Mar25

Fourteen Years

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Fourteen years ago today, at about 10:00 in the late evening, my precious little Mama left this horrible world. Many times over these years, well meaning people have told me how sorry they are for having lost Mama. I know they don’t mean any harm, but I’m always quick to correct them. You see, to say one has “lost” something implies one has no idea where the object or person they are concerned about is located. It is missing from existence as far as they can tell. Now this next little part won’t sit well with any atheists or agnostics or members of any other religion, so if you feel offended or need to avoid triggering, just scroll on by and be done with it. Having said that, I know exactly where my Mama is right now. She’s where she’s been for the last fourteen years: she’s sitting at the nail-scarred feet of Jesus listening to Him talk about whatever it is He talks about currently. She can breathe easily and not gasp for breath because of COPD. She is free from the constant pain that plagued much of her later years. Most of all, she is happy, and Mama wasn’t happy much of the time because of the life she led. So yes, she’s not lost. I just can’t see her or hear her voice, and as much as I would love to see her again and hear her speak to me, I wouldn’t recall her to this miserable place even if I could. I’ll just have to wait my turn.

The last fourteen years haven’t been easy. I guess I’ve traversed the stages of grief about a hundred times in this period. I sometimes still feel in denial that she’s gone. Next to Budge, Mama was the most important person in my life. For the first twenty-five years of my life, she held pride of place. She was my rock in the storms life threw at us. For twenty years it was just the two of us making our way. I could always count on Mama and I tried to make sure she could always count on me. That’s why, on that dark day fourteen years ago, I told the nurse to disconnect all the various monitors and forced air machines. Mama’s eyes fluttered open and I told her I loved her, I was going to keep my promise to her, and that she would be in her new home in time for whatever celebration they have in Heaven on Easter.

Mama was terrified of smothering to death. She was on oxygen, and it helped some, but she still had a hard time breathing. Years of smoking and working in textile mills had taken their toll on her lungs and they could no longer sustain her. I asked, then begged, the pulmonologist to use one of my lungs for a transplant. I had to be a match. I was half her. He shook his head no, and I still don’t know why. He never explained. Anyway, I promised Mama when she went on oxygen that I wouldn’t let her smother to death, that I’d end things before it got that far. So I did. The nurse, with a consult with the doctor and a palliative care team, began administering small doses of morphine. They don’t do for humans like they do for our beloved pets and give us one shot to take us through the veil. I don’t know why. I’m sure some of you may. Mama went back to sleep and I left for a little while. I came back in the early afternoon with Budge.

At that point, Mama was in and out of consciousness, but she managed to open her eyes wide one last time and I told her for the last time that I loved her. She told me in a whisper that she loved me, then she closed her eyes. The doses of morphine got much bigger and closer together after that until, about 10:00 PM, she slipped away. I was holding her foot because Budge was holding her hand and our cousin Rhonda, who was almost like a daughter to Mama, was holding her other hand. She just got very still, so I went in the hall and told a nurse, and she came in and listened to Mama’s heart, shook her head, gave me a sad smile and told me she was gone.

I land on the stage of anger a lot, and I’ll tell you why. Mama only got sixty years. She was two days from being three months past her sixtieth birthday. She had a co-worker, who happened to be the father of one of my former students, who often said that lots of people were going around breathing the air other people should be breathing. For good or bad, that’s how I feel. Mama was the sweetest person imaginable and she got sixty years when there’s people who are vile to the core and they get seventy and eighty years. It makes me irate at the gross unfairness of it all. I feel anger often with no good target to put it on because it’s no one’s fault ultimately. Death follows life and none of us know how long we will have. One thing is certain, unless Jesus returns soon, everyone reading this is going to die. We can’t get away from it.

I don’t bargain anymore. As a matter of fact, I did all my bargaining when Mama was in the hospital leading up to her death. I made the Lord a boatload of promises, but I knew when I was saying it that it was no use. He doesn’t work that way. He has His plan and He feels no need whatsoever to let us know what it is. So I sit with the stage of depression. Some days I still pick up my phone to call her before I think. I dream about her sometimes, but she’s always angry with me and I never know why. Budge is extremely understanding of my continued grief, but she worries. I’ve had several people tell me it’s been a long time and I need to move on past this. I try. I just haven’t managed to do it. I’ve never gotten to acceptance, which I know is foolish, but it’s how I feel and I just can’t bring myself to lie to myself about that.

Fourteen years. In a way, it seems a long time ago, but in other ways, just a few minutes. I cherish her memory and look at what few pictures I have of her. She hated having her picture taken. I do what I can and the pain really isn’t as sharp as it once was, but the long and the short of it is, I miss her, and when March 25th comes around, I can’t help but feel the pain again. I am her only child and she has no siblings and I never gave her grandchildren so when I’m gone, no one will remember her. She’ll just be a bronze marker in a sea of others. I guess that’s the way it’s meant to be sometimes.

As for y’all, know that I love you always. Be safe, enjoy the Spring, and keep your feel clean.

Feb25

A Little About the Olympics

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The games of the Twenty-fifth Winter Olympiad are all in the books now. I didn’t get to watch as much as I wanted to. I vastly prefer the winter games to the summer games. To me, they are just more exciting, and I just like the separate events more. For example, I love the sliding events! I also think some of these athletes are nuts. Now bobsled isn’t so bad. Two man or four man, everybody is enclosed in a vehicle. Speed is crazy, but if they crash, they have something around them. Then there’s skeleton and luge. These people have a death wish. Let’s get on a tiny sled that our bodies barely fit on and go hurtling down a track at ridiculous speeds just a couple of inches off the icy surface. They steer by wiggling their bodies. They are insane. Hit an imperfection in the ice the wrong way and get launched off the tiny sled and onto the track where your only protective gear is a nice helmet and a glorified leotard.

Luge isn’t any better. Let’s flip over and ride the tiny sled on our backs feet first down the track. Same wild speeds, same gear. This time they are just feet first. I remember being little and watching luge for the first time for the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics. I thought then that these people were crazy and the speeds have only increased since then. What’s more, luge has a DOUBLES event where TWO people are on the tiny sled screaming down the track. Now I don’t know or pretend to know these athletes’ sexual proclivities, but just looking at doubles luge seems to me the participants have to know each other, if not biblically, then at least very, very well.

Speaking of athletes’ sex lives, everyone lives for two weeks in the giant Olympic Village. Now this is a place where it is at least whispered about graphic and sordid things happening. Now I’m not sure how quiet the whispers are since they athletes are all provided a lot of condoms as part of their welcome package to the facility. I may be wrong, but I just picture the whole building as a giant fraternity house at a party college. It’s like Sodom and Gomorrah in there! Now I understand the attraction. After all, these are mostly a group of young people at the peak of their physical conditioning. Adrenaline and hormones are all swirling through the air. The atmosphere is exciting. I suppose it’s no wonder one thing doesn’t lead to another. These things happen.

