A Rose By Any Other Name

The new schoolmaster was waving around his hickory stick and laying down the law the first day of school. He pointed his hickory stick.  “Boy, what is you name?”

“My name is Zeke.”

The teacher slammed hickory stick down on the boys desk, scaring the life out of him.  “No, it’s not!  As long as you’re in this classroom, your name is Ezekial and don’t you forget it.”

Advice for the Easter Season: No Baby Chicks!

repost for Easter:  Illustrations by Kathleen Swain

No little kid should ever be allowed a small, defenseless duck, chick, or bunny for a pet.  One of those four hundred pound tortoises would be a far better choice.  It could protect itself and the kid couldn’t pick it up.  Porcupines or crocodiles should be fine, too.  They could probably hold their own against a four year old.  Case in point, when I was four,

Easter with Mixed Nuts

Easter egg hunts with my cousins were a lot more like cage boxing than gentle competitions.  I had more than forty first cousins, mostly wild animals. By the time my aunts and uncles herded them to the scene of the crime, they just opened the car doors and all Hell broke loose.  Exhausted from defending themselves and the babies on the ride over, it was every man for himself.  God help anybody in the way.

Bungarendeen

When warning the children not to eat potato salad that had been sitting on the counter for a week, or the need to clean and dress a cut, generally instructing them in infection avoidance instead of going into the specifics Bud would say, for example, “Don’t eat that. You’ll get bungarendeen.”  He was a nurse, after all, and didn’t know better.

My daughter was in high school; her teacher was discussing various dread bacteria.  Never hearing the one she’d been waiting for, she raised her hand.  “What about bungarendeen?”

She was rewarded was generalized hysteria.  When the teacher quit laughing, she said.  “You must be John’s sister.  He asked that same question three years ago.”