I'M NOT GETTING IT AGAIN

"I ok," our young granddaughter announces after she coughs.

"I ok again," she says after a second cough.

That's a little like me.  The older I get, the more things I don't seem to get.

I remember it was in Bill Clinton's presidency, that it occurred to me that the world had changed drastically.  In fact, I thought and still think it was at that instant that it turned upside down.  Seemingly everything that was right, everything that made sense, no longer did.

While at the pool today, six boisterous people chose to sit/lie near us.  They didn't care that we heard their racist remarks, their lines of work, and their habits

Bar hopping seemed to be one.  But the classic was when one woman got up to get a drink, I suppose, and another woman asked the man how long they had been dating.

"Unfortunately, about two years."

"Two years?"

"Yeah."

"I usually trade my husbands in just like they were old cars.  You know, about every two years, I'm ready for a new model."

"I know exactly what you mean."

The next conversation was started by me.  "Are you ready to go?" and directed to my wife of, well a few more than two years.  Actually 40 more than two.

"Sure," she replied.

AND IT MADE ME THINK

Once I made a phone call to the Teachers' Lounge and it went like this: "D, this is T.  Can you put T on?"

Translated "Ron (DeForest), this is Ted.  Can you put (Will T. Lee) on the phone?"

Now, that's squirrely and as soon as I said it, I realized it, though if D. did, he never shared it with me.

It reminds me of when three coaches were talking at the MTV Conference and an introduction was required.  It went something like this: 

"Coach!"

"Hi, Coach."

"You know Coach, don't you?"

"Coach.  Coach"

Now that's squirrely, too.  When three teachers meet, or three principals meet, or three superintendents, you would never hear such an intro by title, but whatever it is with coaches, that's what they seem to go by.

The white squirrel is Albert.  He lives or hangs out at a friend's house in St. Louis.  He must have been a transplant from Olney, Illinois.  Which makes me wonder what the Olney High School mascot is it.  I'm sure it's not the White Squirrels.  But it should be.

SCHOOL STARTS
As always way too soon.  I'm not going back this year.  Oh, probably to Bible Study Fellowship for my 10th year.  I call our weekly lessons "homework" but it's really not since we receive no grades.

But if I were, I'd make an essay assignment:  Name and discuss your favorite Beatles' song.  Only one.

Just a few weeks ago we were in Liverpool.  A beautiful large city of half a million.  Located on the Mersey River.  No one my age can look at it and not sing "Ferry 'cross the Mersey".  But we were also privy to Penny Lane.

If it weren't before, it's now my favorite Beatle song.

To pass along the street and see where "the barber's taking photographs of every head he's had the pleasure to know".  Well, and to see the "turnabout" that helped people.  To see "Strawberry Fields" solidified the visual.

So that would be my topic, if not my completed document.

But school doesn't start for me, so I won't finish the assignment.  But I will long remember Penny Lane and Liverpool.  

ELOCUTION REJECTED
It was a DisneyLand kind of line a few Sundays ago when we waited to kiss the Blarney Stone. A one-hour wait, in fact.  Much different than the last time we were there in 2006.

Our oldest grandkids were with us and our grandson struck up a conversation with the family in front of us.  "Yeah, some kid fell off the top of the castle and died," nonchalantly stated the man.

That's all it took.  When it was Grant's turn to get into position to lay one on the rock, he declined. "The nice man will help you," I encouraged, but to no avail.

When we started our descent, I told him that it was ok.  I added that although many, many people kissed the stone, it was fine that he didn't.  "Even if you were the only one who didn't, that's fine: you don't have to do what all the others are doing if it doesn't feel right to you."

"I was terrified," he said.  This to one I have rarely seen fear in.

I also warned his sister not to tease him about it.  But I think he would have been ok.

He had bought a chip of the Blarney Stone in a cathedral in Cork and so he said," I didn't kiss the actual stone, but I did kiss the knock off I bought."

Good enough for me.  And if he didn't have the gift of gab the stone supposedly provided, he'd have never talked to the family in front of us who spooked him in the first place.