WHAT I FIND

Recently I’ve come to the conclusion that I find………

I don’t want to cook big meals anymore. When we moved here eight years ago, the one thing I missed was the nearly new stove we left behind. How I loved it. It had five burners, a warming oven and also had a convection feature. I used it every day very happily, so much so that all I wanted (besides a few other things) when we moved was to get rid of the one in the new house and get one with the same features. After five years I got it. I didn’t know that I no longer yearned to cook the way I did for over fifty years. Now I feel so stupid every time I look at it. Darn it!

I‘d really like to look for odd pieces of furniture to use in various places, but I can’t get up enough energy to find that perfect piece the way I used to. We don’t have those types of antique or junk stores near where I live. Garage sales are a total bust.

I used to walk while listening to tapes on books. In this hot weather walking is never fun and the only way to tolerate it was to walk enjoying the stories. I lost all that with the change in the weather the past few years. I still miss the change in the seasons. This year we’ve probably had two days of cold weather.

The biggest problem is driving to where I can find the things I might want but driving has become a chore, so much traffic. Not that I’m afraid.

I think the problem is I’m just old. Don’t tell me any different.

A MILLION OF THEM

We attended a meeting of our homeowners association. One item was brought up by a woman, a former president of the association, who is starting a Neighborhood Watch group which she claims is perfectly legal for her to do without the sanction of our board of directors. We are an area of 2700 homes.

Her husband also spoke and announced that by the end of this year there will be one million people certified to carry guns and having concealed weapon permits in Florida. We are unfortunately a community filled with NRA advocates and he’s the person heading the group.  A former convict who spent time in Riker’s Prison in New York, he claimed that all gun buyers are subject to strict rules when purchasing guns and have stringent background checks. Obviously, he doesn’t read the “Sports Equipment for Sale” in our local paper.

The day before our meeting, there was an incident in Florida where a Neighborhood Watch member, carrying a gun, shot and killed a young boy who was walking home after purchasing some candy to eat when he and his father watched a basketball game on television that night. It was dark and rainy. The man doing the shooting felt that his life was in danger and so he shot him after he had called the police to report a suspicious person in their gated community. The police advised him not to confront the person and that they were on their way. The young teenage boy was black.

The killer was not arrested because in Florida it’s perfectly legal to kill someone if you feel your life is in danger. This law was pushed by the NRA and is our latest murderer’s excuse for killing an unarmed boy. The resident I have spoken about who lives in our community is also the one pushing a law to allow college students attending our local community college to carry guns on campus. Can you believe he’s an elected State Committeeman of the Republican Party? Well, I guess you can believe it.

A TALE OF TWO WOMEN

Last week was the performance of my farewell to the theatre. At eighty-one years of age I’ll probably not be on a stage again because you have to realize I probably won’t be able to remember my lines.

For several years I have had scenes featuring two women in each of two dramas but didn’t know how to make them into a presentation for an audience. I knew they were powerful, but would people be interested in one scene about the sexual problems of one sister and the marital problems of the other sister? Put that way they probably would, but I didn’t write that premise in the publicity. The other scene is with a young woman intent on committing suicide and the mother trying to stop her.

I was invited by an “old times radio cast” to read the scripts with one of their cast members. She and I had participated in play readings in our community for several years, but those readings were of comedies. They were overwhelmed with the reading of the drama and encouraged us to do both.

In order to present two scenes as an entertainment which could cover at least one hour in duration, I wrote an introduction to the first reading where I gave an overview of the first act of “Dark At the Top of the Stairs” and the part of the second act which introduces the scene between the two sisters. After the reading, I then told the story of the third act conclusion, all in the character of Cora, the lead in the Tony Award winning play.

We handled the scene of “’night Mother” the same way but it calumniated with the daughter telling her mother ‘night Mother and then the gun shot is heard. An unexpected moment leaving the audience stunned.

My partner and I played off of each other very well. Theater people who were there said I became my characters which is the best compliment an actor can receive. I was able to build my on my relationship with my sister as well as the one with my daughter. All the characters we portrayed were totally believable.

Audience members can be moved by people on the stage but are not able to define what makes a good performance. They will say they like something but that’s about as far as they can go. A friend asked me if I was deluged with calls from people who attended the show because it was so compelling. I told her no one called.

The End

A GOLDEN MEMORY

About three or four years ago, we introduced our grandson to an acquaintance. He asked the boy’s age and said to me that soon he would not enjoy visiting his grandparents anymore. Sometimes that does happen, but after we got home I went over to our grandson, who was sitting on the couch watching television, and gave him a kiss. I said I wanted to get as many in as I could before he no longer enjoyed visiting. He then got up, hugged me and kissed me and said “Grandma, I’m never going to be too old to hug and kiss you”.

A LESSON IN RACE RELATIONS

When I was in the fourth or fifth grade our teacher closed the door to our class room to speak to us in private. “Today we will have a new student in our class room and although he may look a little different, he’s to be treated no different than you would treat anyone else”. That’s how our small town was integrated about seventy years ago.

The very first black family moved into our town and it made no difference to us kids. Bob joined in on all our after school activities. Near our backyard, a large warehouse had burned down many years before and only a cement foundation was left which was crumbling in some of its sections.  We kids were always sweeping up those pieces when we used the surface as a place to roller skate. Our new classmate joined us in the cleanup which we did almost every day and he was never treated any different than the rest of us. We all spent a lot of time together and no adult ever said anything to us about our friendships.

I grew up in an unprejudiced family that taught us to be respectful of others and we have raised our five children to be the same.

I cried when a black man became our president as did many of my friends and family. I believe a brilliant man should not defined by his color. Unfortunately that is not the feeling of certain factions in our country’s political climate today. However in the rest of the world there is enormous respect for President Obama which was never the way they felt about our former president, in case you hadn’t noticed.

A LOVE STORY

A 21 year old young gentleman with ideals wanted to marry his 20 year old sweetheart. They were saving to buy rings for their upcoming marriage and had plans for both of them to enter the ministry the same as her father.

However, his birthday was coming up so he thought to buy himself a present, a gun, and was in a closet in their small church with a 48 year old parishioner, who though he had a concealed gun permit, didn’t think to check if he had removed the bullet that was in the chamber of his Ruger 9mm. That was the bullet which went through the closet wall into the head of the lovely young lady who loved to dance.

The death of the young woman was nobody’s fault, just an unfortunate accident in which a young couple with plans to buy wedding rings went awry.