15th Birthday Rap Song for Grandsons

Keep your privates in your pants,
You don't want to take a change
On being a daddy as a teen,
So keep your privates in your jeans.

Sex too young can cripple you,
Can give you some diseases, too.
Ruin your future and your life,
Put your family into strife.

Respect yourself enough to see
That sex is not just he and she.
It changes everyone you know,
To sex so young, just say NO.

Travel first and go to school,
That's the best way to be cool,
Then sex can be with your mate,
Not with some teenage date.

So keep your privates in your pants,
You don't want to take a change
On being a daddy as a teen,
It can make you sad and mean.

SUNDAY DOLLAR MOVIE LAUGHS

Gramps and I never know what we are going to encounter when we go on our every Sunday dollar movie theater adventure. We almost always see a good movie, and the price continues to satisfy us. If you haven’t read about our many experiences on those adventurous Sundays, you might want to read the other posts on this web site. We look forward to the Sunday experiences as much as we look forward to seeing a second run movie for a dollar. The one we saw this Sunday was a first run movie last week which cost eight bucks at the expensive movie theater instead of the one buck we spent at the dollar movie theater one week later.
We didn’t have to wait long to have our Sunday laughs before the actual movie began. The laughs came during the coming attractions portion of the movie. The first four series of coming attractions of upcoming movies were shown without incident. The fifth coming attraction was about a movie currently showing on one of the other screens. It was about the popular movie Evan Almighty, a contemporary parody on Noah building the ark, per God’s instructions.
Somehow the film of the coming attractions on Evan Almighty was put in the projector upside down and also backwards. It’s a mystery to us how the projectionist did that. Oh, yeah, I just remembered, the snack bar attendant is also the projectionist for the movies at the dollar movie theater. I think maybe they need to make their HELP WANTED signs a little bigger in order to attract more employees. We have so much fun just going to the dollar movie theater, it must be a constant series of laughs to work there. Maybe they should pay people to work there since it’s such good therapy to laugh.
Imagine this in your mind, the film being upside down made all of the people and the animals standing on their heads. The film being put in backwards made every scene run in reverse, people running and walking backwards, walking backwards into door opening with doors shutting ahead of them instead of behind them, people and animals spitting their food out instead of swallowing, cars and trucks running in reverse all the time. All of that happened as the people spoke what sounded like a combination of Chinese, Japanese, Mongolian and East Indian languages. The lions’ loud roars were backwards, sounding like SSSSSRAOR. The sounds from the elephants’ trunks were weird, like maybe elephants with speech impediments who were beating their trunks on the ground instead of raising them in the air.
It was hilarious, upside down people, animals, cars and trucks walking and running backwards on their heads, with the people speaking weird languages and the animals uttering strange sounds, like animals with speech impediments. And, poor Evan, who was supposed to be the modern day Noah, disassembled the ark in the upside down, backwards coming attractions instead of building it. God surely didn’t give him those plans.
Those two minutes of the movie trailers, commonly called coming attractions in our day, set the mood for the great movie that we viewed. Gramps was concerned that the movie would be upside down and backwards also, but it wasn’t. It was right side up and from beginning to end, just like it should be.
I’ll have to admit, we feel a little cheated on the rare occasions that all incidents at the dollar movie theater go as planned. Even when the movie we view is a good movie, it seems kind of boring when things go right. We’re too used to having unusual experiences that cause us to erupt in great laughs. The healthy laughter is a bonus to our paying only a dollar to view an entertaining movie.
The only problem is that we were the only ones laughing at the upside down and backwards coming attractions. Not one of the other six people in that theater could see the humor in the situation. Maybe they’re expecting too much perfection for the dollar they paid. Gramps and I find humor in everything. That’s why we have so much fun together.
You haven’t lived until you’ve seen people and animals standing on their heads walking and running backwards, cars and trucks on their roofs running backwards, along with the people speaking a Chinese/Japanese/East Indian/Mongolian language, and the animals making reverse sounds like they have speech impediments. It’s a sight to see and hear. We all need to find mistakes humorous instead of aggravating. Anger clogs the arteries and laughter clears the arteries. We would all live longer and have happier lives if we found humor in stressful situations.
I’m already looking forward to next Sunday for the next experience on another of MeMe and Gramps great adventures at the dollar movie theater, as long as Gramps doesn’t fall on the floor again and I don’t lose my hundred and twenty-five dollar sunglasses down the stool in the bathroom again, as I related in the earlier posts on the web site. Just remembering those experiences starts me laughing all over again.
The more I think about it, maybe the funny incidents are saved for Sunday when Gramps and I are going to be there just to keep us laughing.

