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When I was in high school, 6-yrs-younger sister and I were playing Scrabble one day.
Pretty late in the game, I was saving up to attempt a use-all-your-tiles 50-point-bonus word, with a few good high point tiles. Although the board was crowded, I saw my opening, a lonely "s" that would work perfectly for me.
But it was my sister's turn, so naturally she put down a single tile to form the word "is," for two points, using up that available "s."
I slammed my fist down in disappointment. We had a Scrabble board lazy susan, and that meant, when I calculatedly banged one edge of the turntable, all the tiles catapulted.
At first my sister yelled, but I quickly conceded the game (I think she was ahead anyway), and when I had explained the cause of my frustration, she understood perfectly and we both had a hearty laugh about it.
That's when Mom, having heard my sister's outcry at first, came rushing down the hall and sent us both to our rooms, despite all our explanations that things were fine. (Yeah, Mom was wrong, but parenting is not an exact science, right? At least that's what it says in my Parenting Handbook. In fact, that's all it says.)
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Let us re-dedicate ourselves today to faith in the attractive power of practical, hopeful principles.
True disciples of the Lie will never be persuaded, but many a confused heart and mind needs only have Truth and Right presented positively, for murky ignorance to be replaced by the clear light of understanding.
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Mrs had a dresser which belonged to her mother, and was giving it to our daughter, so, naturally, I get The Dirty Job, to vacuum up the cobwebs underneath it.
Stuck under the very bottom, rolled up, was a 1950 $10 bill.
It wasn't under a drawer, it was stuck in a groove in the wood "skirt" around the bottom.
If you look at the back of the bill, you can see the patch of varnish stain on what was the outside of the rolled-up bill. Was it in there when (if) the dresser was refinished, or did the varnish just transfer over the years?
We've got it flattening out in a book. Mrs hopes to find a two-sided frame to display it. Nothing special about it. Just an old Federal Reserve Note.
But how did it get there? Did her mother put it there? Was it some kind of reserve emergency money? Not easy to stash or to get to, but sure wouldn't be found by an intruder.
This mystery!
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Conflicting Comfort and Discomfort Zones
"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject." - Winston Churchill
Back in the day, on CompuServe religion forum, there were characters who seemed out of place, too enthusiastic, pushy, insistent about a particular belief - shrilly interjecting their doctrine into all exchanges, insisting their beliefs are divine (which was fine) and everyone else's are demonic (which was not) — disruptive to the point of banning.
Then I'd see the same person in some technical forum and they behaved perfectly sociably.
Religion had no monopoly. Fanatical True Believers exist in ... every? ... category. (Fanatical quilters? Probably.) With some folks, there's topics you can talk about, and topics you can't. When you got to know someone in one context where they were fanatical and you can just ignore them, then you meet them being more normal in other circumstances, you have to see them a little more sympathetically.
I suppose we can all be like that, given the right circumstances.
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Those who lurk
Do not post
Do not post
Those who post
Do not lurk
-Radd Dadd Upanishadd,
the digital Lao Tzu
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