The Mama Kat Thursday blog prompt link-up topic is: "You won an award at some point in your life...what was it for?" I'm terrible at sports. I don't like hitting or chasing or bouncing or catching balls of any sort. I also hated games like "steal the bacon" or "kick-ball." At the age when one is playing such things in school and developing that skill set, I lacked eye-hand coordination. However, with age, and eventually a little depth perception correction with glasses, that changed. I had one occasion to go into a batting cage in my late 30's. Bat in hand, I swung the bat at balls the machine was throwing at me and enjoyed the great satisfaction of actually hitting every one. It was a redeeming moment. But I didn't really find my niche until Hubby and I took a 6-week beginner foil fencing class. Now, technically, fencing is a martial art and like other martial arts, it's not about size or strength, but speed, skill--a...
Growing up in Indiana, my family lived about 45 miles SW of Indianapolis way out in the country during the 1960's & 70's. We had a black land-line phone like the one pictured. It was a party-line, meaning about a half dozen neighbors shared the same phone line. You could pick up the receiver and hear someone chatting away and, if you did, you just hung up to wait till the line was clear to make your own call. That may have been between 1963 & 1966, because sometime after everyone started having their own private lines. Believe it or not, most everyone had just one phone until the late 60's when it became trendy to have more then one phone, which meant you to have the phone company put in a land-line connection in every room you wanted an additional phone in. Teens started being able to have their own phone in their rooms, if family's could afford it, so they could talk to friends. That lasted thru the 70's. Imagine, back then, if you made an appointment or ...
T he Mama Kat writing challenge today is a "College Memory." After 4 years in the Air Force, I decided I was ready for college, so I was older then most of my fellow students, who were right out of high school. My first semester of college was in the fall 1980. The year John Lennon died. That alone sent a memorable wave of grief over the school population. I was enrolled in a 2-year Commercial Art program. It was a small country college. The class wasn't big. Maybe 20 students in my graphic art classes. I remember this one guy was obsessed with the band "KISS" and, anytime he could, he made them the center of his art. He was apparently great at drawing KISS; less great at anything else. My instructors were both commercial artists who'd worked in the field before becoming college teachers. Brad Rock was one of them. He was new that year. A blond, forty-ish guy taking on a room full of greenhorn artist wannabe's. One day that first semester,...
“ This Christmas,” our Mother firmly and unexpectedly announced, “there will be NO chocolate.” My sisters and I stared at her incredulously. What, no chocolate? It was inconceivable! You see, every year, for as long as I could remember, there had been chocolate on Christmas. Not just a little chocolate, but an opulent extravaganza of chocolate that would've made even Willy Wonka blush. Empty decorative bowls would be laid out on Christmas Eve, enough to cover our 7 foot dining table, only to be “magically” filled by morning with Hershey’s Kisses, Hershey's Mini-bars, chocolate peanut clusters, chocolate turtles, chocolate cremes, M&M's of both types, chocolate stars, chocolate-covered cherries, Tootsie rolls and candy bars of every type. It was a veritable chocolate feast the Ghost of Christmas Present would surely admire. How...
The Mama Kat prompt topic for today is: "Tell us about a job you quit...and why?" I suppose everyone has a job they've quit at some point. I quit mine after 17 years. I used to work for a local flower shop as a floral designer. When I was first hired, the manager was a woman named Millie. She's actually the one who trained me and she was a pretty good manager. She provided a strong sense of leadership, clear guidelines for everyone to follow, hosted feed-back/brain-storming sessions for her employees and was smart enough to have an assistant manager, so she didn't have to be there every minute. About 18 months later, Millie decided to retire and her assistant manager, Donna, took over as manager. Now the flower shop was actually owned by a Frenchman named Alain, who was a very savvy businessman. He just did the books, paid the bills and set the financial goals for the managers. Donna was a decent manager. She was there Monday through Friday...
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