One of the games I love playing with little ones is hide and seek. Not that I enjoy looking underneath every bed in the house for my giggling grandchildren but because of how they believes they’re invisible when they’re standing in the middle of the room or behind the curtain with their sneakers plainly visible.

And so it is with people in their cars. We think when we’re in our vehicles, nobody can see what we’re doing. That might be true if our windows are tinted midnight black with a reflective coating Superman couldn’t see through, but not all of us have that luxury.

Most of us are quite open to the world in our cars, but we forget that from time to time. Like I did the other day.

It was one of the fresh fall afternoons when the air was crisp and the mercury had dipped below scorching. I rolled the windows down and enjoyed a cool breeze on the way home from the grocery store.

No car ride with the windows down is complete without music blaring, I thought, so I slipped in a familiar Barbra Streisand CD.

All the lyrics came back and I started humming along. But then, I couldn’t resist and I found myself singing along. Pretty soon, I was belting out the songs, word for word with the diva, not a care in the world as I drove down the highway.

Was I off key?

Oh yeah.

Did I care?

Not in the least.

Because for those few minutes, I felt free and young and talented and totally uninhibited.

Until I stopped at a red light and noticed a car next to me. Immediately I shut my mouth and pretended I didn’t notice the driver giving me a funny look. To cover up, I started talking to myself.

Now 20 years ago, that would’ve gotten me an even stranger look, but with hands-free cell phones, I looked totally normal having a pretend conversation when there wasn’t anybody in the car with me.

The driver next to me didn’t have to know I was covering up the fact that I was pretending I was standing on a stage, belting out pitch-perfect songs to a packed audience.

I kept on pretending like I was talking – really singing the chorus quietly to myself – and I’d glance over every few seconds to see if he was noticing anything.

He could’ve cared less about me because he had his own show going on. First he took a few selfies, complete with Elvis Presley lip curls and a cavalier raised eyebrow.

And then he did something that made his opinion totally worthless – he started looking up his nostrils in his rear-view mirror and, believing he’d found something, went on an exploratory mission to find it.

And I thought singing in my car was a little off.

But people do all kinds of crazy things in their car, thinking nobody can see what they’re doing. They pluck their eyebrows, floss their teeth, and cram handfuls of popcorn, Fritos, Cheetos, and Doritos in their mouths while sitting in traffic.

I’ve seen women put on mascara and eyeshadow while waiting for the light to turn green, and men shaving in their cars – yes shaving – when waiting in traffic.

Once, while driving on Highway 59, I saw someone reading the newspaper and another driver – who came whizzing by me – with a paperback book propped up in the middle of the steering wheel.

I suppose they thought nobody could see what they were doing in their vehicles. They, like my little grandchildren, were invisible to the world.

But it’s a free country, and an imagination is a wonderful asset. Especially when you’re behind the microphone, er, I mean the steering wheel.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

 

            The audience in the auditorium quieted down when the B.F. Terry High School choir members began to walk onto the stage. There were red, white and blue decorations around the room, and a prominent American flag hung from the ceiling.

            The concert began with over 100 students slowly and reverently singing “The Star Spangled Banner.” We usually sing that song before sporting events, and many of us forget the meaning behind the words.

            I found myself doing the same, glancing down at the program to see what songs were coming up. But then a big screen came down from the ceiling, and a grainy black-and-white video began playing.

            The video was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. The film from 1963 showed thousands of people in Washington D.C. listening to the civil rights leader talk about his many dreams. One was for people to be judged by the color of their character, not by the color of their skin.

            He also hoped his four children would one day hold hands with white children, and I thought about that dream as I looked at the choir students on the stage. Black students stood shoulder to shoulder with white students, brown students and students with disabilities.

            At the end of the speech, the screen came up, and two dozen young teens began the “United by Love” performance. The idea for the concert came from choir directors Rhonda Klutts and Marlayna Shaw, and they said their students immediately embraced the idea and concept.

            Songs were chosen for their meaning about acceptance and understanding. The words from “Colors of the Wind” set the tone –if you “walk in the footsteps of a stranger, you’ll learn things you never knew you knew.”

            The choir, and indeed the school choirs in our diverse county, reflect those lyrics. There were faces from all ethnicities in the choir on the stage that evening, just as there are in our grocery stores, churches and the hallways of our schools. Many people still judge others by what’s in their shopping cart, the language they’re speaking or the clothes they’re wearing, but our children understand how to get along with each other. They seem to accept and celebrate each other’s customs and cultures.

