My great-grandmother was ninety-six when she began to lose her mind. Just think what she lived through: two World Wars, the Great Depression, the Civil Rights movement, the Cold War, her husband’s death, and the substitution of corn syrup for sugar in Coca-Cola, her favorite drink. We tend to be more patient with the idiosyncrasies […]
When my soon-to-be best friend Hunter moved into the house three doors down, we both acquired the brother that neither of us had. We found a partner in crime. When the Little Harpeth River flooded in the late March and April, we would sneak the pool floats out of my garage and raft down the […]
Neither one of my nieces has developed a “filter.†You know, that social apparatus which keeps most of us from saying rude, uncomfortable, or politically incorrect things in polite company. Emery, the older one, will say things like “Mommy, your breath is stinky,†or “Why is that lady so big?†Merrill, the younger one, has […]
When we were growing up, my two sisters and I weren’t allowed to watch several television shows. Married with Children had bad language and crass humor. The Simpsons was a little too irreverent for my parents’ taste. Friends had all the wrong goodies: promiscuity, children out of wedlock, divorce, profanity, a casual attitude toward pornography, […]
This past Sunday, I went to Dollywood with my wife Megan, my parents, and my older sister and her family. Megan’s dad runs a non-profit production company, and he has performed a one-man show called “The Whittlin’ Man†for the past seven summers. Ash’s show is the best thing going at Dollywood, unless of course […]
Every year on April Fool’s Day, my dad tells a lie. Of course on that particular day of the year, we don’t call them lies. We call them “jokes†or “pranks.†This technicality in nomenclature is supposed to annul the victim’s anger, deflate it like a red balloon. “Can’t you take a joke?†the perpetrator […]
The preacher at her funeral didn’t have any problem finding jokes to make.
I don’t know why my grandma says some of the things she does, but I try to love her completely without complete understanding. That’s how I want to love everyone.