Leaving sex behind, another favorite event, and a decidedly unsexy one at that, is curling. This game of glorified shuffleboard on ice just amazes me. I have but a slight comprehension of the rules, but the mechanics of the game are fascinating. One person in an elegant sliding motion sends a specially made stone down the icy path then starts screaming at two people with space age type “brooms” to sweep a line in front of the rock that makes it curve or go straight faster as the people want it to. I’m amazed at the stones themselves. I saw and episode of How It’s Made on Discovery Channel showing the only quarry of granite in the world where all curling stones originate from. The main body of the stone comes from one type of granite, while the small disc on the bottom is a second also special type of granite of another color. Maybe I’m just a nerd, but it’s heady stuff to me.

Even Budge likes curling. Back when we had cable, we found a sports channel that featured some curling matches so we got to watch outside the Olympics. I didn’t get all the details, but apparently, there was a spot of controversy at the games this year. Seems allegations of cheating were being leveled at certain teams by other teams. Whether or not it was true, I still think it’s a little funny to see the stuffy curler getting upset about the very gentlemanly game.

Budge’s favorite events are the ski events of any type except moguls, and figure skating. I find this amusingly strange. On the one hand, she loves to watch people hurtle down a mountain, but at the same time, adored the elegance and style of figure skating. One of her most enjoyed events, and one she has expressed a desire to do, is ski jumping. She finds it amazing how, for a brief time, these athletes are flying, practically flying, through the air. I told her she was welcomed to try and I would support her from the sidelines, because I’m old enough to remember ABC’s Wide World of Sports and their example of the “agony of defeat” was a ski jumper absolutely wiping out on the launch ramp. That’s all I need to know about the sport.

The other skiing events are pretty wild, too. Downhill skiers are about as crazy as the sliders. The downhill athletes go screaming down the mountains through curves and small jumps while reaching speeds that would be illegal on most highways in my home state. I know the big story of the games, at least the early part, was Lindsay Vonn’s comeback attempt ending in bitter tragedy with her terrifying crash on her first run. To me, she had no business trying to compete anyway. I understand the desire to get out and recapture that greatness, but honestly, downhill skiing is a young person’s sport and she’s over forty. She did survive the crash, but she credits the doctors and surgeons with saving her leg in the aftermath.

Still, Budge’s heart is set on figure skating before anything else. She watched the competition on her iPad every night it aired. She enjoys Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir’s commentary as much as she does the skating. She has studied the jumps and such and has a pretty good grasp of the rules. I, on the other hand, am at a total loss as to what’s going on out there. I have no idea what makes a Lutz different from a Salchow, or what a combination is supposed to look like. I know the judges are a finicky and picky lot of lemon suckers. I think no judge from a country whose skater is on the ice should be allowed to judge that skater. It’s too much temptation. I know they throw out the top and bottom score, but still. I enjoy watching the various iterations of the skating as long as I get to watch it with Budge. It makes her so happy, she smiles.

One last event she and I both enjoy is the biathlon. Now that’s a sport. Let’s ski cross country up and down hills and valleys, and over various obstacles. That’s going to get the old heart rate up and moving. Then, when were sucking in air like our lungs are going to sue us for nonsupport, we’ll stop and take a rifle and shoot at a little bitty target a good ways away while standing. I think those are some supreme athletes.

Anyway, I hate that the winter games only happen every four years. It’s the only time the sports I really enjoy are televised. I guess in Europe they have sports shows that feature luge, skeleton, and bobsled, but here in America we miss out. So in any event, stay warm, know that I love you all, and keep your feet clean!

Jan30

Musings on Being Gen X

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I turned 55 earlier this month. I’m at the speed limit age now. From that bit of information, I’m sure you can deduce my birth year was the Year of Our Lord Nineteen Hundred and Seventy-One. I’m squarely Gen X. I see in my scrollings on Facebook and Instagram that Gen X has a pretty noticeable presence online. I follow three separate content creators, and I love to hear their takes on the music of our time growing up as well as the things from our childhood and teenage years and I thought I’d give some of my thoughts on what it’s meant to be part of the Gen X crowd.

First off, most Gen Xers remember harsh physical discipline. Lots of reels talk about the difference between the “gentle parenting” of today and what we went through. I can’t relate though because I never got so much as a swat on the backside growing up. I was raised a de facto only child after my parents’ divorce, so most of my time and conversation was with adults. As a result, I adopted more adult ways and that wasn’t conducive to getting one’s rear end blistered. Long explanation short, I didn’t do anything much to deserve a spanking and the handful of times I did, it was around Granny Wham, and she wasn’t going to let anyone touch me. Now I did get paddled at school one time in the second grade for talking during nap time. Yes, we took naps in second grade; isn’t it grand? Mama found out when I went home and told her. She didn’t take it well. She took me all the way into school the next day and stopped by the principal’s office on the way in. I’d never heard Mama speak at that volume or use those words. I think it would have been different if they’d told Mama first, but I’m not really so sure.

One thing I did do in common with my Gen X comrades was the Saturday morning ritual. Saturday was Mama’s only day to sleep in so I was on my own from the time I woke up until she got up around ten o’clock. I filled the time productively by pouring myself a nice big bowl of Cocoa Pebbles or Cocoa Puffs, and turning on the Saturday morning cartoons. It was a great way to spend a morning. I’d watch Looney Toons and Thundarr the Barbarian and a host of other half-hour shows from eight o’clock until Bill Cosby and the Cosby Kids came on at 11:30 AM. They were the last cartoon of the morning on the clearest channel we got, but sometimes I would watch Pink Panther through a little static snow. Either way, once they went off at noon, it was time for Mid Atlantic Championship Wrestling! I spent the next hour cheering my heroes in the “squared circle” and booing the bad guys. Mama would watch with me while she folded clothes, and I think she got as much entertainment from me as she did from the show.

Another thing I shared along with my compadres was the mandate to be outside. Saturday morning cartoons were the only acceptable time to watch TV on a day off and once they went off, my friends and I were expected to be outside. I would ride my bike in my slow fat kid pace over to the Willis boys’ house and we would play all sorts of ways. We’d go on grand adventures in the woods behind their house, or maybe if the weather was right, we’d go fishing. Sometimes we’d go to their grandmother’s house up the road a ways. I loved their grandmother, but I hated getting there because I couldn’t keep up on my bicycle. They were all just too speedy for me and any size hill resulted in a dismount and walking my trusty two wheeled steed up to the summit. Summertime and vacations from school were no different. No matter how hot it was outside, we were out in it from morning to evening. We did get our water from the garden hose, which is a great way to get stung on the lip by a yellow jacket by the way, but unlike what I hear from the Gen Xers on line, we did get fed around noon. Whichever mom’s house we were at would make us some variety of sandwich and pour us up some sweet tea or Kool-Aid to wash them down with. We didn’t go hungry.

I remember when the first Atari 2600 came out. The Willis boys got one the Christmas they came out. We weren’t allowed to play on it during daylight hours. That was for being outside. When night feel though, we could come inside and after supper play Combat and Pitfall until our thumbs ached. It was the same several years later when the original Nintendo showed up. We’d try to sneak in and play during the day in the glorious air conditioning, but inevitably, we’d get caught and shooed outside. I was and to this day still am, hopeless on a video game. I was fairly good at some of the arcade stand up games we could play at the mall and in some stores in Fountain Inn when I was with one of my papas, but home consoles were the death of me. I got laughed at a lot.