Halloween Loving Gramps

HALLOWEEN LOVING GRAMPS Gramps hasn't always been as funny as he currently is. At one time he was very, very scary. He continues to be scary once a year on one of his favorite holidays.You see, Gramps never outgrew his love for Halloween, not at ten years old, not at twenty years old, not at thirty years old and not at forty years old. Having been influence by him, our oldest son and his friends observed the holiday all year long in our basement with a continuing, all year long spook house. Regrettably they used our youngest son as their first victim in testing their ingenious work. Still to this day our youngest son hates scary movies.Even today in his early seventies, Gramps still dresses up for one of his favorite days of the year. Now he's a mummy and he stands in the front yard in the middle of elaborate holiday decorations with a blazing fire in a fire pit behind him.As a matter of fact, currently I have to dress up like a cute black kitty cat so I can soothe the fears of the frantic children when they get a glimpse of the scary mummy. I have to encourage them on toward the chocolate candy bars that the mummy passes out while they resist their urges to run the other way in fear.Last year I got insulted by a snippy smart mouthed preteen girl who said to me, after I had spent hours putting on my cute black kitty cat makeup, black cat ears anchored to a head band, black shirt and pants, "Are you a black cat again? When are you going to change your costume?" I could have tucked my long fake black cat tail between my legs and cowardly walked into the house, but I wasn't going to let an insult ruin my holiday. She didn't say one nasty word to the mummy about his costume being outdated, and he's been a mummy for 15 years.For years Gramps has had a reputation in town for being very scary with several generations of people. In the late 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s he used to dress in my full length black evening cape, my shoulder length flowing dark brown wig and a tall witch's hat. Being the artist that he is, he always created huge fake warts out of clay, painted them dark brown and temporarily glued them to his nose. He even put long straight black hairs growing out of the warts. He was ug-ug-ugly in that costume.On every Halloween evening during those early years he took up residence on the front porch of our previous house, stirring a concoction in a huge vat that was boiling from dry ice. It looked like witches brew. As long as our black cat (creatively named Blackie) cooperated, Gramps cradled the cat in his left arm. He was very, very frightening. We always had scary organ music accompanied by screams playing on the outside loud speakers, the sounds originating from the hi-fi in the house. This was a typical Halloween at our Boston Street house.Three of our regular trick or treating customers in those years were children of friends of ours. They always warily approached our porch, urged on by their big protective daddy, to collect their candy. Year after year they came for their frightening experience.The father of the children told us that the children always refused to walk on or ride their bikes down, "The street where the witch lives."Years later, one of those children became a pediatrician, one an attorney and one an educator. It continues to be embarrassing to be at a fancy party and hear our friend remark to his adult professional children, "Do you remember who this man is?" They still say, "Yes. He's the witch who lived on Boston Street." Then they go on and tell how Gramps in his witch's costume cost them lots of hours of sleep and added to their childhood fears.Gramps, I'm thinking about using that as part of your obituary when the time comes, "He will always be remembered as the witch who lived on Boston Street."Do you double dare me?

Posted by "Dear One, Love God........." at 6:32 AM 0 comments Links to this post Labels:

2007 scary Gramps

Shampoo Snafu

"makeshift example!"
Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Shampoo Snafu

