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The Demise of the King’s English

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OK, I admit it; I am a grammar snob, a spelling snob, a pronunciation snob, and a vocabulary snob. A couple of years ago I did a short blog about some of my pet peeves. My top choice then was the constant misuse of its and it’s, closely followed by the butchering of the first person pronoun! For some reason people just don’t seem to understand when to use I, me, or myself. “John and myself went to the store.” “The snow fell on John and myself.” I fear a false sense of humility scares people away from using I or me; perhaps they think myself is more modest? Sadly, I still continue to be irked by those two instance of misuse. I could also get into the correct use of those pesky past participles, but that might be an entire blog in itself.

I also find that the headlines along the bottom of the screen during newscasts are fraught with errors. Those little banners used to done with a device called a character generator; no doubt they are all computer generated today. The spelling errors are amazing. I am not sure whether the stations have an undereducated bunch of journalism interns doing them or if perhaps they are letting a fourth grade Boy Scout troop do them (with apologies to the Scouts!). I also get weary with all the crazy governmental abbreviations such as POTUS, FLOTUS, SCOTUS, SOTU, and so on. I would prefer to see them written out in full, but I can accept that space is limited. Could they just refer to the President or the First Lady? I think we know that they are referring to the US President or First Lady.

I would never presume to say that I never make mistakes, but I do keep a Webster’s College Dictionary, a Super Thesaurus, and Brian’s Common Errors in English Usage right there on my desk to double-check myself from time to time. (Note the proper use of myself in this instance!). Since I am somewhat of a language nerd, I even have to use proper punctuation and spelling on my text messages. You won’t see me using U R for you are, etc.

Whatever you do, don’t trust the spelling and grammar checks on Microsoft and Apple! I’d like to have most of those little computer geeks in English class for a few weeks or months. Even Word Press which is what this blog is written with, can drive me crazy from time to time. When you are ready to post a blog, Word Press does an automatic spell check and “sort” of a grammar check. My favorite is “complex expression.” Well, I’m not trying to write at a fourth or fifth grade level. Then there is “passive voice.” Certainly we don’t want to use the passive voice too often, but there are times where it is warranted. The list goes on!

When our sons were still in school, they would often bring home notes from their teachers. In all honesty, I never knew whether to reply to the note or grab my red pen and correct it. No wonder many young people don’t have good language skills; their teachers don’t either. Just as we teach our children not to talk with their mouth full or to keep their elbows off the table during meals, we also need to help them learn proper language skills. On a side note, I am pleased to say that both our sons do have excellent written and spoken language skills; of course, they never had a chance to do otherwise I suppose!

I think that the rise and fall of civilizations and languages may well go hand in hand. When Rome fell, ultimately so did Latin as a spoken and written language. Except for a few misguided souls like me, most people didn’t study Latin for years or read Virgil’s Aeneid in the original Latin. As civilizations became more advanced, language went from the rudimentary, “Me want food” or “Fire hot,” to Plato’s Dialogues and the magical words of Shakespeare.

When we look at the English language, we see the evolution from the old Germanic based Anglo-Saxon; think of the epic poem Beowulf in its original form. Unless you too have had the pain of studying Old English, you probably couldn’t read a word of it! From there we find Middle English; think of the wonderful lyrics of Geoffrey Chaucer. While you might not get everything, you could probably get the gist of it. Spelling was pretty freeform in those days as well!

In early Modern English, you find the wonderful works of Shakespeare and Marlow and some of my favorites, the Cavalier Poets! I suspect that in terms of the evolution of the English language, we may have peaked in the late 19th and early 20th century and be on the downward spiral now. Of course, the British look askance at American English usage, and the Americans haven’t figured out why the British can’t spell “Department of Defence” properly!

The rise of all of our electronic devices and toys probably contributes to a decline in language skills as well, and don’t even get me started on not teaching cursive writing in schools! When I was in the doctorate program in English at a major US University, the chairman of the English Department, who looked like a character out of a Dickens novel, wrote only with a black fountain pen in an almost perfect-looking calligraphy sort of script. The poor man is probably rolling in his grave over the inability of young people even to write the King’s English, let alone use it properly!

As you can probably surmise, I love language and words. Few things are more satisfying than actually expressing your thoughts and creativity with the written word. I hope everyone can share in the enjoyment of the written word at some point. Now, I must wrap up this little discourse. My four-legged red-haired assistant is telling me that it is time to switch from writing to opening a can of dogfood!

©Eclectic Grandma, 2018

A Few More Museums!

