Ask a stupid question and you get a stupid answer, or so the old saying goes. It would seem logical that the Hundred Years’ War lasted 100 years, but actually it lasted 116 years. All of us are not Vulcans, and logic doesn’t always work, Mr. Spock.
A question with a less obvious answer might be: What kind of horse did Joe Cartwright ride on Bonanza? The correct answer: a pinto!

Let me begin this article with a bit of trivia—This man was the original host of Jeopardy before Alex Trebek. (Answer: Who was Art Fleming?) Correct.
One of my earliest memories of watching television was watching Art Fleming host the original Jeopardy. If you search Google, you can find more information on Art Fleming, and you can watch clips of the original Jeopardy game show on YouTube. I just finished watching one. It is interesting to see how the show functioned so well in the 1960s and 1970s without a lot of the modern effects that the show presently has.

If you’re like most people, most of the time you definitely want to be in the “in” crowd. There you’re accepted, adored, idolized, and never alone.

That is, you’re never alone until your thinking starts to depart from the “status quo” of your “in” crowd. Then you risk becoming an outcast, as most groups struggle with a free thinker within their “in” crowd.

On May 1, 2021 I will celebrate an anniversary. On that date, thirty years ago, I bought my house. And like a lot of us living the American dream, I owe more today on the principal balance than the original purchase price.

For those of us who were teenagers or young adults in the 1980s, it seemed, at least in retrospect, a magical time. Even the music of the 1980s was great. I was a freshman at Lincoln Memorial University in the spring of 1984. That was so long ago that the college academic year was divided into quarters, four instructional terms that lasted approximately ten weeks each. The shift to semesters, three annual instructional terms of approximately sixteen weeks each, started at some point before I graduated with my Bachelor’s degree in 1987.

At some point during my high school years, I remember attending an assembly that seemed to occur on the spur of a moment. At least to my memory there was no announcement other than the one given for us to go to the auditorium.
I don’t remember if girls were present at this assembly. I do remember that Principal Joe Day introduced to us the speaker, a man with a common-sounding name. He turned out to be anything but common.
The speaker’s name was Jack Brown. He told us his life story that day.

If you have friends who love to email great thoughts and turns of phrase, or if you are a Facebook junkie, you have undoubtedly come across some pretty interesting opinions about the year just about to end approximately 77 hours from the time I type this sentence.
The one that sticks with me the most at present is this: If you had to choose a drink to represent the year 2020, what would it be? Answer: Colonoscopy prep

In so many cases, the best friends I have are those who give me books.
My good friend Linda Dyer Clevenger Welch gave me several old books a few months ago. One of them was an American literature book. I have been going through it for the past several weeks, reading those selections that perk my interest.
It seems that my favorite part of old literature books is the short story section. In the most recent I’ve scanned, I read short stories I have read many times over the years and some new to me, though they were written decades ago.

Have you ever felt like a piñata, and that everyone you meet is a stick? Or consider the opposite—have you ever felt like a stick and that everyone you meet is a piñata that needs the candy beaten out if it?

Every time I see a piñata I think of my sixth and seventh grade social studies teacher, Ann Crass. I think of Ms. Crass very often, especially during election years.

I have always thought it my destiny to own a Lincoln. Car, that is. Yet it never quite seemed to work out for me.

It did work out for my sister Anna Mae, my mother’s only daughter. She once bought a beautiful four door Lincoln sedan that had belonged to a judge. I don’t remember the model, but I can see that car in my mind. It had a steel blue exterior, dark blue leather interior, and looked practically brand new. It had an electronic dash and air shocks.