Grandmas Goulash

Tom wouldn’t have stuck his neck out, if he had suspected the ear of corn camouflaged an axe handle.   She suspected the old turkey would probably taste like rubber, but times were as tough as he was.  Priscilla wanted a healthy bird for her table, but Tom got suspicious when she started asking a lot of health insurance coverage questions. 

When she approved pets at work, the CEO hadn’t met Bedlam, an aptly named feline. Now she gathered evidence to justify policy revocation.   Gina hoped her pet flea had jumped inside the camera. She didn’t want him associating with those mangy dogs.

Nothing is impossible. You can be anything you want to be. If you think you can do it, you can. Sayings like these make me cringe. I’m sure they’re intended to motivate, but they also imply that those who don’t achieve their dreams, just haven’t tried hard enough. I’d love to figure skate in the Olympics, win the Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions, and write symphonies that rival Beethoven’s. Age, intellect, and natural abilities say that isn’t going to happen, no matter how hard I try. It’s not just the big dreams.  Things that many people do easily, are simply out of my grasp. Several years of pursuing a foreign language, left me far from fluent. My college roommate, who had only two years of French, spoke it well enough to be accepted into the French dorm in her sophomore year.  Socially, I do fine with one or two people whom I know well. I don’t mind public speaking and have comfortably addressed a room of five hundred people. Send me to a party with twenty or...

Sis’s teacher was outraged over the defacement of the costly book. She was in a gallon of trouble. Johnny hid his smile and his crayon. 

While Ruby worked, Emma remained alert for wheat poachers. Her scythe could cut more than grain. Mae wished Mary would get back to work and stop waiting for some guy to help. Her “Johnny, dear” would probably never show.

If Bones had half a brain, he’d cherish the memories of a fully intact skeleton. Old Miss Frame had loved watching Trick-or-Treaters thru her window until her joints became too stiff to extract her head from the blinds.

Yesterday, Calico and I were discussing Miss Muffin’s growing guitar skills. We’re both delighted that she is doing so well and practices daily without reminders. “Remember when I was like that with the clarinet?” Calico asked. I thought for a minute and gave her a look that needed no words. She knew exactly what I was thinking. When Calico was in fifth grade, she wanted to play a clarinet in the school band. The school’s supply of instruments was limited, however, and her teacher was late in sending interested students to see the band director. By the time she got there, a tuba and a few percussion instruments were the only choices. The director saw her disappointment and offered a solution. “You can  buy clarinet s here”, he said, handing me a list of stores. “They carry used instruments suitable for beginners at very low prices.”  A visit to each of the stores on the list confirmed this. Unfortunately, the used instrument supply was fairly depleted by that time of ...