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Last week I talked a bit about my favorite “Big Four” of museums in the world, the British Museum, the Louvre, the Egyptian Museum, and the Vatican Museum. Today I want to revisit some lesser known, but still great museums in Egypt, Paris, Kuwait, London, and Washington, DC. How’s that for a variety of locales?

I suspect that most of you have not had the opportunity to visit Kuwait, so I’ll start with the Tareq Rajab Museum of Islāmic Art in Kuwait.

Night View of Tareq Rajab Museum

Tareq was the first Minister of Kuwait. He and his British born wife, Jehan Welborne, amassed one of the largest collections of Persian and Islāmic art in the world, including gold, silver, pearls, armor, early editions of the Koran, and many, many other artifacts. This privately owned museum houses this outstanding collection. An interesting note is that during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the staff hastily packed up and or hid the various artifacts. Part of the museum is underground, in a series of climate controlled rooms. The stairs leading down to these underground rooms were filled in with dirt and covered over with rubbish, leaving the Iraqi Army unaware of the treasures that lay beneath their very feet. After the war was over, the stairs were dug out, and everything was restored to its proper place and display.

Interior View Tareq Rajab Museum

While we are looking at the Middle East, I have to also mention the Roman-Grecco Museum in Alexandria, Egypt. You probably know of Alexandria through its two most famous citizens, Alexander the Great, who conquered Egypt and founded it, and the Pharaoh Cleopatra, best known for seducing both Julius Caesar and Marc Anthony! Even today in Alexandria it is not at all uncommon to see people with red hair and blue or green eyes, reminding us of that long ago Macedonian army. While not as grand and huge as the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, the Roman-Grecco Museum has a wonderful collection of well displayed artifacts from the Pharaonic, Roman, and Greek eras in Egyptian history. The gardens have multiple busts of Julius Caesar and Marc Anthony. There are also many images of Cleopatra throughout the Museum. Despite her reputation as a femme fatale, she was not thought to have been overly beautiful, but she apparently had quite a way with men!

Roman-Grecco Museum, Alexandria, Egypt

Close to the Museum there is an old Roman amphitheater and baths. I have to mention this site as we thoroughly enjoyed getting to see it. You can just wander around these ruins on your own. The whole site would be an OSHA nightmare here in the US, no railings or safety measures anywhere!

Roman Amphitheater

One of the interesting things for me was noting that all of the seats were numbered (in Roman numerals but of course!) so that everyone knew where his assigned seat was, just like going to the theater today!

Those of you who know me well know that I love the medieval and Elizabethan periods, so my next two selections should not come as a surprise.

Musee du Moyen Age, Paris

In Paris the Musée du Moyen Age, also known as the Musée du Cluny, houses a wonderful collection of medieval art, jewelry, stained glass, and tapestries. The building itself was built in the 15th Century and was originally part of the Abbey du Cluny. A nice side benefit of visiting here is that it is off the beaten path so not nearly as overrun with tourists as the Louvre and some of the other more famous sites! Another favorite of mine from the Middle Ages has to be the Tower of London. As you can probably gather, I am definitely a history and literature buff.

The Tower of London houses the collection of the Royal Jewels as well as the Royal Armoury.

Tower of London

It is not a museum per se but houses other museums within it. When I stood in the spot where Ann Boleyn had been beheaded, I had chills. On a lighter note, when we visited the Royal Armory within the Tower complex, there was a full suit of armor that had belonged to Henry VIII. Now Henry was a large man, both tall and heavy. The suit of armor had what was the Elizabethans politely called a cod piece or else he wanted to, umm, enhance his manhood, so to speak. There were two little boys about 10 or 11 looking at the armor.  They were speaking in a foreign language, an eastern European one I think, and were pointing and giggling.  You didn’t have to speak the language to understand full well what they were saying!

Henry VIII’s Armor

As I look as my “Big Four” and my “Minor Four,” I am sad to say that I really haven’t included any US museums on my list of favorites. We in the US do have the various museums in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, and I hope every American gets to see all of these. Over the years I have visited all of them, but I have to say that they don’t excite me quite like some of the others do.  I do think the Air and Space Museum is certainly worth a visit as is the Holocaust Museum. The National Portrait Gallery is most impressive, but I have to admit that art galleries are not my very favorite.  I prefer the more historical types of museums, especially if they have lots of old artifacts and mummies!