            So why is it so hard for adults?

            In between songs, students read narratives about equality, getting along, acceptance and forgiveness. They asked for members of the military, police officers, law enforcement, fire fighters and EMS personnel to stand and for the audience to thank them for their service.

            They then recognized any families who’d lost a loved one while serving our country, and there was somber applause for those who stood. What a contrast to some of the disrespectful shenanigans politicians and professional athletes are engaged in these days.

            Toward the end of the concert, I thought about all the grievances and differences we have in this world –someone’s skin is darker than ours, someone wears a hijab or someone speaks with an accent – and realized these teens are onto something with their concert.

            We have to move on to a better world and that starts with each individual person, each individual heart and each individual hand reaching out to someone else in love, understanding and peace.

            At the end of the concert, almost 200 students stood around the auditorium, shoulder to shoulder, and sang “When You Believe.” I don’t think there was a dry eye in the full house at that point because there really can be miracles when we believe and act on those beliefs, just as these teenagers showed us.

 This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

            Maybe it’s because the weather’s cooling off or because the smell of soups and stews is in the air, but I’ve been picking up cookbooks lately, browsing for recipes.

            I’ve never been a gourmet cook. In fact, I’m not much of a cook period. Our kitchen is small for a reason – I don’t want to spend any more time in there than I absolutely have to.

            But as we’re empty nesters and all my friends want to talk about is their blood sugar levels, cholesterol and lipids, I’ve started to examine my eating habits a little closer.

            And I have to admit that my days of driving through a fast-food joint and picking up fries and a burger are probably over. The days of adding a milkshake to that order are definitely a memory. But instead of whining over the grease I won’t be licking off my fingers, I decided to see if there might be something to actually turning on the stove and cooking something for dinner.

            I started online by searching for “quick meals” and the first item was from Country Living. I could deal with that, I thought – fresh vegetables and healthy eating. The first dish called for red peppers and tons of onions, and that was out. I dislike onions and hate red peppers. Plus it was cooked in a cast-iron skillet, and I don’t have one of those.

            It got worse – “Pierogies with Sausage, Cabbage and Pear.” I have no idea what “pierogis” are and I don’t see cabbage working in partnership with pears. So on to the next recipe.

            “Thai Noodle Soup with Shrimp and Pumpkin.” First, I’ve no clue what Thai noodles are, nor have I ever seen those in the local grocery store where I shop. Secondly, I’m not a fan of eating pumpkin. Those are for carving up and putting near our front door on Oct. 31.

            And shrimp goes in etouffee or deep-fat fried with lots of breading and hush puppies and fries and … wait a minute. I’m supposed to be thinking of healthy foods. So I decided to switch tactics and typed in “quick healthy meals.”

            The first site that popped up was from the Food Network. I’ve watched cooking shows on that network, and they look pretty complicated. But I thought the “20-Minute Chicken” might be worth a look.

            I was wrong.

            This was for 20-minute chicken thighs with couscous and dill. I don’t have a clue what couscous is and dill is what I associate with a pickle. Then I saw grape tomatoes and that made me think about watermelon and how much I miss summer meals like barbecue and burgers and more barbecue.

            The next day, I went to the library and the friendly librarian pointed me in the direction of cookbooks. I quickly got lost in the dozens of cookbooks on the shelf to fit every dietary need. There was a totally gluten-free cookbook, three or four for vegans, a paleo diet cookbook and a dozen or so dealing with just chocolate.

            As much as I wanted a chocolate cookbook, I settled for one with 300 easy and healthy recipes. Didn’t matter that there was a picture of cupcakes and pizza on the front – the book claimed to be healthy.

            I opened it to a random page and found prosciutto and arugula pizza. Again, not a clue what those two ingredients are. But I checked the price —   $20 a pound for the prosciutto at an online store. That’s more than steak.

            And I don’t have a clue where to find arugula in the store. But I wanted to give the cookbook another try, so I closed my eyes and randomly picked a page, and “Indian Chicken with Cucumber-Mango Sauce” popped up. There were six or seven ingredients, but the recipe looked easy enough. Sitting down, I started making a list with all the ingredients I’d need. All was fine until I got to the last item on the list – thinly sliced fresh mint. I don’t have a fresh mint plant.  I think I saw some mint plants at the hardware store, but that’s 20 minutes away.

            Sighing, I opened up the pantry and saw a box of Trix cereal. Let’s see – it’s colorful, it’s cheap and it’s already here. And for a continental flair, I’ll have breakfast at night instead of early in the morning and really shake things up.

