Columns & Editorials
Ask Aunt B
Dear Aunt B, I am not a very good learner. I wasn’t that successful in school, and now I am having a hard time learning new things as well.
KEN LEONARD
Three Rights Make a Left
Fall has finally arrived in North Texas and, after a long hot and dry summer, there is a definite hint of a nip in the breeze serving as a prediction that colder weather is to come.
Circle Closed
“Sweetie, be still. You have something on your face.” It was coming. I knew it. The electricity in the air changed. She licked her thumb. She wiped my face. I could smell her saliva mixed with the unmistakable aroma of a recent long Salem Light cigarette and a cup of Folgers coffee brewed in a percolator. I cringed, unable to will away the urge to wriggle against her grip on my arm. My mother had leveled me once again. What is this unexplainable thing that mothers do to young children with remnants of Jello pudding crusted in the corners of their mouths? Was my spotless mouth that detrimental to our reputation? Why the spit and shine? I wonder, at times, do the sons of mothers obsessed with clean mouths also feel this way? And, so it began, my six-year-old mental list of things about my mother I could not stand. By the time I entered my teens, the list had triple compounded. Why, oh why, did she harp on and on about the same things? Would the world really end if I didn’t make my bed? Night air cannot be the serial killer she made it out to be. Is it not abuse to be subjected to the story of the bicycle spoke piercing her ankle as the child version of her rode over the train tracks with the train whistle blowing? And, why the obsession with lemon juice and honey for sore throats? I did not believe anything she said. I was so much smarter, you see. Why, I understood the world. She did not. That was crystal clear to me.
