Columns & Editorials

The Layden Senior Citizens Center of Forney would like to welcome you at 101 Main Street in City Hall, open weekdays from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Please enter the front or through handicap-accessible doors located at the back of City Hall where reserved parking for seniors is also available.

“Shooting” Turkeys

Term vs. Perm: Which is Right For You?

Ok, I guess we are pretty much assured Spring is here. Do you have any gardening advice for me? I love flowers but don’t know much and haven’t had much luck in the past.

I’ve been doing it all wrong. It’s a sobering feeling, panicky almost. I have found that is how these moments usually go, these sudden realizations that typically hit us in the morning as we are brushing our teeth or shedding the clothes of the night for the clothes of the day. We see our own reflections in the mirror and exclaim – typically inside our heads but occasionally out loud, “Oh, Mylanta! I get it now. I finally get it!” That is how it normally goes for me, anyway. Show me an inopportune moment where time won’t allow me even a second to regroup, and I will solve a problem or right a grievous wrong. I just won’t have time to implement the solution. So it was this morning. I was trading in the messy bun of slumber for the messy bun of daily activity when it hit me. I am fading. My hair is turning gray with these areas around my face where the color of one is morphing into the color of the other. My complexion is more sallow, my eyes more hollow. I have lost that distinction of youth completely. The contrast is gone. There is no bright undereye for the peachiness of the cheek to reflect from, though the peach has long turned into a persimmon. There is only slackness and darkness and fuzziness. I’ve become blurry. Blinking my eyes, I half expected to watch my image break into a million pixels and disappear altogether. Under regular circumstances, these observations would send me spiraling faster than Merle Haggard can sing “are the good times really over for good,” but today was different. I smiled at my reflection with teeth that are no longer as straight as my parents planned them to be and only a few shades whiter than my olive complexion thanks to an undying love for coffee, and exclaimed, “I’M SUPPOSED TO LOOK LIKE THIS!”

I have small children. I am new to this community, and I don’t know many people. I can handle it, but my children are lonely and need new friends. Do you have any suggestions for me to meet individuals who have small children that may want to play?

When Should You Take Social Security?

I am a middle-aged man. I am looking for a good woman to build a long-term relationship. As you can imagine I have had some bad luck in the past. Any help would be appreciated.

There is so much noise, so much racket in the world. We are assaulted by the sounds, the sights, the smells. Someone is always pushing, always pulling, always needing something from us. Do you feel this way, too? Recently, there has been much debate over what defines a woman. Oddly polarizing this commentary has become. Some groups stake their claim on the hill of biology. Their battle cry is a rousing “God does not make mistakes.” Others attack with a cacophony of righteous statements like, “God does not get to decide what I am or am not.” While I side with the former, my condensed disquisition pivots on a single mantra. It is based on the things we carry, we women of this world. God especially equipped us with this gift that cannot be replicated or faked or hidden or pushed into oblivion. We carry. Period with a “T.”

Snakes play a significant role in the legend of St. Patrick, the primary patron saint of Ireland and the man who inspired a wildly popular mid-March holiday. Though the notion of St.

My heart is broken. I don’t want to go into particulars because they are too painful. I realize this leaves you with little information to go on, but do you have any advice at all?

Dear Aunt B, I am angry a great deal of the time. I get mad about something nearly every day. It is not always something big, but I’m starting to wonder if this is a normal thing. I don’t like to get mad. It just seems like something always happens.

When I was around seven years old, I wrote a eulogy for a dying cat. I was a melodramatic child who lived out in the country in an area known for dog and cat dumping. The 70s were crazy times. Animal rescue wasn’t a thing. Pets seemed more, well, disposable, for lack of better words. At least, that is the way it seemed to me. Every morning was a new adventure. One day might provide the companionship of a heavily pregnant shepherd mix. The next day could have me wooing timid cats. We even provided a wayward goose with a soft place to land for a few months. We rehabilitated a nestless trio of too young bunnies whose mother had fallen victim to an evil tractor. Though never successfully hatched, there were many fallen swallow eggs coddled under lights, wrapped in the warmth of my mother’s heating pad. My father was not excited by the thought of spending money on feeding animal mouths over people mouths, but we did everything we could to help. Daddy was known to show up at his friends’ homes with a plea to accompany him to the animal shelter where a city address could enable a guy from the boondocks to drop off a collection of mutts no one wanted anymore. I would become inconsolable at the loss of “my” dogs and cats (the goose left town on his own), but daddy would sit me in his lap and tell me the story of Peter Rabbit and how he freed all the pets from the tar pit. “You see, DD,” my father would gently say, “if Peter kept all these animals, he wouldn’t be able to help all the new ones who needed him.” This was all before Emmanuel, though.