Gramps exclaimed, “Oh, no,“ very loudly as he read the newspaper in an excited voice, that high pitched exclamation that could only mean that someone we knew had died or someone had been arrested or we had invaded another country or something else catastrophic had happened. I was passing him on my way to the bathroom to take a shower, wash my hair and get dressed to go on our Sunday date to the dollar movie theater in a nearby city. I paused briefly to inquire what horrible thing had happened to cause that kind of exuberant reaction.Gramps excitedly said, “The dollar movie has gone up to a dollar and a half.”Now, that was very bad news. That meant that our every Sunday date was going to cost fifty cents more apiece, making our date cost a whopping six dollars. We had always relied on the bargain of paying three dollars for our hot dog and pop at the big wholesale warehouse and then two dollars for both of us to go to the movie. This was a huge blow to us.I do have to explain to you again that we are not impoverished senior citizens, we just love bargains, a trait that was passed down to us by my dad, the man who always asked for a senior citizen’s discount on an ice cream cone.Gramps was saddened by the news of the hike to a buck and a half for the movie. It suddenly didn’t seem like a bargain anymore, even though the price at a regular theater is eight dollars now. I guess he had visions of the prices regularly being hiked sky high.We quickly discussed whether we should continue to frequent such a high priced movie theater which charges a dollar and a half to view a second run movie. We love our bargains. We agreed that we need to stay loyal to the theater because we’ve had such great laughs on our adventures at the dollar movie theater. Also we had seen some very good movies, and a few very bad ones. At least we hadn’t wasted eight bucks on the bad movies.After we agreed that we would continue our Sunday afternoon escapades at the dollar movie, I went into the shower stewing about the price hike. My mind was very judgmental and highly incensed for a little while, but I finally decided that the hike in price was not so bad. As I went ahead with my shower and shampoo I felt much better than I had felt when I entered the shower, trying to stay positive.Have the rest of you senior citizens found that you are forgetting more and more as the years pass? Well, Gramps and I are. Some things we forget to do now are things that we used to do by rote without even thinking about it.After the devastating news from Gramps about the hike in prices at the dollar movie, we were running short on time to get to the movie theater. I had all of twenty minutes in which to shower, shampoo, dry my hair, put on makeup and dress. I convinced Gramps, and myself, that I could do it. I can be very speedy when I have to.Sure enough I was out of the shower, having showered and shampooed my hair in a whopping five minutes. I toweled off my body, toweled my hair and then wrapped a clean towel around my hair to absorb more of the water so that the hair dryer didn’t have so much to dry before I put the four curlers in it that I use to take some of the natural curl out of my hair. I stood in front of the hair dryer, which I have on a neat stand, and put my clothes on while my hair was drying. It’s now ten minutes down the drain. I only have ten more minutes to get ready. I can do it.As I was drying my hair I noticed that my hair didn’t feel like it always does when I fluff it up as I am drying it with the hair dryer. Huh, I thought, must be the new shampoo. The bottle of the new shampoo says that it has some ingredients which will give volume to your hair, a real boom for people with thin hair. I’m not one of those people. I have very thick hair which curls into ringlets all over my head with any hint of moisture in the air, possibly with as much as just the mist from the nostril of a person who sneezes nearby me. No one had sneezed by me, but the curls were tight just from shampooing, and as I was drying my hair it seemed like my hair was multiplying and getting bigger. Must be the volume ingredients, I thought as I continued fluffing it as I was drying it.After a few minutes of drying the hair, I began to put each of the four large curlers into my hair. My hair still felt strange to the touch. I put all four curlers in before it occurred to me to test my hair for that familiar squeaky clean sound that my mom had taught my three sisters and me to do in testing to see if our hair was clean after shampooing.As I stood at the mirror, fully dressed with hair partially dried, the designated hair rolled on the four big rollers, I began to have a funny feeling that I had left something out of my routine. Let’s see, hop in the shower, put shampoo on your hair, wash your body with sweet smelling body wash, rinse your body off, rinse your hair ----------- rinse your hair? Uh-oh, I had forgotten to rinse my hair. I still had volume enhancing shampoo in my hair. No wonder I had so much hair. The volume enhancing ingredients of the shampoo were still in my hair.Now, actually the culprit was the dollar movie being raised to a dollar and a half. I had been so preoccupied with thinking about the raise in price that I had shortcut my routine and skipped the rinse cycle of my hair. It was too late then to retrace my steps and rinse my hair and then do the rest of the routine, I reasoned, because we would never make it to the dollar movie theater if I did.Actually, when I finished drying my hair and brushed it out, it looked great with the shampoo in it. It was dull, but the hairspray helped that and added a little shine. I may have to see if I can get the shampoo company to recommend my procedure to its customers if they want really, really thick-looking hair.The only thing I have to watch for is the next rain. We have had rain in our area for the last five days and if it continues and I get caught in the rain at our grandson’s football game or if I get rained upon on the way to our grand daughter’s volleyball game, it might be embarrassing for the grandchildren to have MeMe walking around with sudsy hair cheering them on to victory. It wouldn’t embarrass me. With all the adventures we have had at the dollar movie, nothing will ever embarrass me again. I’m finally at the age that I can even tell my friends about the time I took a shower with my undergarments still on my body. Yeah, I forgot to take them off before getting in the shower. Didn’t have to wash them in the washer, though. I think I need to slow down a little; don’t you?Gee, this adventure with the shampoo happened to me while I was getting ready to go to the dollar movie. Come to think of it, so did the undergarments in the shower. There must be something about that dollar movie that makes Gramps and me want to laugh at everything and do crazy things.Actually, after Gramps and I discussed the rise in admission price to a dollar and a half to see the movie, we came up with the reasoning that what we can do is go to the movie and pay a dollar and a half on Sunday, then the next week we can go to the movie on Tuesday when the admission is a whopping fifty cents. Our thinking is that when we figure the average of the two admission prices, it averages out to a dollar per movie. So we can still get a bargain by averaging the two weeks. We both feel much better about it now.Going back to the shampoo snafu, the joke was on me this time. Gramps kind of likes my voluminous hair. It kind of reminds him of the beehive hairdo I had when we met and fell in love. That would be a good commercial for leaving the volume enhancing shampoo in the hair, that it makes senior citizens very romantic. It would really increase sales.

