My wife’s a Southern gal; I’m a Chicago-born Yankee. So when we visited the Civil War battlefield at Gettysburg, we bought a blue Union cap for me and a gray Confederate hat for her, which we hung on our respective motel bedposts. Is that what they call “consorting with the enemy?” I don’t know, but… I heard about this one guy in the Civil War who came up with a questionable plan for survival. He decided to wear a blue shirt and gray pants, so he managed to get shot at both ends!
Our son-in-law opened his Father's Day card from our ten-year-old grandson and found an acrostic of his first name. Now, each letter gave our grandson an opportunity to reveal some of his perceptions of his dad. For example, for the letter "R," our grandson wrote: "Refreshed after Mommy kisses him." Our son-in-law said, "How do you know that?" And his son simply pointed to his eyes with two fingers and said slyly, "I see it!"
For people in South Florida, Andrew will long be remembered as one of the most destructive hurricanes of all time. His 250-mph winds just tore buildings apart, and as always, some amazing storm stories came out of Hurricane Andrew. Like one family of ten who were found buried under the rubble of their Florida home - all alive! The father told what sustained them as they saw and heard that storm just ripping their house apart around them. He said, "We felt we were going to die, so we just kept yelling that we loved each other." That's what enabled them to hang on.
The teacher was late that day in senior French class, and our daughter and her classmates had just gotten their senior pictures. So, the girls starting pulling pictures out of their wallets. Now, our daughter had two pictures that were especially interesting to everybody. Her seventh grade picture…you know, braces, kinky hair, big glasses. Seventh grade, you know. Then her new senior picture: radiant smile, beautiful long hair, big blue eyes, no glasses. That was good for a lot of laughs, including our daughter’s. Well, the teacher walked in. She took one look at those pictures side by side and she said, “La miracle!” The miracle.
It wasn’t easy to get out of going to school when I was a kid. I mean, my Mom said the deciding factor was I had to have a fever, which led me to wonder, “How can I induce a fever on a day I don’t want to go?” Well, I had what I thought was a clever idea. Sit on the steam radiator in our apartment when the heat was coming up. I tried that once. Did I get a fever? No. Did I get blisters on my bottom? You got it…yeah!