That was something else about our growing up I shared with the online Xers. You had to have a thick skin. Sensitive kids need not apply. Whatever was different about you would be a target of ridicule. Mine was my weight and pale skin. I was easily sunburned and I was fat for a kid so I was given the nickname at play and at school of The Great White Marshmallow. You know, it stung a little at first, but the difference between that kind of ribbing and out and out bullying was nicknames and such weren’t malicious. No one was trying to hurt you or your feelings. It was just a way of showing where you stood in the pack. Now we did have bullies. We had some terrible bullies. Unlike today, there was no zero tolerance policy or anything like it to protect people from getting bullied. Teachers were notorious for turning a blind eye to some pretty bad stuff. I got a little crap because of my weight and because my parents were divorce, but nothing like some others I knew. In our jungle, the only way to defang a bully was to stand up to them. I saw some much smaller guys get fed up and take on some bullies. Thing was, you didn’t have to win. The act of resisting showed you weren’t a victim. The same teachers who turned a blind eye to getting bullied were also just as blind when a playground bully got his just desserts as well. Unlike today, we had to sort our problems out on our own.

I don’t remember everything fondly about those times though. For one thing, mental health wasn’t paid much attention to. I know today if a child or teen seems “off” it won’t be long before they are in some kind of therapy, and rightly so. Wasn’t that way when I was growing up. You pretty much had to figure it out on your own. Childhood and teenage depression weren’t talked about and I don’t know when it changed, but they weren’t even acknowledged to exist when I was coming up. I know I would have benefitted from talking to someone. My parents’ divorce when I was small did a number on me mentally. I went mute for several months. I wouldn’t go outside no matter how much I was coaxed, and I withdrew from my friends. All I wanted to do was sit in a corner of the couch and read and deal with a sadness I couldn’t articulate and that no one tried to help me through. I was told, not unkindly, that it was part of life and I just had to get through it. Years and years later when I started going to my excellent psychiatrist and psychologist, I talked to them about that experience. They both said similar things. At the time, children’s mental health wasn’t understood well, if at all, and even if the adults around me had tried to get me help, there wasn’t really any help to be had. It was just the way of the times.

One last thing I’ll discuss about how different things are now that from when I was a kid is working. I got a job the day after I turned fifteen and worked until I went on disability thirty years later. Barely missed a day. Most of my friends worked a job. Grocery store bagging and stocking was my chosen vocation. I’ve got to be honest, I’ve never enjoyed a job as much as I did working at Community Cash bagging groceries and stocking the canned veggies aisle. Now though, I don’t see teens working as a general rule. Sure, some do, but for us it was expected. I never got an allowance at any time growing up. If I wanted to put gas in the car my father so kindly bought for me and my mother kindly paid the insurance on, I had to earn the money. It was just how it was. I’m not sure what changed, but I know today’s generations don’t seem to have the kind of work ethic we did, but I don’t think it’s a mark of character, I just think the times have changed.

Now I could go on for pages, but I’m going to leave it here. I may pick up on the topic in a later post. I think I’d like to talk about all the things we were scared of in our Gen X child and teen years and how it’s different from today, but that’s a story for another time. So keep your feet clean, and know I love y’all!

Dec22

Christmas Shopping

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Ever since the wise men brought gifts to a not so baby Jesus back at the beginning of Christmases, gift giving has been an important part of the holiday season. Now for years out of time immemorial, gifts were usually handmade and created by the giver or at least traded for. Gift shopping as we recognize it didn’t exist. Eventually, that all changed with the rise of commercialism and merchandising until we reached the state we are in today when Christmas shopping is the keystone of many retailers’ budgets for the year, and the “holiday season” begins closer and closer to Halloween, if not earlier since I saw Christmas displays out at Cracker Barrel alongside witches and black cats this year.

I have been part of Christmas shopping throughout my life and I have noticed some serious changes over the years. I started in-store Christmas shopping with my Aunt Cathy when I was big enough to keep up with her in the stores. Now Aunt Cathy was not one to shop early. As a wag once put it in a comedy routine, Aunt Cathy liked to wait until Mary’s water broke to go shopping. As a result, more than once, she and I would be out on Christmas Eve looking for her last minute gifts for the family. She also loves to remind me to this day how she sought far and wide for Star Wars figures and play sets the year the movie came out. Oh how I wish I’d left those in their original packaging.

I also shopped with Mama for Christmas. Back then, it wasn’t unusual for her to start shopping in September because almost all the Christmas gifts would spend some amount of time on “lay-away” at K-Mart or Sky City. Lay-away, for the younger readers I may have, was a type of buy on time arrangement where one would gather up all the treasures destined for the tree into a shopping cart which then got pushed to the “lay-away department” of the store. Once there, a down payment of a certain percentage got put on the merchandise. Then, each successive paycheck until the week before Christmas, you would come in and pay some on what you had on “lay-away.” It was a time honored tradition that sadly has gone the way of the dodo bird in today’s modern retail landscape. For a time though, it shined as a way to get presents for everyone while living from paycheck to paycheck. One interesting thing about lay-away was you often forgot exactly what you had on lay-away so making the final payment and collecting your booty was as exciting for you as it would be for the people the presents were destined for.

Mama moved away from lay-away with Palmetto Bank’s launch of the Christmas Club. This was a novel savings account where, starting in January, Mama would deposit a set amount of each paycheck into the Christmas Club account. The money would grow week by week throughout the year as more was added. Then, the week of Thanksgiving, Mama and the rest of the Christmas Club members would withdraw their funds with a little interest to boot in time for the yearly pandemonium known as Black Friday.

Ah, Black Friday. Honestly, it doesn’t mean much anymore. So-called Black Friday sales begin weeks before the Friday after Thanksgiving. Not much is left to go on sale anymore. There was a time, though, when Black Friday was an exercise in danger and deceit second to none. The Wednesday before Thanksgiving, you would pick a newspaper up with all the sales flyers for the various stores. Then, you would spread the flyers out on the table at home and you and your loved ones would plan out your attack.

For many years, Black Friday itself was a riotous event. Sales would begin at 4:00 AM with the doorbusters for the day. Hordes of people would line up outside the mall and the Wal-mart waiting the chance to charge the doors to be the first to get to the item they coveted. That’s if they weren’t one of the hardy breed who had been camped outside the store for a few days to get the best place in line. I know it sounds insane to read about, but my goodness, you had to be there. See, each store only carried two or three, maybe ten at most, of the biggest ticket items like TVs and Tickle Me Elmoes in the store. A lot more than ten people wanted those items.

Every year, the news would have coverage of people being sent to the hospital because they had been trampled in the crush to get in the doors. Also, it wasn’t unusual to see several fistfights in the parking lots between seventy and eighty year old women contesting the purchase of something the other wanted. Here’s just an example: one year in my childhood, the Cabbage Patch Doll was the item of the season. Parents were rabid about securing one of these ugly cloth dolls with a fake birth certificate for their children. Store crew members had to be stationed where the dolls were kept to referee the bloodsport taking place as the dolls flew off the shelves. Grown women were ripping these dolls away from each other so their daughter could have one. It was so bad, news agencies were warning parents not to let their children take the dolls out to play before Christmas because people were stopping on the side of the road to snatch dolls from little kids’ arms. It was crazy.

