Once upon a time, I wet the bed.
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I wasn’t much of a bedwetter. Not really. Which is hard to believe considering the bladder problems I’ve always had. It wouldn’t have mattered, either way; my family doesn’t talk about such personal things, choosing instead to overlook them with polite parentheticals. Should an uncomfortable topic arise in conversation, we are likely to smile and pass it off with an “Is that so?”, but not in an encouraging way. Inflection is key in asking a question without looking for an answer. It’s an art form, actually. Likely, had it been an issue, they simply would have spent a fortune on new sheets and bed spreads,...
Go Green, young man, and grow up with the country.
I rarely cash in on a fad. Not out of disdain or separatist leanings, I’m usually just too lazy to keep up. But, Main Street, the heart of downtown, which I live so close to as to worry that it’s developed angina, has given over whole contents of wallets to cash in on “Going Green.” And let me tell you something. When you give a lot of money to a cause, it is no longer a fad. It is a fact, i.e. We now have bicycle lanes. The thing is, it’s catching on. I went downtown, before Christmas to buy a book for my brother-in-law, a...
A drum set, and other gifts not to give to children.
I found myself in a conversation the other evening in which the topic of Santa arose, and with it came the typical, post-adolescent baggage: How old were you when you found out Santa wasn’t real? It seems that Santa has a very thin line of discussability (today's word du jour). Either you are six, or thereabout, and Santa conjures up images so explosively potent that you have to lock yourself in a bathroom until the feeling passes, and though the whole messy Santa business only lasts for about twelve total hours on the night of his imminent arrival, you still swear...
It’s beginning to look a lot like Ma Onie.
Ma Onie was another of my sidekick grandmothers. (Not blood kin, but I can’t recall a moment of my childhood where she wasn’t looming in some corner of the kitchen fermenting sugar syrup for her sweet tea or threatening a misbehaving child with the worn brass tip of her cane). She was, in most lights, the iron fist in the velvet glove personified with a smidge of Ma Kettle sewn in the seams; trust me, sugar syrup wasn’t the only thing she kept out in the smokehouse. And when Christmas rolls around I tend to give her her due because of her Christmas “inventions.” Now,...
First things first…
Filed under: Deep South, Everyday, family, humor
One thing that seems universal to all children is the idea of what it means to be first. It doesn’t matter at what they’re being the first, either. Being first carries within it all the intended glory necessary. First to sit still, first to get a haircut, first to touch base during hide-and-seek, first to finish dinner. Endless possibilities. My nephews, this past Sunday, case in point, were running neck-and-neck, outside, racing each other from one side of the yard to the other, simply for the bragging rights of saying, “I beat you. I got here first.” Wynn Chandler, the baby who...
“He’ll never make it in kindergarten.”
I feel a little like an abusive husband, right now. As if I’ve been bad, mistreated you in some way, and am now, tail tucked between my legs, throwing myself at your mercy, hoping a small bouquet of sad daisies, likely bought at Kroger, will be enough to woo forgiveness from you. I haven’t written a blog in about two months. Because…well… …in other words, I’ve been busy. I mean, excuse me, I meant to say I’m sorry. Also, I have no flowers to give. Just an odd complaint or two. I hadn’t intended my time to be taken away from me quite the way...
Gary makes me hungry.
I had a long, fun conversation with my friend Gary the other day, Sunday actually, over the telephone, and we quickly started talking about food, as our conversations tend to do. Gary, now a famous playwright/critic, who spends most of his days on a plane, as opposed to by a plate, always wants to hear about what Nana has cooked, created, invented, resurrected from her kitchen shelves. Nana’s kind of magical that way. And she has become something of folklore in my social circles, and many of my friends eagerly await for my Sunday dinner details. (I can think of one person who...
After that, I ate my chocolate cobbler in silence.
This past Sunday, my youngest nephew, Wynn, who by the way is a few months shy of three and has already rightfully earned the nickname of “Chunk,” turned to me and asked for coffee. “What…did you…say?” I implored of him. “Coffee,” he responded, and then with a nod of the head as if recognizing that he’d forgotten the magic word, added, “pease?” It’s always precious when the little ones remember that fading concept known as “manners.” But, precious aside, I wasn’t sure I’d heard him correctly. I went in search of his mother. She wasn’t a bit thrown off by what I felt had...
What happens when you’re late to the boat.
Most of the time, I have the best of intentions. A week into the oil devastation that now ravages our gulf coast, and I’d already registered my name with the Audubon Society as an eager volunteer, ready to give up his summer for the clean-up cause. That oil devastation, as you may know, is now going on Day 34, I believe. Or over a month, whichever sounds worse. This past weekend, though, I found myself in Biloxi, smack dab in the middle of Mississippi’s manmade coastline…and I didn’t clean up a thing. I didn’t have to. Now, it wasn’t entirely a planned trip. We’d...
So, that one time, I committed a crime, OK?
Let me tell you why I like Lowe’s. They’re not afraid to bend the rules, for you. I can’t say how far they would bend them—sharing trade secrets, “extras” given rather than purchased—but I will tell you this: they’ll go the distance to help you get mint. Every year around this time, this humid, wet, hot time, I get the notion that, once again, who I really am has nothing to do with theatre, writing, or teaching. No, who I am, in fact, is a Farmer. I drag out the tools from the side of the house and cultivate the small...
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