Posted by "Dear One, Love God........." at 4:12 PM 0 comments Links to this post Labels: 2007 adventures of Meme and Gramps, Sept. 9

Drama Queens

Thursday, August 9, 2007

Drama Queens

Drama,Drama, Drama,

Oh, Mama, Mama, Mama,

What's a poor girl to do?

Drama, Drama, Drama,

Oh, Mama, Mama, Mama,

Let's send it to the zoo.

Where Drama, Drama, Drama,

Oh, Mama, Mama, Mama,

All the chimps love drama, too.

But Drama, Drama, Drama,

Oh, Mama, Mama, Mama,

For me it's all taboo.

Posted by "Dear One, Love God........." at 5:30 AM 0 comments Links to this

Jethro's Fence

Saturday, August 18, 2007

                JETHRO'S FENCE
                                  T. Wieland Allen
      My husband, affectionately called Gramps by some of the grandkids, has a reputation in our neighborhood for having wonderful ideas, a man who can fix anything. Gramps has a reputation with me, his wife, of always having brilliant ideas, EXCEPT ONE. Normally he has really good insight into new designs, as well as fixing broken items cheaply but efficiently. For that quality, Gramps has my utmost admiration.
     The EXCEPT ONE occasion was the one where Gramps created Jethro’s Fence. Or maybe I should say he de-created it, but there is no such word, so I’ll have to use the term "destroyed."
      I must give you a visual picture of the surroundings so that you can fully appreciate the incident. Our home is a split level house. One must drive up our long driveway, turn left at a concrete block fence and then enter the garage/basement area of the house.   
      Now, the concrete block fence is eight feet tall and thirty feet long. In the back yard behind the concrete block fence is a huge, century old oak tree, stately and majestic. 
     After a devastating wind storm, there was a huge limb of the oak tree hanging down, not yet completely severed from the tree, but still hanging on so tightly that Gramps could not pull hard enough to completely sever it from the trunk so that he could cut it into segments and haul it to the dump.
     The limb needed to be taken care of, so the day after the storm Gramps decided he knew exactly what to do to take care of the problem. He had slept on it and that’s when he sometimes gets his best inspirations, when he sleeps.
     While Gramps was in the back yard removing the huge limb from the tree, I was sitting in my recliner doing some sewing when I heard a huge WHAM, BAM, THUD.  It was so loud I feared that someone had run into the side of our house with a huge truck. What could have happened, I wondered?
     A few minutes later I heard the garage door open, and I heard Gramps’ footsteps coming up the basement stairs from the garage. They were not the footsteps of the confident, self-reliant, efficient  man that I know. This may sound strange, but they were the footsteps of a shame-on-me-I’ve-done-something-terrible man.
     Gramps walked slowly into the room and sheepishly announced to me, “I pulled down the concrete block fence.”
     Now, Gramps didn’t say that he had run into the concrete fence with the car and knocked it down, which would have been believable. He said that he had “pulled down” the concrete block fence. Was this possible?
     Gramps is a competitive swimmer and has a great physique, big shoulders and muscular arms, but he’s no Hercules or Goliath, for sure. How could Gramps have done that feat, pulled down an eight feet tall, thirty feet long concrete block fence? My curiosity was so piqued that I couldn’t get mad at him, so I good naturedly replied, “How in the world did you do that?”
     Gramps began to describe the great idea that he had, which turned out to be a bad idea, one of the few bad ones my Mr. Fix-it has had in our fifty year marriage. He said that his idea was to tie a real thick rope to the broken limb that was still dangling from the tree, then for leverage run the rope through one of the open circled decorative areas in one of the top blocks of the concrete block fence, then run the rope down the driveway and tie it to the front of his Mazda RX7 sports car.  His idea was to back the sports car out of the driveway until the rope pulled the big limb loose from the huge tree.  Brilliant?
      Wrong!