Budge and I took place in some Black Friday craziness for a few years. We lined up outside Wal-mart before dawn to be early into the store. We got a few good deals, but truthfully, we were more there to people watch than to actually get any “have to” items. We’d watch the craziness around us until about nine o’clock, then we’d go to the nearest Waffle House to eat breakfast. We haven’t done that in years though. It was just too crazy.

Things got even crazier when, several years ago, stores started opening on Thanksgiving Day, but you couldn’t buy anything until midnight of Black Friday. What happened then was surreal. Huge pallets of something like DVD players would be dropped all over the store to spread out the madness. Those DVD players might be in the frozen food section, while the toy of the year was in the sporting goods aisle. Then, at the stroke of midnight, a store worker would slit the plastic wrapping the pallets and the frenzy would begin. Again, fistfights were common as people who had been standing with their hands on a DVD player since 8:00 had it ripped away by some johnny come lately. Thankfully, that madness ended with the COVID pandemic. Stores no longer opened on Thanksgiving Day and even when the pandemic was deemed over, the idea of giving workers time off shockingly stuck around. Even Wal-mart is closed on Thanksgiving these days.

Now, all that madness is obsolete. Budge and I haven’t been out for a present in five years or more. Our secret? Not really a secret, but ONLINE SHOPPING! It is the greatest. As we’ve gotten older, neither one of us likes a big crowd so sitting at home behind a laptop in a cyberstore is fantastic. Since we only buy for each other, it does cause problems with trying to keep stuff hidden from the other. Each of us has the gifts for the other sent here to the house. It makes things interesting. Still, online is the only way to go. I have all Budge’s presents hidden in the house ready to give to her on Christmas Day and never had to go anywhere! All my presents are piled up on her side of the bedroom and I am forbidden to touch anything under pain of eyebrow hairs being plucked.

So Merry Christmas to you all, and I hope you get those last minute gifts bought with either a run to the late sales at the store, or some overnight shipping from online. In any event, love y’all, and keep those feet clean. See you in the new year.

Nov27

Thanksgiving 2025

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It’s that time of year again. Time for families to gather and eat turkeys and pass out in food comas in front of the tv watching football games. Thanksgiving is a family time. Unfortunately, not everyone has a joyous time at Thanksgiving because they either don’t have any family left, or maybe they are estranged from their family they do have. One of my friends is going the be alone this Thanksgiving for the first time in seven years because he and his long time girlfriend split up back in March. He’s picking up a shift at the security job where he works since he doesn’t have any dinners to go to.

I don’t know which is worse, to not be able to be around your family for one reason or another — some legitimate, some petty as hell — or to simply have no family to gather with anymore. Budge and I fall into the latter group. I grew up having great Thanksgivings. In fact, one of the only things I found somewhat beneficial about having divorced parents was the fact I got to eat TWO Thanksgiving meals.

For the first few years of my life, starting once I was big enough to follow along, I went hunting with Daddy and some friends and family on Thanksgiving morning. Thanksgiving has traditionally been the opening day for rabbit season in South Carolina, and Daddy had a pack of beagles he loved to hear run rabbits. He would pick me up early in the morning from Mama’s, if I hadn’t spent the night at his house, then we would hunt for a few hours, and he would take me back to Mama’s so I could wash up and we could go to wherever we were having Thanksgiving lunch. We had choices depending on which great-aunts were cooking that year, but they all could cook better than anyone else I knew.

After lunch, Mama and I would go to Fountain Inn where Mama would drop me off with Papa and Granny Wham. Papa, Uncle Larry, and I would watch football together in the den. Lots of years, I didn’t get to see much playing time because I would fall into a turkey induced deep sleep for a couple of hours. I’d wake up once Daddy and Teresa, my stepmother, got there though. Then it would be time for Thanksgiving Meal Round Two. Granny laid out quite a spread for Thanksgiving supper. I had no problem eating that second meal though.

No matter how much I had eaten at lunch, I always had room for Granny Wham’s bone dry turkey and my own pan of dressing. Yes, I got my own small pan of dressing cooked for me at Thanksgiving and Christmas because I didn’t like onions, so Granny Wham made me my own little pan without onions. Drove Daddy crazy, but Granny didn’t want to hear it. Aunt Cathy was always first in line to fix her plate. That was because she had to be the first to pick which yeast roll or biscuit she wanted. That’s just the way it was. Drove Daddy crazy, but Granny didn’t want to hear it.

When I became a teenager and started dating, things got a little complicated as I now had a girlfriend who wanted to eat with her family and mine. So, for a couple of years, I ate THREE and every once FOUR Thanksgiving meals on Thanksgiving Day. That did strain my belt loops and I had to learn to pace myself. Granny noticed and made a unilateral decision. She moved our Thanksgiving meal to the Sunday after Thanksgiving. For the rest of my teenage years and into my twenties, that’s when we ate Thanksgiving.

Then came 1995. Granny Wham had a stroke in July and Papa Wham died three days later from the shock. Teresa took over the family meals. I’ll say this about my stepmother, she can cook. She can cook up a storm. I waddled away from her table many times in my life. We still had Thanksgiving on Sunday after Thanksgiving. It did make things easier. I got to eat with Mama, and then go eat with my girlfriend.

Sometime along the way, Mama started cooking Thanksgiving at her house. Mama could cook, too. (Does anyone see why I was such a fat kid growing up?) When Budge and I got married, we would eat lunch or supper with her Dad and Sandy and Sandy’s family, then eat with Mama for the other time slot. At least that’s what we did until we stopped eating Thanksgiving with Dad and Sandy for some years, but that’s a story for another time, and it’s really Budge’s story to tell, not mine, so you’ll probably never see it here.

Then, Mama’s health started failing and she no longer felt up to cooking a full Thanksgiving meal and doing all the prep work and clean up it required, even with Budge and I helping. That’s when we started eating Thanksgiving lunch at Ryan’s Steakhouse. It was a buffet more than a steakhouse and they were open on Thanksgiving Day at 10:00 am. We’d get there about 10:30 am and eat plenty and not have to clean up anything. It was great.

Then, faster than I could process it, Granny Wham was gone. She hadn’t cooked the meal in several years by that time, but she was there, and she was the heart of the family after Papa Wham died, then she was gone. Then, not long enough later, Mama was gone, too. Thanksgiving just wasn’t the same anymore. It didn’t help that Teresa decided to combine Thanksgiving and Christmas meals into one date because all of us were grown and had our own families and it was nearly impossible for everyone to get together twice in such a short period as Thanksgiving to Christmas.

With Mama gone and us not really associating with Dad and Sandy, that left Budge and I to our own devices on Thanksgiving. For a number of years, we ate Thanksgiving lunch at our friend Laura’s house with her family, but COVID did that in, among other things. So it was down to just Budge and me. These years, Budge has taken over and we have our own Thanksgiving tradition to celebrate. We get up and watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade until all the Broadway shows have done their part. Then, we go to Cracker Barrel about 11:00 am and eat their Thanksgiving special. It’s not Granny Wham, Mama, or Teresa, but it’s not terrible.