©The Eclectic Grandma, 2018

Great Museums of the World

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I am really fortunate to have been able to visit some of the world’s greatest museums.  The “Big Four” that come to mind for me are the British Museum in London, the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, the Louvre in Paris, and the Vatican Museum in Rome.  I would have to rank these four as the top museums in the world, although I realize that not everyone may concur with my opinion.  Let me comment briefly on each of them in ascending order of my own personal favorites.

The Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel

The Vatican Museum is truly amazing!  If you have the opportunity to visit there, it is well worth it to pay a little extra for a private tour guide.  The crowds are horrendous!   I must admit that there may have been a few too many tapestries for my taste, but still an interesting visit.  Perhaps my favorite stop on the whole tour was the renowned Sistine Chapel, with its famous ceiling painted by Michelangelo from 1508 to 1512.  I can certainly see why it took him four long and tortuous years to complete it.  I probably shouldn’t say this, but I somehow expected the Chapel to be a little larger and grander than it was, but I guess that is often the case.  Our guide, who had a wicked sense of humor, did tell us that one of the figures descending into Hell on one of the panels depicted a particular Cardinal that Michelangelo disliked.  My favorite panel is the famous one known as “The Creation of Adam,” which shows the hand of God reaching down to Adam.

The Glass Pyramid at the Louvre

Next on my little museum tour is the Louvre in Paris.  This is the largest art museum in the world.  For our visit to the Louvre, we didn’t go the tour guide route; we opted to go by ourselves, armed with a detailed map and a list of the key items that we really wanted to see.  You could easily spend days and days in the Louvre, but since we didn’t have that much time, we just made the most of it.  I suspect everyone is familiar with the iconic glass pyramid in the courtyard of the Louvre.  Underneath that pyramid is the central starting point for the various wings of the huge Louvre Palace.  Like the Vatican, it was packed with tourists of all nationalities.

We managed to see our list of the most famous pieces, including Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.  Probably everyone has seen her famous smile.  The actual painting is really quite small; my husband remarked that he expected it to be larger.  It actually only measures about 30″ by 21″, so not a huge painting.  When we saw the Mona Lisa, there were what seemed like thousands of Japanese tourists there, all armed with selfie sticks and taking endless selfies of themselves standing next to the Mona Lisa.  Now that was the picture I should have taken–that sea of selfie sticks!

Mona Lisa Enjoying the Selfies

Moving on from Paris, my next favorite museum is the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, more properly called the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities.  I have always had a deep interest in archaeology and ancient Egypt.  We visited the Museum in the early 2000’s.  Sadly, it was broken into during the Egyptian uprisings in 2011 with some damage to artifacts and some thefts.  I have to admit that I am glad that we got to see it when we did; I don’t know if I would choose to return to Egypt these days!  Probably everyone has seen the movie, “The Mummy” with the great exterior shots of the Egyptian Museum.  That is exactly what it looks like.

When we visited, the crowds were primarily focused on the King Tutankhamun exhibits and the room with the royal mummies and disregarded most of the rest of the museum.   Once you got away from the crowds and found some of the older displays, you pretty well had the whole place to yourself.  I don’t think some of the display cabinets had been opened or dusted since the items were originally put in them.  Faded placards written on old typewriters and handwritten captions in French and English revealed much of the French and British presence in Egypt in earlier centuries.

Exterior of the Egyptian Museum

In one case we saw a well-preserved hunting dog; his hair looked as if he were still alive.  Except for the King Tut and the Royal Mummies exhibits, the building was not air-conditioned and was open to Cairo’s horribly polluted air.  At one point I started to take a picture of some old stone sarcophagi, and a museum guard told me not to take picture due to my flash.  As if the flash on my camera could be any worse than all the automobile exhaust pollution pouring in through the open windows!  The sad thing with the Egyptian Museum is that so many of the artifacts are not on display or even catalogued for that matter.  I can only hope that the present leadership in Egypt can somehow appreciate and preserve the wonderful ancient treasures of their country.

Now for my number one favorite museum!  It has to be the British Museum in London.  This outstanding museum has a bit of everything, from the famed Rosetta Stone to the Elgin Marbles.  It has an amazing collection of Egyptian artifacts as well the Elgin Marble from the Parthenon in Greece and numerous Roman objects and old Viking relics from the Sutton Hoo excavations.  The entire collection reflects what a world power the British Empire was for so many years. At one point I used to think it was sad that the treasures from so many countries ended up in museums in England or France.  Then having seen the lack of preservation and regard in some of these locales, I think it is a blessing that these artifacts are being so carefully preserved and cared for outside of their native countries.

