules – we are each and every one of us the prodigal – the sinner, the one that drifts away, the one who squanders her gifts, the one who drifts back and asks for forgiveness, and not only receives forgiveness but more gifts; and sometimes those who are following the rules at the time will be resentful – but they are in the wrong because they are prodigals also.

          Kind of takes all the air out of the Sunday school class discussion of which of the two sons are you? doesn't it?

289 20151016 Prodigals All

The Mustard Seed

     When I was about grade school age, I received a necklace with a pendant of a translucent heart, and inside the heart was a mustard seed. I think it was a gift from one of my godparents, but not sure. From my church-going, I did know at the time that the mustard seed was a symbol of faith, you know, “the smallest of all seeds becomes the largest of plants.”

       Years later, the heart was soldered onto a charm bracelet, and I still have it.

       The summer before Amanda was going to begin kindergarten, May of 1992, I quit my job at the day care to spend those last free days with the girls. Among our goals for the summer was to read together the book The Parables of Jesus by James Montgomery Boice. I thought it would be rewarding to share the Parables with the girls, and it would also be a chance to better understand the Parables myself.

       Well, the first surprise was to read about the mustard seed. “Though it is the smallest of all your seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds in the air come and perch in its branches.” (p.21) The author says that mustard seeds do not grow into trees, they become shrubs – so the listeners of Jesus when the parable was told would have known immediately that a tree-sized mustard plant was not normal. Birds were symbols in an earlier parable of messengers of evil. So the parable is about a church that grows, yes, but evil grows along with it, and inside it, and the church becomes too big, and the evil will need to be excised. Well, that's what I get out of it.

        If someone today were to say we need faith that grows like a mustard seed, and if I were to correct that person by saying a mustard tree is not what our faith is supposed to become – eyes would roll and I would be told, “You know what I mean.”

        But today a mustard seed as a symbol of what Christianity can grow into makes me a little uncomfortable.

288 20151015 The Mustard Seed

The Photo News

in the news November 1970

        One day my senior year of high school, I heard my name on the P/A along with three classmates – we were being summoned to the front lobby! I had no idea why – almost always if students' names were called it was not good news. But the three guys whose names were mentioned along with mine were not the kind to have done anything wrong, and so I figured I was in good company no matter what! With moderate trepidation I left the class I was in, probably with a hall pass, and went to the front lobby.

           A photographer was standing there – a professional, not someone from the school. He said the Hamburg Photo News had sent him to take each of our pictures because we had the four highest science averages in the senior class! In between sounding like a load of bull, this was kind of exciting!

          Mom kept the article from the News in her photo album all these years. Apparently Bausch and Lomb was bestowing a Science Award to the senior at our school with the highest science average. And there were three runners up – which meant that I was the senior with the fourth highest science average! From the article, the award winner was then eligible to compete for a Bausch and Lomb scholarship at the University of Rochester, New York – I don't know if our Award winner tried out for the scholarship or even where he went to college – but I do recall he was really smart!

          When my daughters were still pre-schoolers and we would get the photo albums out to show them pictures from when they were even smaller, one of the comments they made the most often was, “I always liked that dress!” In fact, we often got yelled at because the dress in a given picture was outgrown and “Hey! That was my favorite dress – why did you give it away?” so we stopped getting the albums out because the anger was not worth the stroll down memory lane. 

in the paper again November 2014

          But guess what I remember most about the one and only time my name was ever announced over the school public address system? The dress I was wearing – I always liked that dress. It was my favorite! The dress I happened to be wearing on the day that I did not know my picture was going to be taken for the town newspaper was a plaid shift with buttons down the front and ruffles with the buttons – it was pretty and comfortable.

           Last year my picture was in the AJC - Atlanta Journal Constitution publicizing a storytelling event - I guess 15 minutes of fame can repeat every 40+ years or so. Just sorry Mom missed it. I really liked that outfit too!

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