After we eat, we ride around in the car and, at noon, we listen to “Alice’s Restaurant” on WROQ 101.1. If you don’t know the song, it’s twenty minutes long, it’s a story, and it takes place around Thanksgiving. I love it and introduced Budge to it some years ago. After “Alice” goes off, we head home for naps. I’ll get up and watch some football while Budge piddles on her phone. Then, after dark, around 7:00 or 7:30, we’ll go to the Waffle House for Thanksgiving supper.

I really appreciate all Budge has done these last few years to create something for us to look forward to on Thanksgiving. I always get depressed badly this time of year because almost all my family is gone. Now, Budge’s Dad is gone, too, so it really is the two of us. She does a great job of giving our little family of two our own traditions to enjoy and, again, I appreciate all the work she does to make the day go well.

So, that’s this year’s Thanksgiving post. Hope you all have a great Thanksgiving wherever you are. Love y’all, and keep your feet clean.

Oct31

#TBT: Halloween at Aunt Nell’s

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I originally published this on Halloween 2009. Since then, Aunt Nell’s grandson, who was living in the house has sold it and left Greenpond for the suburbs. Halloween gatherings at Aunt Nell’s belong strictly to the realm of memory now. I know I’ve posted this story several times over the last few years, but please understand, this is a core memory of mine. It was one of the only times I got to see my extended family, and so is a very precious point in time for me.

When I was growing up, we lived in the back forty acres of the boondocks. I took some friends home from college to meet my mama over the holidays once and two of them swore we lived in a different time zone, if not another space time continuum. Living that far from nowhere meant that social events were scarce, but for a kid with a sugar craving on All Saint’s Eve, it was death. I LITERALLY had no where within walking distance of my house and we lived so far out we’d have to eat all the candy we got driving around just to survive the trip. So in the era of my childhood, preceding all the newfangled “Trunk or Treats” , the highlight of Halloween for me, my brother’s generation, and my dad’s generation was the annual trip to Greenpond to visit Aunt Nell and drink her Witch’s Brew.

the boys at halloween

Over twenty years ago in Greenpond. My baby first cousin, Blake, is the Blue Dinosaur; my brother, Nick, is the redhead behind him; Aunt Nell is in the witch’s costume; my second cousin, Anna, is next to Aunt Nell and is holding a child I don’t recognize; and Zach, my oldest first cousin, is standing behind Anna.

See, when Daddy and Aunt Cathy, as well as all the First Cousins, were children, they lived in the boonies as well; so they didn’t have anywhere to get candy on Halloween either. In an effort to give the children somewhere to wear their costumes and get some candy, Papa Wham’s sister, my great-Aunt Nell, started dressing up in a witch’s costume on Halloween and hosting a small gathering. She’d put a huge (well, huge for a five year old) cauldron of what she swore was witch’s brew on an open fire in front of her open and detached garage then pop up a huge amount of pop corn and lay out a great stock of candies.

Children — first my daddy’s generation, then mine — would come with their parents and eat popcorn and run around the pitch black yard in our costumes playing hide and seek until we vomited. It was our unofficial family reunion and most Halloween nights, just about every lineal descendant of Granny Mattie would make their way up Aunt Nell’s winding driveway. Rain or shine, she always turned out.

The Witch of Greenpond became pretty much a local legend. Aunt Nell made the cover of the local weekly newspapers and in all the years I can remember, she never missed a Halloween. Time comes for us all though, even good witches, and the year finally arrived when Aunt Nell simply couldn’t take on the night’s festivities. Alzheimer’s Disease had robbed her of the memory of the wonderful times she’d given all of us and the rest of the rural children of the surrounding countryside.

That year, about six or seven years ago now, I think, the pointed hat was passed. Anna, the adorable little blonde standing next to Aunt Nell in the picture, took up the mantle of the Greenpond Witch from her grandmother. Now she presides over the ceremony that has meant so much to so many people for so long. Now, rain or shine (and tonight was a frog-floater) the cauldron still gets lit and the children still come to eat popcorn, chase each other, and drink a cup of Witch’s Brew . . . which still tastes suspiciously like cherry Kool-Aid.

Happy Halloween, y’all, and don’t forget to wash your feet after you come in from trick or treating!

Sep17

Take It to the Limit One More Time

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Thirty years ago on this date, one of the brightest stars to ever shine in my sky fell and flamed out. Her name was Tina Dawn Messer, and she was the shortest known but most connected best friend I ever had.

I met Tina in 1993 when I was doing my student teaching with Mrs. Nell Cox at Pickens High School in Upstate South Carolina. She caught my eye, not because she was cute as a button — which she was — but because she was on crutches. I did a quick double take and realized why she was on crutches: her left leg was missing from the hip down. I smiled at her and went back to what I was doing, but something about her nagged at the back of my mind. See, I’m a storyteller, and as such, I also collect stories, and I was sure she had a good one, and I wanted to hear it.

We hit it off and eventually, I got to know the story. She was a freshman playing volleyball when she got strangely tired one day at practice. She could hardly keep going, so she went and sat down on the bleachers and started rubbing her legs. Behind her knee on her left leg, she felt a golf ball sized knot. She thought it was a muscle knot at first, but when it didn’t go away, her mama took her to the doctor who, worried as he was, sent her on to the hospital for some tests.

I’m sure you probably know where this is going. It wasn’t a muscle knot; it was lymphoma, and a mighty virulent strain. The doctors were honest with her from the beginning. They said she would need chemo and radiation, but if she really wanted to improve her chances of living, she needed to have her leg amputated, so, she did. By the time I met her, she was a senior and had been on crutches for three years give or take.

She was fitted with a prosthesis, but she said it hurt to wear it for long at a time and it was awkward, so she preferred her crutches. The first time I went to her house, she showed me her room including the big box of left shoes over in the corner which she had collected over time. I told her she needed to find a girl her size with a right leg amputation and they could split the cost of shoes. She’d never thought of that.

I was about to graduate Clemson and she was about to graduate high school. I came back up to Clemson after I graduated to go to her graduation. After that, we kept in touch, mostly through hours long phone calls, and even got together a few Saturdays. She was ridiculously easy to talk to and we found out we had many things in common. We both loved Southern Rock music and all the rest of the classic rock catalog. We even sent each other mixtapes of our favorites. She loved Fleetwood Mac, and at the time, I didn’t see the appeal. Now though, through Budge’s influence, they are one of my favorite groups. Her favorite song of all though was by the Eagles, “Take It to the Limit.”

We both loved cars, and we both loved adventure. Looking back on the person I was then and comparing him to the person I’ve become, I can’t imagine me loving adventure being such a homebody now, but back then, I was different. We used to ride around the mountains of Pickens County in her car. She had a new convertible Corvette that was burnt orange, had a highly tuned engine, and an automatic transmission. She drove like a bat out of hell. When she was in a playful mood, I’d end up halfway in the floorboard on the passenger side waiting to go off the side of the mountain.

