“We’ll just draw names again. Except for the babies.”
Filed under: Deep South, faith, family, food, humor, life
I’ve never really cared about the gift exchange element to Christmas. Time and time again, as a child, I’d be asked what I wanted and time and time again, I’d say I didn’t care. I’d be pressed until I crumbled and rattled off some random item. A typewriter (which I ended up loving), board games (which I’ve since donated to high school theatre departments), books (I still have every one of these), a video recorder (I used it once six years ago to document a living will). I’ve never really put that much focus on material things. Not to say that I...
Not tonight, dear, I have a checkbook.
Filed under: Deep South, Everyday, education, humor, life
I will not turn around for anything or anyone, once I’m on the road heading to my destination of choice (be that New Mexico or Kroger), unless the circumstances are so dire that I have no choice: I need gas, I left my two-year-old nephew sleeping on the couch, you know things like that. For instance, last Thursday when I drove up to Taste of China, because I prefer their cream cheese wontons over China Garden’s, I was determined to get out of the car and walk in the door and eat like a king. Except I had left my wallet at...
I’m not sure if you know this or not, but it’s never wrong to steal a pen.
Filed under: Deep South, Everyday, education, faith, family, humor, life
I can count on one hand the number of things I’ve stolen in my entire life: four. I’m holding up four fingers, at this very moment, even though you can’t see them. But, that’s it: four items. Four, random though purposeful, inconsequential items. One of those items was a candy bar. A Kit-Kat, actually, and it was easily stolen because I used to run the “candy store” between class periods, at my high school. The smart kids got to do everything fun, especially when it involved cash handling. I only stole one candy bar and only the one time because I had convinced myself that...
That one time I rode on Amtrak.
Filed under: Everyday, family, food, humor, life
I never really bought into the sentiment of those Lionel train commercials. Have you ever seen those? Their propaganda touts this concrete belief that Americans have some highly wrought love affair with trains. They're usually spread all over the airwaves around this time, each year. Because nothing says Christmas quite like the stumble-trap of a miniature railroad system circling hour after hour around the base of your tree. My grandmother, she’s 93 as of yesterday, and she had this train set that she would year-in-year-out place around the Christmas tree, letting it silently circle on its tracks, beneath the Douglas Fir. Inevitably, she’d forget...
I brought my own microwave, thank you very much.
Filed under: Deep South, Everyday, family, food, health, life, writing
Let me explain how I came to own the microwaveable egg poacher, first. Then, you can make your judgements. I am, as someone once said, a "marketer's wet dream." I'm not sure if or how that could be considered a compliment, but when in doubt, I make everything a compliment, anyway, so... I like to think everyone in the whole world, actually, is talking about me, at any given moment. It makes me feel better. I can't deny that I probably have a problem, like a genuine problem, this time; I'm a walking bank account when it comes to clever advertising and bright...
Real love requires 2" heels, at least.
That Ken Ludwig. Man. He can't write a play without causing serious damage to the ankles. (That's what my feet are saying, anyway. Ah, well, there's a price to be paid for anything, huh?) I'm sorry if this comes across, at first, like a shameless plug for the current production of Leading Ladies that I'm in - it wouldn't matter anyway, if it did; we're practically sold out for the rest of this run. We've only got one more week, and then...it's curtains. Literally. But, out of the goodness of my heart, and since I'm a Christian man (from the waist up, anyway), I'll gladly give you the...
Because hands can do everything but lie.
I don't always know what to do with my hands. You might find that ironic for an actor, even more so for an educator. But, it's still the truth. It wasn't anything I ever really noticed until a few years ago. I began to realize that my Nana was fascinated by the frequency with which I used my hands to animate my conversation. She would look less at me and more at my gesturing. Over time, I became so concerned with how I might physcially be telling my story that I began to grow flustered at the dinner table. I didn't know how...
I feel pretty sure God said He was going to stop doing that to people.
I love bad weather. I hate flying. Putting the two together does not help, because the spectrum on which they reside is of equal value. Both haunt my dreams, and continuously. I'm hoping...against hope I would imagine since we're entering that stage of the season where thunderstorms lurk around the farthest oak trees, down the highway, and then appear suddenly, from the limb tops...still, I'm holding out that the weather will be nice toward the end of June when I must board a plane and fly to Tacoma, Washington. For funsies, you say? No. Not for funsies. For competition. The community theatre I work with...
Ah, Wilderness! Ah, Bottle Rockets!
I was never the best with fireworks. Which I find odd, in retrospect, because I had nearly flawless hand-eye coordination. Reflexes that would make a hummingbird jealous. I played tennis, and well. But, somehow this quick-speed ability failed me at fireworks. I learned the hard way, too. For some reason, as children, when the Hot Holidays arrived, so called because we were allowed fireworks as part of the celebration - and these included Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas which drained into New Year's, Valentine's Day, the Fourth; basically, we begged for fireworks on every holiday - and when we got them, oh how we eagerly hoarded...
Persistence has no pesticide.
It all started with the handmade oatmeal soap my sister-in-law gave me, in the guise of a present. I must say, wrapped as it was in that beautiful red gift paper, it was quite a thoughtful-looking Christmas present. That’s the allure of wrapping paper, though, isn’t it? I learned this early on: people will take anything on this earth if you just wrap it pretty enough. It can be a thoughtless happy, a re-gift (as American as the NRA), a genuine present, anything. Many is the household item, kitchen utensil, family portrait, that I, as a child, took and re-wrapped and gave to Nana...
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