      Gramps proceeded to tell me that when he backed up the RX7 to pull the limb loose from the tree, instead of the limb breaking from the tree and falling to the ground, the concrete block fence came catapulting down onto the driveway block by block by block, creating a huge pile of broken concrete blocks, which completely blocked the driveway. The image in my mind at the time, because I had not yet seen the damage, was the image of Jethro Bodean of the Beverly Hillbillies doing the same thing in Beverly Hills, hooking a rope from that old rickety truck of theirs to a tree and backing up and destroying their house.
     I got one of my laughing spells and laughed and laughed and laughed. How can you get mad when a brilliant scheme has actually not panned out and has not produced all what it was supposed to accomplish? At least Gramps had tried.
     We walked out of the house to survey the damage. It was worse that I could have ever imagined. Instead of a few concrete blocks blocking the driveway, almost the entire concrete block fence, except the end posts, was piled onto the long driveway blocking the exit of the garage and exposing the whole back yard.  No privacy fence for us that day and probably for the next month or so, I thought.
      In the middle of my laughing spells, which Gramps was enjoying by this time, Gramps began to tell me more about the incident. He said that when he slowly started backing up the sports car with the rope tied to the bumper of the car, then tied through the decorative holes in the top of the concrete blocks, then securely fastened to the broken tree limb, when he began to back the car up the concrete blocks through which the rope was threaded and then tied to the front bumper of the car had broken loose from the rest of the fence and traveled with lightning fast speed down the rope and stopped inches from the car. If it hadn‘t stopped where it did, the front of the RX7, Gramps prized sports car, would have been an innocent victim of Gramps’ great idea. At least the car, windshield and all, had been spared the devastation that Jethro’s Fence suffered.
     Gramps’ description of the fifty pound concrete block traveling the length of the rope and stopping within inches of the front of the car was enough to start me roaring again with laughter. What I would have given to have seen Gramps sitting behind the wheel of that sports car, with his big blue eyes the size of saucers, when that fifty pound concrete block came traveling down the rope toward him and his prized sports car.  Instead of breaking the huge limb loose from the tree, most of the concrete blocks from the huge fence were littering the driveway.   Just the image of it in my mind still gives me bouts of side splitting laughter.
     Gramps restored the fence in a few weeks, laying the concrete blocks himself. It’s a more beautiful fence than it was before the incident. Even though it is more beautiful, I just had to name it Jethro’s Fence. It will always be known by that name to us and to the neighborhood, even in its restored state.
     The eventual solution to the huge broken limb was for Gramps to saw it at the break which was located at the trunk of the 100 year old tree.  Then he hired a man to come to the house, chainsaw it into sections and then load up the pieces of wood and haul them off. 
       Laughter is so beneficial to us humans. Gramps and I have lots of occasions to laugh, especially when our best laid plans don’t work out as planned.
     Our oldest grandson, Neil, spoke great wisdom about  not getting mad when someone makes a mistake.  He said not to get mad when someone makes a mistake because it just might be you making the mistake next time. How did that grandson get so smart when he was seven years old?. He was right, everybody makes mistakes.  Small mistakes don't run in our family.  Big mistakes do. 
     The lesson was learned that sometimes the best plans of men don't pan out.  We have the choice to laugh or get mad when people make mistakes.  Jethro and Granny laughed at Jethro's mistakes and so do we, whether it's my mistakes or the  mistakes that Gramps makes. In our family, we get to laugh all the time.
     Gramps died in 2012, but Jethro's Fence proudy sits there as a memorial to how much we laughed during our marriage.  It will always be known as Jethro's Fence to family and friends to remind us how fun loving Gramps was.  Jethro's Fence is much better than a tombstone to me. 
        