She loved life in the way only those who know how close death is really can. We would ride around singing at the tops of our lungs, talking about things we wanted to do and places we wanted to go. It was great times.

It all came to a head one night in the summer. I was over at her house on a Saturday night. It was just the two of us. Her parents had gone out for supper and said they’d be home late. We sat on the couch talking about all kinds of things when I finally looked at her and said, “Tina, why don’t we leave your mom and dad a note, go pack the Corvette and head out to Vegas and get married? It’d be one grand adventure, and I can’t think of someone more closely matched to me to spend the rest of my life with!”

She turned away and I never will forget the look in her eye when she turned back to me. She said, “Shannon, that sounds wonderful, and in another life, I’d take you up on it in a heartbeat because we really were made for each other I think, but you have to know, I’m always in danger of a relapse, and I know you and your heart and if we were together, you wouldn’t be able to stand losing me, and you will lose me — sooner rather than later. I can’t do that to you.”

That was the last we spoke of it. I’ve had six engagements counting Budge, who didn’t waste time like the others did. The story of those engagements would be a post all its own, but don’t hold your breath waiting for it. I kid about it, but it isn’t really funny. I don’t count Tina as one of those, even if I technically did ask her to marry me in a way.

Anyway, that was the last time I was at Tina’s house. We kept talking on the phone and exchanging mixtapes, but we didn’t get together anymore. The cancer did come back; this time it was in her lung. I went to see her in the hospital and she was just as bubbly as ever. We talked like we always did. She had an operation to remove a lobe of her left lung. Then she had more chemo and radiation. It went away and it looked like she was out of the woods.

We didn’t talk as much after that. I think it was just too much for both of us. The calls got fewer and fewer until I didn’t hear much from her at all. Once I realized Tina and I would never be together, I got into what would become the worst relationship of my life. I don’t want to talk about it, but it was months of stupidity and insanity lasting from Christmas of 1993 to summer of 1994. I went from a perfect match for me to the worst thing I could ever have gotten mixed up in.

But I never forgot Tina, and one day in the fall of 1994, I got a call from her mama. She said Tina’s cancer had returned and this time, Tina had decided not to fight anymore and, as Tina put it, “Let them cut me up a piece at a time. It’s time to go.” I wanted to come see her immediately, but her mama said Tina wasn’t having ANY visitors. She was in bad shape and she didn’t want anyone seeing her in that condition.

That was the last I heard for a long time. I met Budge not too long after. We started dating in January of 1995 and I was happy. In the back of my mind though, I never forgot Tina. I wondered often how she was. I knew her iron will though, so I also knew trying to see her was futile.

1995 was a hell of a year for me. I lost my beloved grandfather in July, and buried one of my wrestlers who was killed in a terrible car wreck in August, and in March of the year, I lost two of my favorite cousins in a crash on I-85. It just was a rough time all around. Budge was the only thing keeping me going. Then came September 17, 1995. I got a call that morning. It was from Tina’s hospice nurse. She asked to speak to Shannon Wham. I told her that was me. She said she had the sad news to tell me Tina had passed away just a few hours before surrounded by her mama, daddy, and brother. The nurse said she was going through Tina’s instructions of who to notify and my name was the first on the list. I thanked her and hung up the phone.

I didn’t go to the funeral. I had been to three funerals already that year, and I knew it was just a box holding what was left of a jar of clay that once was Tina. I kept her picture on my desk at home. I had one of my artistic students draw me a portrait of her from a picture I had. In it I told him to give her back her leg and give her angel’s wings. I kept that portrait over my desk at school for five years before I finally took it down.

It’s passingly strange, but in the early years of our dating and marriage, Budge was kind of jealous. She didn’t like discussing my former girlfriends. Still, she never said a word to me about having Tina’s picture or the portrait at school. I could talk about her as much as I wanted and Budge never got mad or even lightly upset. I was thankful for that because, deliriously happy as I was with Budge, I still missed Tina. There was something about her I couldn’t forget and Budge told me I didn’t have to.

To this day, though, I have a hard time sitting through “Take It to the Limit” if it comes on the radio. Budge always turns it soon as she hears the opening bars. Tina was something special. Nineteen was way to young for her to leave, but I’ll always remember her at the wheel of her Corvette, wind mussing her short hair, radio blasting around the mountains of Pickens. I miss her still.

Love y’all and keep those feet clean!

Aug28

TBT: I Hate Summer Passionately

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I Hate Summer!!

Rerunning this post from about 15 years ago in honor of this being the hottest summer I can remember. It’s been terrible this August with ten straight days of 100 degree heat. Hope it does what they say it’s going to do and cools off some soon.

I don’t know how long it’s been since I mentioned this fact, but I hate summer with all my heart; I have two perfectly excellent reasons for despising this godawful season that everyone else apparently loves so dearly.

First of all, I am not a small man — not by a long shot. To be quite honest, I’m fat, large, obese, and several other words of varying denotation and connotation all pointing to the fact that I was born 10 pounds and 5 ounces and I haven’t looked backed or missed a meal since.

Summertime was not meant for fat people. We sweat. Now some of  you more proper individuals may “perspire” and some ladies may even develop a “delicate sheen.” Well, honey, I sweat buckets and right now, I’ve got the Zambezi River flowing from my hairline down my back to eventually puddle in and around my nether regions. That’s with the A/C “givin’ ye all she can Cap’n”. Any more strain on the venerable Trane and the dilithium crystals will probably blow and we’ll have to eject the warp core. If I go outside for long in this 100+ heat, you could render lard off my backside.

I hate to sweat. The only time I’ve ever CHOSEN to sweat is when I wrestled four years in high school. Then, sweating seemed to serve a purpose. Any other time, it just makes me miserable. Fat people were built for Arctic conditions. If you don’t believe me, when’s the last time you saw a skinny Inuit? (Nota Bene: Eskimo is a derogatory term, which I didn’t know until an exceptionally large Inuit man told me) Inuits live in the Arctic. Ever seen a svelte whale? Know why? It’s freaking cold in the ocean depths where they swim! Nature has selected against fat mixing with heat. Fat goes with cold; skinny goes with heat.

My second reason to despise summer is I am known as “The Man The Sun Forgot.” I don’t want to say I’m pale or anything, but people afflicted with albinism stand next to me to feel good about their tan. The few times I’ve gone cave exploring, my glowing body was the third emergency light source. Folks are always asking me why don’t I take off my shirt when I’m outside. The simple answer is when I did that last summer, I got a call from Houston Space Center asking me to please cover myself because I was blinding the crew of the International Space Station and they couldn’t conduct their experiments.

You think I’m joking, but I’m not. I am WHITE and I am FAT. I went to the beach several years and pants sizes ago and when I took off my shirt just for kicks, a big guy in a frock coat started chasing me down the beach waving a harpoon and screaming, “I’ve found ye at last! Thar she blows! A hump like a snow hill!” If the beach patrol hadn’t grabbed him I hate to think what might have happened.

