And another thing...

Why would anyone choose to put their face within inches of the bathroom mirror when flossing their teeth? I don't get it; what is there to look at anyway? And if they could see anything, why couldn't they see the spatters on the mirror? And for that matter, why not use the floss picks instead of the linear dental floss. Isn't it easier, more sanitary, and better in every way to have everything contained within the mouth. There ought to be a law, or some kind of mandate. (I know this is ungrammatical in terms of agreement, but I don't want to point the finger by making it gender specific.)

Suspense...

"There are things about me that nobody knows." Wait, I'm not referring to myself; that would be boring and self-serving. I'm quoting Dr. Phil: I heard this on TV this morning, and have been wondering as to what it could be ever since. Could it be that he wishes he had thick glossy hair, that he knows why Jeff Jordan left basketball, that he believes the Mass. airport authorities were justified in confiscating that woman's cupcake, (Seriously, who travels with a cupcake in a jar!), that he thinks the BMW would be a better choice for car of the year than the Elantra, that he believes it wrong that the California dad threw his daughter off a boat, that Mittens will be our next president, that he wishes he had more closet space, more friends, and that his basement wasn't damp? Could it be that he's not really a doctor, that he cheated on a test in fourth grade, has a now regretted tattoo,or wishes he had the guts to get a tattoo? Maybe he knows what's in Tropicana's orange juice, or could blow the whistle on that woman who claims to have a four-year-old McDonald's cheeseburger. Or, most intriguing of all, what the name Blue Ivy really stands for---intravenous maybe? Tune in at 3:00 p.m. to find out. The possibilities are endless. Oh, darn, I have to be submitting a community service essay this afternoon, and won't be home then. Someone, anyone, keep me posted!

Severance

"The birds of leaving call to us
Yet here we stand endowed with the fear of flight.
Overland the winds of change consume the land,
While we remain in the shadows of summers now past."

Homework assignment

If 3/4 million Jews were incinerated at Auschwitz in a nine-month period of time, and the average weight of each was 120 lbs, how many pounds of ash would be generated in a year? You may use calculators to figure out the answer.

Fuschia???!!!

One day in fifth grade, after the morning Pledge of Allegiance, the teacher said there was another announcement. A girl stood before the class to say she had lost her new scarf. She went on to describe it in detail: a square, quite large, and the color was gold and fuschia. I remember feeling surprised, because she was a friend of mine, and I didn't know she had a new scarf, much less that she had lost it. I also was a little in awe that she had the nerve to voluntarily go to the front of the room to announce her loss. I'd lost one of my mittens a short time before, and I was too shy to tell anyone, and that was my only pair of mittens. But most of all, I felt guilty for not knowing what color fuschia was, and a little envious because she did. She later found the scarf, neatly folded, on the shelf of the cloakroom. (Purple, I would have called it.) In the back of my mind, I always harbored the thought that she had faked the loss so that she could display her knowledge of the word fuschia. But then again, I never believed that Anne Frank actually wrote her diary either.

Three tales

Having been an English major back in the days when that meant you were required to read until you wore out your eyes, I've read and mostly forgotten a ton, several tons, of literature. Too, we were bookworms when we were kids; learning we could take as many books out of the library as we wished was a wondrous discovery. My mother was always telling us to put down that book and go outside and get some fresh air. My father was constantly reminding us to turn out the lights and go to bed. "Do you want to make the electric company rich?" "You wouldn't stay up so late reading if you had to get up at 6:00 in the morning!" But of all the works of literature, I find that only three have a real effect on me now. I do remember Dorothy and me reading downstairs when everybody else was upstairs, and sometimes what we read scared us so much that we dreaded going into the dark hallway, near the foreboding front door, to climb the stairs to bed. Fagan was exceptionally scary when he appeared at the window of the girl he murdered. (The window!!) But what scared us is now mostly forgotten, as is whatever stories moved us to laughter or to tears. Now there are only 3 that are so moving I can't bear to read them anymore. "Our Town" had no effect at first; the play was mandatory reading in Mrs. Hack's 11th grade English class, and Dorothy was assigned to her class, where the play was studied and analyzed in depth. However, I was in the new English teacher Mr. Angelo's class that year, and we read some other work, maybe "Silas Marner." So not until several years later, when I was helping to direct the play at Cambridge High School did I get to know the play all the way through. A girl named Toni played the lead role in the best performance I'd ever seen, counting movies and Broadway versions. A boy name Lewis could have been Thornton Wilder's pure idea of Stage Manager. I can still see those two on stage, with the light shining on the girl's black hair as she yearned to relive the lost past, and the spotlight on the world weary retrospective of the youth who tried to help us make sense of life, and death. I couldn't make it through that performance now, any more than I can read Truman Capote's "Christmas Memory." The last time I read it, years ago, it reminded me so much of the last part of Helen's life interwoven with the last years of Danny's childhood that I became a tear sodden wreck, and that was before time played out its themes of death and growing up, and away. The third literary work forever stuck in my mind is a short story that was published some years ago in "The Atlantic" magazine. I have a vague idea of the title, but can't recall it. I know where I stashed it, to read again, but I've always been afraid to look for it. It was told from the point of view of an elderly woman destined to be murdered, the most chilling narrative I'd ever read. If I can find the nerve to look it up, I'll post the title, but I can't recommend it to anyone.

First Call

Pre-school friend Landon called Andrew, to wish him Happy New Year, or to ask him a question. Andrew told his mother about the call, a little amazed, because he said, " I didn't even know I had a number!"