On the road, shuttling between airports and motels, I sent my daughter an email: “I’m on my way to Branson, Missouri. They say it’s like Las Vegas, but for Christians over fifty.” She wrote back, “I can’t even begin to imagine what that means.”
I could; I imagined it would be laughable and hokey. (You could point out that I am a Christian over fifty and should get off my high horse, but I would only blink at you.) This little town of 6,000
]]>On Mother’s Day, what says “I love you, Mom!” like a new vacuum cleaner? A whole lot of dark chocolate with almonds might do it. Or a pair of chunky silver earrings, or a dozen of the smelliest roses. Even a phone call saying “I love you, Mom!” does a pretty good job. But it takes a vacuum cleaner to really evoke the whole motherhood experience. Oh, the many times I shoved a vacuum under a child’s bed and got a pajama bottom tangled around the brushroll. Do tears spring up prompted by wistful memory, or by the smoke of the jammed rubber belt?
Okay, so maybe it was a *little* complicated. I wanted to use some of my USAirways Award miles to fly my daughter and her two little ones from Baltimore to Charleston, S.C. I checked the airline’s website, and there were no longer three Award seats available on the necessary dates. But maybe there were two, or even one, and I could purchase the others on the same flight.
No way around it: I was going to have to wade into Press Three Hell. Eventually, with enough shouting “Agent! Agent!” I’d lasso a human and get things squared away.
]]>General Mills
Minneapolis, MN
Your Excellency:
I am writing in regards to your food product, Cheerios. Actually not the Cheerios themselves, which look fine as far as I can tell, but the box. Whatever possessed you to start putting inspirational sayings on the top of the boxes?
A few weeks ago I took a new box of Cheerios from the kitchen cabinet, and as I opened it I saw this printed across the top flap:
"Trust your instincts. You know more than you think you do."
Now, Your Eminence, I've never been in the military, and I'm not even sure how to address a General. But I was still pretty surprised at the sentiment. Army life must not be at all like I pictured.
A person can only hope to accomplish so much in a lifetime, and of course many of the better discoveries (fire, the wheel, the home Jeopardy game) have already been taken. But I can rest easier now that my own contribution to mankind has been perfected. I have discovered the moral equivalent of oatmeal.
It goes like this. You know that eating oatmeal is the most noble act a human can perform in the course of food consumption. It’s the right thing to do, as some wise man (Copernicus?) once said. This is because, face it, oatmeal is not very appealing. Once in a bowl, it transitions quickly from homey to homely, and in bright morning light is a soggy, depressing mess. What better sight to thrill our sense of duty?
At dawn on the last day of the year, my husband and I were walking along a rural highway in South Carolina, following a trail of broken things. I had left my pocketbook on top of the car at a gas station late the previous night, something we didn’t realize till we got to my mother-in-law’s house about 45 minutes later.
It was too dark to search then, but all night I fretted. Had it fallen off right in the gas station lot, and was someone even now using my Visa card to order a vintage Corvette? Was some fan using the cell phone to leave long messages on Ricky Martin’s answering machine? How would I ever replace all those little plastic cards, when I couldn’t even remember what half of them were for? I pictured myself spending all afternoon at the DMV, glumly waiting to pose for a new license.
So one day this guy hears his doorbell ring and he goes to answer the door. He doesn't see anybody there, but looking down he sees a snail creeping along the welcome mat. He picks it up and tosses it far across the lawn.
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News is that that dreamboat, Ned Flanders, is going to be a-v-a-i-l-a-b-l-e. Why are hearts fluttering and knees weak? Take another look at our man Ned: he’s got more than his share of gal appeal. He’s decked out in an impeccable suit of virtues.
I’m on the level here. OK, get past the adenoidal voice. Get past the round goggle-glasses. Get past the annoying chirpiness. Wait, go back to the annoying chirpiness.
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I didn't go to see "Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me;" I went to see the historic theater where it happened to be playing. But when those psychedelic colors started spilling off the screen I couldn't resist. Austin Powers, the ersatz James Bond, is a weenie with a Herman's Hermits haircut
When I was first approached about becoming a member of the Spice Girls, I was a little taken aback. My impression was that this troupe of British singers was salacious and provocative, one more example of the debasing of our culture.
"I'm embarassed to admit it, Mom," my 21-year-old daughter confessed, "but I actually liked the movie. It's harmless--a teenybopper thing, like for preteen girls. It's singing Barbies, and there's nothing dirty about it. It has that nutty English humor, kind of like the Beatles' Help!, so I actually ended up really enjoying it--I even watched it twice."