So, lay out a little and tan, right? Um, did you even read the first section about heat? An ex of mine once asked me to lay out in the sun with her. I told her if she wanted to break up with me, just say so. Even if I didn’t mind roasting myself like a suckling pig with pineapple rings and a Macintosh in my mouth, there’s the little matter of blistering sunburn.  When I was a child and into my early teens, the strongest SPF sunscreen was 15. I would get COOKED right through 15. If I want a decent chance at remaining non-boiled-lobster color, I have to wear Bullfrog 55 SPF and, no lie, I get pinkish through that after a couple of hours. Oh, and when I do burn, it doesn’t turn tan. Nope, most people are burn, tan, burn, tan darker. I am burn, peel, burn worse, get sun poisoning, peel some more, risk drowning in an oatmeal bath.

I’ve got a ton of sunburn stories, but I’ll tell one and let it go at that. When I was six, we had the first above ground pool I’d ever seen. Of course, Daddy didn’t bother to hook up the filter, so we had to drain it once a month to get the slime molds out of the bottom and refill it . . . but I digress. Two friend of mine and I happily splashed around in said pool from 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM. I hadn’t put ANY sunscreen on, but that was okay because I had my FAVORITE shirt of the moment on just like Mama had told me to do. (Well, she did tell me to wear a shirt.)

This shirt was a real, live reproduction football JERSEY complete with HOLES all in it! Now, I have a genius IQ, but as one of my best friends used to point out, I lack the common sense to get out of a shower of rain. I figured that moving around would cover my whole body with the fabric at some point in time and it would keep me safe from the ravages of the sun.

It didn’t.

When Mama came home from shopping, she called us in the house (trailer, whatever). She took one look at me and burst into tears. I couldn’t see my back so I had no idea what was wrong. This was one time ignorance was not bliss. I had developed a water blister through each one of the hundreds of holes in the shirt. The shirt was literally fastened to my back and shoulders by water blisters poking through the holes. I went and stood in the shower under straight cold water for thirty minutes trying to get the blisters to go down.

They didn’t. Mama finally had to take off that shirt and every one of those blisters broke open. If you’re wondering, yes, I cried. I cried like a baby. My back looked like steak tartare.

And THAT, gentle readers, is why I don’t go outside OR get into a pool unless it is DARK O’CLOCK!

Keep cool and wash those feet!

Love y’all! 🙂

Jul31

New Beginnings for Budge and a Little Spat

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Tuesday of this week, Budge went back to the first day for teachers, and for the first time in twenty-three years, it was at a new school. She didn’t leave her old school without a lot of soul searching and inner turmoil because she fully planned to retire from one school, but events just made it impossible. I could write a post on what finally made her leave, but it wouldn’t be at all fun, so let’s focus on the new way ahead.

Back in June, we paid to have professional movers move Budge’s stuff from her old school to her new school. It was a little pricey, but I don’t have a truck anymore and borrowing a truck is always a pain, so we bit the bullet and had it hired out. It was for the best since neither one of us is in great shape. Budge has been dealing with hip and back pain. As I mentioned in my last post, I’m getting a new hip at some point so I wasn’t my best. It was a good idea, price be damned.

We went to her new school last week to drop off some furniture she had purchased from IKEA. Then, later in the week, we went back so I could put it together. Yay! Ever since Budge started teaching, I have helped her set up her room. This year was particularly involved because she’s going to a charter school and the building was an office building and not designed as a school. As a result, she had no storage space, or nothing much of anything to be honest. It was four walls and a skylight. Bare bones. So we had to buy stuff to finish it out. That buying stuff lead to one of the few disagreements Budge and I have had in our soon-to-be twenty-nine years of marriage.

It all started over a piece of furniture so found on a Facebook forum for teachers. She had to have it and it was at a “great price.” I asked her how she expected us to get it from A to B. She said we would put it in the back of my Element with the seats stowed. I took one look at the picture and told her it wouldn’t fit. She, who knows little to nothing about my Element, insisted it would. After all these years, I know when I’m not going to win, mainly because I never win, so we texted the guy that we were going to pick the piece up the next day.

We got to the guy’s house, and I couldn’t help but remind Budge this wasn’t going to work, but she dismissed my concern. Then he and I got the piece out of the garage and walked it down to the Element. We picked it up to slide it into the back and it was a good six inches too tall. He offered to put it in the back of his van and deliver it. I took one look at his minivan and knew that wasn’t going to work, but he seemed so earnest and he really wanted that $100. We moved over to the minivan and the piece was just as excessively large as it was for my Element. So we sat the thing down in the driveway and looked at each other.

At this point, I want to just help him carry it back into his garage, thank him for his time, admonish him to put dimensions in the description next time, and go work in the room. It was over ninety degrees in that driveway with the merciless Sun beating down on us when this bright boy comes up with the idea, “Do you want to take it apart?” I thought that was a terrible idea, but before I could say anything, Budge looked at me and I knew my list of stuff to put together just got one piece larger.

It was an IKEA piece so the whole thing was held together by eight screws and a crap ton of wooden dowels. He took the eight screws out with an allen wrench pack, put them all in a Ziplock bag, and started stacking the pieces into the back of the Element. They wouldn’t stack right because of the dowels sticking out at random, so I was starting to lose my cherub-like demeanor. Finally, everything was in the Element, I gave the man his money, glad to be away from him, and we left to take the stuff to school.

We didn’t talk much on the way there. I wasn’t in the mood for conversation because I realized I was going to have to put this thing together with no directions, and that was AFTER I got the blasted thing into her classroom. We got to school. Budge sweetly volunteers to go get the hand trucks we’d been using for all the other pieces. I stood by the opened rear of the Element, my temper rising with the heat.

She came back with the hand trucks and I awkwardly stacked what I could on the plate and off we went. It got to her classroom with a lot of wobble, but no real issues. Oh no, THAT was for the last trip. I went back to the Element and stacked the central piece on the trucks. I wasn’t at all sure it would make it, but not using the trucks meant an extra trip and I was tripped out. On the way to her classroom, disaster struck. I was alone and the piece weebled, then wobbled, then, unlike the toy, fell down. It landed flat on the shelves and collapsed forward, folding up. As it folded, I watched the necessary for construction dowels snap in pieces. At that point, my patience ran out.

Budge heard the noise and came to investigate. I was picking up the pieces and announced to her in a somewhat unkind tone the piece was now completely ruined. She said nothing, which is a typical response she has when she can tell I’m past my sell-by date at the moment. We gathered the shards up and deposited them in her classroom and I sat down in the middle of the carnage and fumed. I was livid. I was certain the piece would never go together again and that we had just wasted money we didn’t have to waste.

Budge, meanwhile was tapping on her phone. I had no idea what she was doing, but it irritated me nonetheless. I was turning pieces over in my hands, pulling out broken dowels with a pair of pliers. All except for four which broke off flush with the top of their holes and so couldn’t be grasped with the pliers. I was even more livid. Finally, I turned to her and said, “I can’t fix this,” in a nasty voice. She replied, “You’ll figure it out.” I then said something I now wish I hadn’t. I snapped and told her, “You ALWAYS have an answer for everything, don’t you?” I wasn’t finished, I continued, “I wouldn’t be in this mess if you had just left when the thing wouldn’t go in the Element, and I wouldn’t have broken the piece if you hadn’t gotten the hand trucks!”