Being of English and Scottish heritage myself as well as a student of English literature for many, many years, I also loved seeing the original manuscripts and folios of so many famous works of literature that I have loved through the years. There you have it, my top four museums to visit and enjoy!

©The Eclectic Grandma, 2018

 

The Christmas Tree Revisited

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In honor of the Christmas holidays, I am once again reflecting on our childhood Christmases!

Of all memories stored away in our brains, what can be more special and wonderful than memories of our childhood Christmases? I grew up in Texas in the fifties, two unrelated but equally spectacular feats. My parents moved us, me and my little sister, to Texas from Long Island when I was seven. We were the dreaded (and often fighting) word—YANKEES!     As I grew older and more mature, or perhaps as I began to acquire somewhat of a Texas drawl, the Yankee comments began to dwindle, and I actually began to identify myself as a Texan. Children are very amazing when it comes to fitting in.

My parents made all holidays special ones, but at Christmas they really pulled out all the stops. Across the brown, dusty lawns and homes of Dallas, outside lights, decorations, and Christmas trees went up the day after Thanksgiving and returned to their boxes in the attic the day after Christmas, with the now dried out and shedding fir lying on the curb awaiting the trash pickup. My family was different. They looked at the rush to put trees up with disdain as if Christmas itself were being compromised. In keeping with my parents’ German and English heritage, our tree went up on Christmas Eve and stayed up at least until twelfth night, and often longer. In fact, the sudden arrival of the Christmas Tree was accomplished not by Mom and Daddy, but by the Big Man himself. Yes, our tree was decorated by Santa!

Imagine if you can, the excitement and wonder of a small child heading off to bed on Christmas Eve with a naked fir tree sitting in the living room and awaking to a fully decorated tree with presents and toys surrounding it. Another slight difference with our southern neighbors was the lavishness of the tree itself. Decorating the tree was not a casual hanging a few ornaments and lights, it was a work of art right up there with the Sistine Chapel—and often taking nearly as long to accomplish! Today, as a dedicated lover of Christmas, I compromise between the two traditions; we generally put up our trees Thanksgiving weekend and leave them up until around mid January. Of course, my artificial trees need no water and don’t shed needles all over the carpets. In keeping with today’s more elaborate decorating approaches, we have a “traditional” tree and a southwest tree, not the single lovely focal point of my childhood.

Selecting the tree was a feat unto itself. A week or two before Christmas, the four of us would make the rounds of what seemed to be every Christmas tree lot in Dallas looking for the tallest and fullest tree to be found. Luckily our old rented farmhouse had tall ceilings; even so our tree usually appeared to have grown right into the ceiling, so we never had the tradition of a star or angle topping the tree; they would have had to sit in lonely splendor in the attic! After traipsing around multiple tree lots, my sister and I grew progressively less picky. Not my father; the search continued until we found the perfect tree or rather the almost perfect tree. Since Nature herself could not seem to produce quite the tree Daddy envisioned, she had to be helped along.  Once he selected the main tree, he would select another less perfect specimen of the same variety as the first. At last we headed home with our hard found booty

Once we arrived at home, the trunks of both trees—the full bosomy one and her scrawnier little sister—were trimmed off a little, and they were left to stand in buckets of water outside the house, not in ordinary buckets of water, mind you, but in a concoction of sugar water and other secret ingredients known only to my father.  A day or two before Christmas, we began the ritual of getting ready to decorate the tree. The prime tree was brought into the house first, placed in the stand, and then put upon a device known as the platform. The platform was a 4 x 8 foot sheet of plywood which rested upon four 12” sawhorses. The tree was then placed in the center of the platform with its top branches trying their best to break through the ceiling. Grudgingly, Daddy would trim minimal branches from the top, just to allow the tree to stand upright with the top branches spreading out around the ceiling.

Next both Mother and Daddy would examine the tree critically, noting every place where a more aesthetic Mother Nature should have placed a branch.  What she couldn’t do properly, Daddy could!  Armed with a drill, he drilled holes into every spot what a more competent Mother Nature would have put a bough.  Then the other little tree’s branches were cut off and inserted into the holes in the trunk until voilá, the perfect tree emerged!  The remaining branches from the second tree were used to decorate the mantle over the fireplace and make countless other kinds of Christmas centerpieces and decorations.