The Snake and Gramps Speedo

This is Gramps!

"The Adventures of MeMe and Gramps"We used to come to parties at this house before we bought it. A doctor friend and his wife built the house. Their son, Todd, a teenager at the time, had a huge snake, a boa. Everybody knew it. The doctor and his wife eventually divorced and sold the house to another doctor, who eventually lost the house and it was foreclosed on. The last doctor only lived in this house for a year. When we first bought the house, after it came out of foreclosure, and we moved into the house our neighbor, Sadie, reminded us about the boa, Todd's snake, and that it had escaped one day from the house and had been seen around the neighborhood at various times. She wanted us to know that because of all the crevices in the house, since it's split level, has a sunken pit, and also has the bomb shelter in the basement. That put the thought into our minds that the boa might still be around our house. She even told us that the year before we moved in that someone had seen the boa a couple of blocks away. Several days later a neighbor behind us and two doors down had a big rattlesnake on her patio. The snake fear was amplified in our minds. About a month later, Gramps was in the back, around the pool, and he was cleaning leaves, etc. from around the pool. I heard him yell and ran to see what it was and he promptly told me that he saw a huge snake over the fence in Sadie's back yard. I looked over the fence and saw a big snake coiled and saw diamonds on its back. We both jumped back and discussed what to do. Gramps said he could get his shotgun and shoot it. We decided that wouldn't be a good idea. Then I thought about calling animal control at the police department and ask them what to do. Gramps called them and they said that they would send someone out immediately. We paced in our back yard around the pool, praying that it wouldn't get away before the authorities got here. I was too scared to take another look at the snake. It was so ugly. Gramps has always hated snakes, so he didn't look at it again at the time. A policeman showed up at our front door, armed with a gun at his hip. He had a fearful look on his face. Gramps had remained in the back yard while I answered the door. The policeman went in the back yard and Gramps told him that he knew exactly where the snake was in Sadie's back yard. Gramps proceeded to lead the policeman around to the front yard and then into Sadie's back yard. They slowly crept up to the place where the snake was coiled. The policeman had his hand on his gun on his hip the whole time. I was still in our back yard by the pool in the vicinity of the snake so I could direct them to the proper place if they couldn't see it. All of a sudden I heard Gramps say, "I guess he crawled away because I don't see it anymore." Boy, I was not glad to hear that! Now we had to live with that fear for the rest of our lives. The policeman left and Gramps sheepishly came back into our back yard. I asked him where he thought the snake had gone. He told me to look over the fence again and look at the snake. I was confused but did it. I looked over the fence and jumped back. It was still there. Gramps said, "Look real good." I did. Gramps then said, "MeMe, tha'ts the gas meter." Oh, my word, it really was the gas meter. Thankfully the policeman never knew that the snake was really a gas meter with part of it covered with leaves. We rejoiced in the fact that Gramps did not get his shotgun and shoot the snake or we would be dead, and the whole neighborhood would be blown to smithereens. My problem is, I was the one that thought I saw diamonds on its back. Second laugh: Gramps just reminded me that the most embarrassing part was not about the snake but that all of this happened while he was in his, ewwwwwwwwwwww, Speedo. Yes, he paraded in the neighborhood in his > ewwwwwwwwwww Speedo while talking to the policeman and leading him into the neighbor's back yard.

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