That upset her. She said, “It’s just all my fault then isn’t it!?” I replied, “Yes it is, and what’s more, I don’t want to be sitting here doing this.” She then snapped, “Well, just leave me here then and leave!” Now gentle reader, I was hot, I was aggravated, I was extremely ill tempered, and I was not pleasantly disposed toward my God-given spouse at that moment, BUT I had not lost my will to live or my instinct for self-preservation. I began to deescalate as quickly as possible and just huffed and went back to the pieces.

Eventually, with the help of a random screw I found in her toolkit, I was able to get out all four screwed up dowels. I showed her and she just grunted. I asked her if she could find directions for the piece online, and she snapped back, “Why? Because I always have an answer?” I dropped my head. I had been unkind and now I was going to have to pay for it.

We left shortly afterwards. She did find instructions online and a video of one being put together. By that afternoon, “I always have an answer” had entered the lore of our marriage. I apologized to her for my words. She graciously accepted, and we went on out way laughing. See, one of the secrets for having a twenty-nine year marriage is you keep very short accounts, you don’t hold grudges, and you don’t take your partner’s bad day personally. It’s worked well for us.

In the end, I was able to get the piece back together with some dowels we got off Amazon and the directions Budge found online. She truly does always have an answer for everything, mainly because she’s one of the best problem solvers I know, and she patiently works with a problem until she solves it. She’s great about that. So I got the piece together along with the rest of the furniture she had to buy. We worked together all day Tuesday on the first day of school and now her classroom looks mostly ready to go. She says it finally looks like home. I’m glad she’s happy.

One thing before I go, she still needs a kidney table to do small-group work at. The school is supplying some furniture, but the kidney table isn’t one of them. A good one like she needs is $450. If the spirit moves you and you want to help an underpaid teacher out, consider dropping a few dollars in the tip jar. If all my followers gave a dollar, we could buy her the kidney table and she and I would be most appreciative.

In any event, whether you do or don’t donate, I’ll still love you. Just be careful and keep your feet clean!

Jun26

Newest Sign I’m Aging

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Budge’s Dad always said getting old wasn’t for sissies or the faint hearted. Lately, I’ve been realizing exactly what he meant. I turned fifty and the wheels just fell off the apple cart. I’m up and down all night because I’ve suddenly developed a bladder the size of a walnut. When I wake up in the morning, I can’t just hop out of bed and get going like I could in my thirties. Now, I have to take roll call of all the body parts who will be taking part in this morning’s arising. Need to make sure the feet and legs are on board with the program and aren’t planning on ditching at the first sign of weight. The arms and chest have to say they’ll be willing to balance things, and of course, the old brain has to agree to run this whole sorry show one more day. Then I can get up . . . after I stretch a bit for safety’s sake.

Still, one thing I’ve been proud of as I’ve gotten older is my flexibility has remained a staple in my life. I can still sit in the floor cross-legged to work on something. I can get up from the floor with relative ease for a guy my size. Walking doesn’t hurt, which is wonderful. Or, it was until a few weeks ago. I went to sit in the floor Indian style and my left hip screamed out in pain like someone stabbed it with an ice pick. I had to wobble around on the floor some in order to get into a comfortable position. Getting up was a chore as well, since my left leg just didn’t want to play along. I noticed walking was becoming difficult as my left hip and knee started paining constantly. I was at a loss.

I wasn’t terribly concerned though because the pain was mostly manageable. I had my yearly checkup with my primary care doctor and I mentioned the new ache to her. She offered to have a set of x-rays done or set me up with some physical therapy, but I told her I’d just wait and see what happened. Well, what happened was ten days later I could barely walk. Every time I put my foot on the floor, pain shot through my knee and hip. I got in touch with my doctor and asked for a referral to an orthopedic doctor. She set me up and the wait to go see him was the longest two weeks of my life. I had to officiate my step-dad’s funeral while waiting and I was almost in tears, from grief, yes, but also because standing felt like nails being driven into my hip and knee.

Finally, the day came for my appointment. By that time, a slow shuffle was about the best I could manage. I got checked in, and the nurse took me back and had me change into an x-ray suit because my shorts had metal in them. Then I went for x-rays. I have to say that was the most thorough set of x-rays I’ve ever had. They included measuring devices and four different poses and the way they had me turn and contort was pure agony on my leg. I was so happy when they finished.

My nurse took me back to the exam room and I got changed out of those horrid shorts to wait on the doctor. He bounded in and shook my hand heartily so I immediately asked him how old he was. He said he was thirty-seven. I told him it didn’t matter, but I was at the age where I just wanted to know if my doctors were older or younger than me. Trust me, the older crowd is getting thinner and thinner. He had me lie down on the table and manipulated my knee. It didn’t hurt at all. It was my old smooth working knee. Then, he torqued my hip. I almost came off the table. White hot pain shot through my hip like lightning. He smiled and asked me if that hurt. I pointed out to him a special place in Hell awaits smartass doctors, and he laughed. He said my knee was perfect, absolutely nothing wrong with it. My hip, though, was another story.

He took out his phone and pulled up my x-rays. First he showed me my pristine knee. He said I wouldn’t have to worry with it for years. My right hip was also lovely. It had a clear band where the cartilage separated the hip socket from the hip ball. The left hip was a disaster. The nice clear band of cartilage was replaced by spiky things that filled up the entire space between the ball and socket. He gave me the bad news. My left hip was bone on bone and had become severely arthritic. That grinding is what was causing me pain.

Then, he gave me my options to fix it. He said I could take Celebrex for the pain and that would work for awhile. He told me shots into my hip wouldn’t do any good but if I wanted to go that route just to see, he’d set me up with one of his partners and I could try and proved him wrong. Physical therapy would make things worse. The only thing that could provide me permanent relief is a new hip. He said he’d done hundreds and it would be an outpatient surgery. I was borderline body mass that he liked to work with, but I was in spec so it wouldn’t be a problem. All I had to do was tell him when to set the surgery up. I asked him for the largest dose of Celebrex and some time to think. He said that was fine because it wasn’t going to get any worse.

See, I have a strange reason for not wanting to get a hip replacement right now. Budge is in pain from her hip – also the left one – but she can’t have a hip replacement because they told her her body mass index is too high. She’s taking Lyrica to get through the day but the only real relief will be a hip replacement. I don’t want to get one because I don’t feel it’s fair for me to walk around pain free with a new hip when she is still in lots of pain almost daily. She says that is a silly reason and I need to get it done so I can help her. I’m thinking about it.

Right now, I take a huge dose of Celebrex every morning and limp a little through the day. I have to be careful how I sit in the floor now to do things like clean the cat boxes. Walking is okay, but a wrong step still reminds me that hip needs replacing. So, here I am. I’m going to have to decide between my principles and my pain. Right now, I’m hold steady with principles. Budge is having a hip shot on Monday to see if that will help because the source of her pain is not arthritis like mine is so she’s got different options. If it helps her, I may schedule a surgery over her Christmas break. We’ll see.

Until then, remember I love y’all and keep those feet clean!