Now, the lights could be put on before Santa came to finish the job.  With his busy schedule on Christmas Eve, I suspect he appreciated the help.  In those days there were no little twinkle lights or LED’s.  It was strictly the strings of old screw-in bulbs. Even the lights were a production at our house!  I don’t know how many strings of lights the average household in Texas used in those days, but take that number and triple or quadruple it, and you begin to get the idea.  Lights on the tree, now it was time to rearrange the bulbs by color.  “Harve, there are two red ones right next to each other,” my Mother would say of “We need a green one over there,” and on and on.  At long last the light bulbs were arranged and rearranged to their satisfaction.  Suzanne and I didn’t take a very active part in the lighting process; we were just happy to lie on the floor and gaze rapturously at the tree which was slowly being transformed into an object of wonder and delight.

© 2015, Black Dirt and Sunflowers

Reflections on China

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I’m sitting here in the bar at the airport Hilton in Narita (Tokyo) with a cold glass of chardonnay in hand writing this little post and waiting on a real hamburger and fries for dinner! I’m on the return trip … Continue reading →

Truth in Advertising

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A couple of years ago I did a blog about some of my pet peeves about people’s grammatical errors, especially usage of the first person pronoun and its versus it’s. Those still drive me crazy, and don’t even get me … Continue reading →

The Haunted TV Box

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Today most of us have multiple television sets, and the vast majority of us receive our TV via satellite or cable.  All of those connected TV’s across the country tend to have some kind of receiver box as well to … Continue reading →

There is no Frigate like a Book

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                                                 There is no Frigate like a Book                                                                                                                       To take us Lands away                                                                                                                          Nor any coursers like a Page                                                                                                                         Of prancing Poetry                                                                                                                                                      Emily Dickinson, 1894                                                                                                    

A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about some of my favorite fiction books.  In order to be fair, I should also blog a bit about some of the so-called literary classics.   By the 7th or 8th grade, my friend June and I had read most of the English and American “classics,” along with many of the Russian novels.  Looking first at English literature, I still think Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities is one of the best of all time!  Who can ever forget that opening line, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”?  Remember the bloodthirsty, infamous Madame DaFarge knitting the names of the victims of the French Revolution into her knitting patterns.  When we were in Paris a couple of years ago, we saw the site where the many guillotine executions took place.  What a sad time in French history.

One of my other favorite English classics is Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.  I was never too much into her sister, Charlotte Bronte and Jane Eyre; she always seemed a bit insipid to me.  In American Literature, I always really like Nathaniel Hawthorne!  I have warned you from time to time that I am somewhat strange.  I really like The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables.  In fact on my first Master’s Degree I actually did my master’s thesis on Hawthorne.  Who can forget the sad and somewhat mysterious Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter or the cursed Pyncheon family in The House of the Seven Gables?   One of my hobbies is genealogy, and perhaps learning how many of my ancestors lived in both New England and Philadelphia in the 1600’s accounts for some of my interest in the stories of this era in American history.

The House of the Seven Gables, Salem, MA

There are so many great novels in world literature that it is simply impossible to even begin to mention them all!  There is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, Gustav Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and on and on!  Incidentally, Conrad was Polish, but he taught himself English by reading newspapers and wrote his novels in English, quite an accomplishment!

I’ve also read, or was forced to read, pretty well all of the famous Russian Novels. Tolstoy’s War and Peace is sort of an interminable bore, but his novel Anna Karina is much better in my opinion.   Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky is quite good!  I also like his final novel, The Brothers Karamazov, although it is pretty deep.

George Eliot

Oh so many moons ago when I taught high school English, we had a very prescribed curriculum we were expected to follow.  The poor sophomores had to read George Eliot’s novel of Victorian England, Silas Marner.  Now I have to tell you that I hated that novel (and still do, I might add), and really had to psyche myself up to teach it.  If you want to inculcate a love of reading into young people, I’m not sure Silas Marner is quite the way to do it!  My only sympathy for George Eliot, her nom de plume, was that as a woman writing in the mid 1800’s, she couldn’t publish under her own name of Mary Ann Evans, so she had to adopt the more acceptable male pen name.

For my junior students, they had to read Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage, a novel of a somewhat cowardly Union soldier during the American Civil War, or the War Between the States, as it is more properly called.  Crane is a bit better than Eliot, but not by much!  I also managed to get myself into hot water with my school principal and the Fort Worth School Board because I also had my junior students ready J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye.  Salinger’s novel of teenagers coming of age had way too much bad language and sexual innuendo for conservative Fort Worth in those days!

Maybe that is why getting to teach A Tale of Two Cities to the seniors was such a breath of fresh air to me.  I could actually work with a book that I personally liked and admired!  It had history, adventure, and a memorable cast of characters.

