Fanciful or Penmanship
Ernest D’Godor
Remember the days when we used to lie on the grass with our hands behind our heads and stare at the clouds passing by on a warm summer day? It would have been a summer day in the early days of vacation, just after school ended. That would be because by the time August rolled around, I could hardly wait to get back to school, I was so bored.
Those were the days that we actually learned cursive writing in school. Something that my grandkids marvel at, cursive writing has become a secret language of old people. Those were the days that we wrote letters to each other and put stamps on the envelopes. Days when we would hang around the mailbox and wait for the mailman.
These days the mailman delivers mostly junk mail, advertisements from any number of businesses or charities. The missives that most people wait on are transported through the internet. The good thing is that people stay more in touch with each other. We are no longer dependent on the ability to keep stamps in stock in your desk drawer.
The problem is that people have no way to practice their penmanship skills. You might wonder why we need penmanship skills, since no one can read your signature anyway. But imagine that you lost your voice and the electricity went out. How would you communicate with other people? Okay, that is a pretty unlikely situation. How about you’re traveling in a remote area and someone kidnaps you? How would you leave a message as to what happened for the detectives to figure out? Hmm, seems that is also an unlikely scenario.
The only way I can think of to get young people to practice cursive writing would be to require them to ask for money in cursive, since that seems to be the biggest reason that my grandkids come to talk to me. It just might work.
Happiness Is More Than a Bluebird
Sue Donovan
When my children were in grade school, they all had a first grade teacher named Pat O’Connell. She had no children of her own but surely had a wonderful way with her Doherty School charges. In the face of their monsterly behavior, we moms could threaten, holler, banish to the bedroom, unplug the TV, and smack their little keisters with a wooden spoon to no avail, but all Mrs. O’Connell had to say in her soft, sad voice was, “It makes me so unhappy when you … .” Fill in the blank! Problem solved. Infraction forgotten. Behavior back up to first grade snuff. If Mrs. O was happy, all was right with the world!
Wouldn’t it be the greatest blessing if we could so easily identify what makes us unhappy, then reverse our negativity with a soft, sad suggestion? But the cause of unhappiness is sometimes illusive. And the quest for happiness may be fruitless folly. If that cool guy from history class would just notice me—if I could lose 10 pounds before my sister’s wedding—if I got the job, made the team, sold my house—if the biopsy was negative. When the ifs become realities, are we then happy? For how long do we remain happy? Maybe that long-sought-after goal was only window dressing—a way to plaster over a hole in our spirit—an empty place that “happiness” doesn’t completely fill.
When life is turning a little black, part of my advice to myself is “Happiness is highly overrated.” I don’t mean misery is better or that it’s too difficult to seek a healthy emotional life. Instead, it’s worth the extra effort to dig a bit deeper for the source of discontent and devise strategies to satisfy the empty places that will last. For me, exploring the quality of my free time, faith-based meditation, learning a new out-of-my-box skill, or attention to someone in need seems to be the key to lifting me to a more lasting plane of serenity, joy, and contentment. If that’s what you call happiness, I’ll take it!
Want Some Advice?
Lee Murray
Agnes Abernathy was the advice columnist for the Tulsa Herald, a daily newspaper serving the people in and around Oklahoma City for as long as anyone could remember. Her daily column, “Ask Agnes,” sold more newspapers than anything else in the paper, in which she dispensed tips for the lovelorn, gave out marital advice, and soothed the broken hearts of countless readers, young and old. Her trademark was the epitome of nice, providing wisdom of the ages, and her readers loved her soft, flowery countenance.
That all changed one day when Agnes failed to show up for work. The editor-in-chief was alarmed, because she was normally as regular as clockwork. It turns out after 50 years of writing “Ask Agnes,” the renowned advice columnist had suffered a stroke and would be out permanently.
It couldn’t have happened at a worse time. The Tulsa Herald was already operating on a shoestring budget, and many of their regular columnists were on summer vacation.
In desperation, the city editor temporarily assigned the “Ask Agnes” column to a hard-bitten crime reporter named Oren Horowitz whose stock-in-trade was reporting on the police blotter, hardly a good resume for the lonely hearts of Tulsa.
When it was first offered, Oren declined. But when the paper offered him more money and fringe benefits, he reluctantly agreed.
As one might expect, Oren’s advice was much more caustic and sarcastic than his predecessor’s.
To one reader who wrote about a recalcitrant boyfriend who dragged his feet on popping the question, Oren’s reply to Tearful in Tulsa was, “Look, Honey, why are you wasting your time with this creep? What’s the matter with you? Tell him to hit the bricks!”
Another one complained of a meddling mother-in-law who refused to stop interfering in her marriage. He responded, “When are you going to grow a spine, Lucy? Tell Mommy Dearest to stay out of your business!”
One brokenhearted reader asked for his advice on how to get over a bad case of unrequited love and was met with a similar response. “There are plenty of fish in the lake, Jake. Stop complaining and move the boat. Quit playing your violin, and start playing the field.”
It was just those kind of brusque responses that created a deluge of phone calls and emails directed at the paper, basically versions of the same thing, what were you thinking about hiring this jerk?
One might expect Oren Horowitz to be on borrowed time advising the conflicted and the lovelorn. In fact, the editor of the Tulsa Herald was about to terminate the acerbic advisor. But then a strange thing happened. The subscriptions for the paper showed a big increase in the month since he took over the column, and the editor realized he’d hit a gold mine hiring the acrimonious advisor almost out of desperation.
“Ask Agnes” was now a thing of history. She’d been officially replaced by the newly crowned champion of those seeking wisdom with a strong dose of reality. While she was kindhearted and gentle, Oren was anything but.
The headline of the new advice column was “Ornery Oren, Tulsa’s truth teller!”