Frames

  One thing I have found out about myself is that I have a dry sense of humor.  I have also found that some people are gullible.  They don't understand when I am joking about something.  

 Case in point was a girl who worked for me at Belk, when I was a buyer.  I honestly don't know why she was hired for a job.  We had an HR person who hired a lot of pretty girls, so maybe he hired her.  At any rate, they put her to work nights and weekends in the Stationery Dept.  She was a senior in high school, and she told me that the only way she passed her courses was doing personal favors for her teachers, especially the male teachers.  I didn't doubt her claim for an instant.  

 One day, we got a bunch of picture frames for sale.  Most frames come with a stock photo of either people or places to make the frames attractive to the customers.  As we were unpacking a box one evening, she saw the pictures and remarked about the photos.  I told her that the people were my relatives, and the places in the photos were where they lived.  I then proceeded to make up stories about the people.  Because many of the pictures looked like they were taken in New England, the supposed relatives lived in Maine.  There were nice pictures of lighthouses and the coast.  I thought she would laugh about my stories, but she took it all in with amazement.  How could she be so gullible?  As it turned out, she was just not very smart.  I have to say that she was nice to look at, but I had to fire her for not being very bright.

 A couple of years later, I found out that she had gone on to Midlands Technical College to study to be a dental hygienist.  I pity whatever dentist hired her.  And especially, the patients she worked on.  I also wonder if she ever found herself in Maine to look up my relatives who were in the pictures.  

Dentist

  I don't like dentists.  I never have.  Thanks to my dislike of dentists, I have very few teeth left in my mouth.  I suppose I should get dentures, but I think I will die first before having to go to a dentist.

 When I was younger, my parents made me go to the dentist.  From all my visits, I should have had enough fillings to bring in BBC World Service on my teeth.  Thanks to my sweet tooth I always had cavities.  There was one visit in particular that was uneventful.

 My teenage dentist had an office at Trenholm Plaza.  He was also a deacon in his local Baptist church.  It seemed logical for me to go to him.  During one appointment with him he declared that I didn't have any cavities.  I was sure that he had a sudden loss of vision, but I went away happy.  When I got home, I told my parents what he said, and they were shocked and pleased at the same time.  A few days later, my parents got a bill in the mail from my dentist for $150.  What for?  I didn't have any cavities.  They called my dentist, and he said that I had to have a lot of dental work done while I was there, and that I cried when told how much the work had cost.

 So, my parents asked me about what the dentist had said.  Even though I used to lie to my parents a lot about my comings and goings, this time I had to tell the truth that the dentist was mistaken.  I didn't cry, and in fact had been thrilled that I didn't have any cavities.  My parents had a dilemma.  Do they trust their teenaged son who was a bit sketchy, or do they trust the dentist who was a Baptist deacon who had a fine reputation?  They went with me.  My parents told the dentist that they weren't going to pay the $150, and the dentist threatened to sue them in court.  

 As it turned out, his office people sent the wrong bill to my parents, and apparently this wasn't the first time this had happened to a patient of his.  The mistake was rectified, but my dentist didn't apologize, so my parents sent me to a different dentist after that fiasco.  My father, who was a bigwig in the Baptist denomination, told the pastor of the dentist's church what had happened.  Mysteriously, the dentist stopped being a deacon.  I imagine it wasn't the dentist's decision.  We all thought he was a good man.  He had a good reputation.  He smiled a lot.  

Chips

  Have you ever looked at an ant and wondered what it would taste like?  When I watch my cat eat outside, she won't come close to eating an ant.  She will eat a lizard or a mouse but not an ant.  People say that some bugs are good to eat, but ants are not one of them.  

 Back in the sixth grade, a kid came to school with some chocolate covered ants.  It just grossed us out.  He said they tasted pretty good.  We told him to prove it, so he ate one.  He didn't throw up, so on a dare I decided to give it a try.  One bite?  Just chocolate.  Two bites?  Just chocolate.  Then, I put the rest of the piece of chocolate in my mouth and bit down.  I felt a "crunch".  That was the ant.  It sort of felt like I was biting into a piece of potato chip covered in chocolate.  I swallowed it pretty quickly.  The other kids laughed, but I didn't throw up.  

 Years later, I lived in a bug-infested apartment.  I would wake up in the middle of the night with a moth in my mouth.  I don't think I ever ate a moth during the night, but I am pretty sure it would have been crunchy too.  

Aquarius

  When I moved back to Columbia from Fort Worth, it was a sad time.  I had left my love named Kare.  I was still drinking and doing mild drugs.  I was also trying to find work in my field without compromising my principles.  I had found part-time work in a department store, and I was sending out letters to over 200 colleges and universities looking for a teaching job.  Things looked kind of bleak.  I was living with my parents, because I couldn't afford a place of my own, and I was also becoming their caregiver.  

 I saw that the musical "Hair" was coming to Columbia for a one-time performance at the Township Auditorium.  I really wanted to go, since I still considered myself a hippie, even though my hair was a little shorter than those days.  I knew the music well, because I had bought the theatrical soundtrack album a few years earlier.  It was going to be a fun night.

 When I got to the auditorium for the show, there were people outside picketing it.  They said it was lewd and dirty.  I knew why they were protesting, because it was going to contain some bad language and nudity, but that didn't deter me.  There was really only one brief scene of nudity.  If you blinked, you missed it.  I just enjoyed being transported back in time to a place where there was love in our world, and it was free.  It was the dawning of Aquarius for one night.