 I started this post with a famous quote from the American poetess, Emily Dickinson.  The wonderful thing about reading is that, no matter what your preferences might be, immersing yourself into a book can literally transport you to a different time and place, without ever having to leave the comfort of your own home!

©The Eclectic Grandma, 2017

Oh No! More PE Classes!

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After graduating from Thomas Jefferson High School in Dallas, I headed off to North Texas State University in Denton, Texas.  I was the first person on either side of my parents’ families to go to college.  Sadly in those days … Continue reading →

Gym Classes and Other Forms of Torture

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When I was in Junior High School and Senior High School, the Dallas ISD (Independent School District) decreed that all students must have four years of PE in order to graduate.  Funny, in those days we didn’t have the epidemic of childhood obesity that we see today.  I can only recall one person in my entire graduating class of over 500 students at Thomas Jefferson High School who was “fat,” as we so nastily referred to it. In elementary school, we ran ourselves silly with playing Cowboys and Indians, King of the Hill, or Red Rover.  I also stayed active with swim classes, tumbling class, riding my horse, and plenty of outdoor activities.  I was the true tomboy in those days. Interesting, we had no diet sodas, little or no fast food, no computers or tablets.  We entertained ourselves and were generally outside the entire day when we were not in school.

For the infamous PE classes, we had the most hideous one-piece gym suits ever.  They were a stiff white, muslin type of fabric with an elastic waistband.  Our first name was embroidered in red on the front pocket and our full name on the back.  Maybe that was so that our gym teachers didn’t have to worry with trying to learn our names!  “Hey you, Waldman, get over here!”  Those gym suits would have made Marilyn Monroe look frumpy.  I was a tall skinny beanpole in those days so I looked somewhat like an old flour sack hanging on a flagpole.  I suspect they were designed by someone who flunked out of the New York Academy of Design or some such!  I am quite sure that the designer moved on to another highly successful career designing uniforms for our nation’s jails and prisons!  Maybe it was all a plot to be sure that the boys weren’t looking in our direction.

We only had two regular activities in those awful Gym classes year after year, both of which I detested.  When the weather was warm, which was most of the time in Dallas, we played girls’ softball outside.  Now I have to tell you I hate what I call object-implement games!  This entails any activity where I have to hit an object, such as a ball, shuttlecock, puck, etc., with an implement of any kind.  This would include bats, rackets, golf clubs, or even my own hands or feet.  Before I arrived on this earth, I’m sure God had a good chuckle as he was dishing out the chromosomes.  “Let’s not give this one any hand-eye coordination genes.  That should be amusing!”

The other activity when it was too cold or rainy to be tortured outside with softball, was volleyball inside the girls’ Gym.  Other people did spectacular leaps and hits back and forth over the net.  Not me, I mostly just stood there surreptitiously eyeing the clock on the wall.  Even time stood still for those endless games.  Once in a great while we got to do calisthenics.  That was fine; I loved that!  I probably would have loved and excelled at track and field types of activities or competitive swimming.  It is a shame that those activities were not offered or encouraged.  It was really a toss-up which I hated more, the softball or the volleyball, and I haven’t changed my opinion of either over the years.

Only one good thing in my life ever came out of volleyball.  At the beginning of my second year at NTSU (North Texas State University), now known by the loftier name of the University of North Texas, I went one evening with a couple of friends to the BSU or Baptist Student Union.  Now I was not Baptist or even overly religious, but figured I might meet some cute guys, so it was worth a visit.  With my hair fixed and make-up on, I wore one of my favorite dresses, an orange, two- piece dotted-swiss one.  We arrived at the BSU, and, God protect me, they were having a volleyball game!  Against my better judgement, I was coerced into playing that horrendous game yet again.

Then suddenly, Whap, right in the side of my head!  I got taken out by a spiked ball from some sadistic player across the net.  If I had been a cartoon character, I would have been covered with stars and chirping birds.  The culprit rushed to help me up and ended up walking me back to my dorm later that evening.  He turned out to be a tall, blue-eyed guy with a blond flat top.  We began dating, and the rest is history!  We now have two great looking blue-eyed, blond sons, and two adorable grandsons (and of course, two wonderful daughters-in-law as well).

It wasn’t until after we had been married for several years that Bill finally summed up the courage to tell me that he hated my beloved orange dress and thought it was hideous.  It was probably a good thing he didn’t tell me that sooner, or history might have taken a different path!

©The Eclectic Grandma, 2017