            As they say in the fanciest kitchens in the land, dinner is served.

 This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

A recent article from ScienceNOW stated that male babies leave traces of their DNA on their mother’s brain, and those traces can persist for decades.

As the mother of three boys, that revelation could explain a lot about why I do the things I do. But first, let me state I believe girls are as capable as boys in every regard – brains, competence, caring, logic and a thousand other characteristics.

There’s always exceptions to the perceived rule. Not all girls love pink and lace and not all boys like camo and mud. But my experience as a parent showed me that there was a difference.

Before I had children, I thought I could raise my offspring the same – no gender-biased toys for my kids, I said. When they were young, that logic worked. They loved the stereotypical girl toys as much as their stereotypical boy toys.

But after a certain age, it was clear the boys didn’t like the same things their mother liked. But there were similarities.

We understand and speak the same language – one-syllable words and short sentences do the trick with boys and me. Phrases such as “stop it” and “drop it” come out of my mouth a lot more than logical, sensitive explanations.

Whenever someone’s trying to make sure they’re being deliberate and thoughtful in their explanation, I often want to blurt out “can you just cut to the chase?” Now I know the reason – boy DNA in my brain.

My sons also used everything as a weapon. A stick wasn’t a stick – it was a machine gun. A rock was a grenade. And a tree was for climbing and a safe place to throw rocks at passersby.

The boys and I differ in that I think sticks are just sticks, but I have been tempted to throw a rock through a driver’s car window as he comes tearing down my street going 90 miles an hour.

And then there’s a tolerance for dirt. If I’d let them, my boys would go for days without bathing. They reminded me of our dog – if there was dirt or mud, they were rolling around it.

Perhaps that explains why I can go without dusting the furniture for weeks and why, when the boys came in with muddy jeans, I wasn’t at all concerned. Dirt and mud, I told myself, wash out.

My sons and I both love comic books and super heroes, but I didn’t get that love from them – they got it from me.

I’d rather spend an afternoon in the comic-book shop than I would a department store, and I was the first one in line when the first Spiderman movie came out. I shrugged it off as making my sons happy, but they knew I was the one who wanted to see that movie.

Before I pass myself off as a woman who lacks female DNA, there are things I do my sons never understood. They never quite got why I teared up at the end of the book “Laura Charlotte” by Kathryn Galbraith.

The children’s book is about a little girl and her flannel elephant. The grandmother and Laura Charlotte’s mother figure prominently in the book, and their multi-generational affection for each other makes me sob every time I read the book to my boys.

But my nieces understood how important that female connection is in a family and how much strength we girls get from each other.

My nieces also understand why I’m sniffling at the end of “Fiddler on the Roof” and why lipstick – not plastic X-men – is a required item in a purse.

Maybe having a little male DNA in my brain isn’t a bad thing. And maybe, if the universe is balanced, there’s a little female DNA in my sons’ brains, courtesy of their mom.

But, for me, I’m a blessed woman having had the privilege of parenting three boys. Now I know I’ll have a piece of them with me all my life.

 This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

            I pulled into the driveway as the sun was starting to set, happy to finally get home. As the garage door went up, I noticed something moving by the threshold – a snake.

            Panic immediately set in because I have a gigantic fear of snakes. And now one was between me and my back door.

I didn’t know if the snake was poisonous or harmless – as if a snake could be harmless, I thought with a shiver running down my back.

            I sat in the car, motor idling, watching the motionless snake. Maybe it was dead, I thought.

            And then it started to slither. Not very far, but just enough to let me know it was alive and waiting for me.

            As I watched that snake, the irrational fears took over. The three-foot long brown snake suddenly grew to about 10 feet in length. I couldn’t see the snake’s head, but in my imagination, the head turned and the fangs were bared, poison dripping from each sharp tooth. The venom was burning into the concrete as the snake tried to hypnotize me with its snake eyes.

            I forced myself to return to reality and looked across the street to see if my neighbor was home. Arthur loves snakes and is my go-to person whenever I spot something reptilian in our back yard and my husband’s not home.

            Arthur’s rescued me before. My husband was out of town one evening, but he’d told me to call Arthur if I saw any critter in the back yard that bothered me. I went out to empty the pool’s skimmer basket, and that’s when I saw something black and thin swimming across the water.

            I pulled out my cell phone and called my neighbor.

            “Arthur, there’s a snake in our pool,” I said, my voice shaking. “Can you come over and get it out?”

            I’d barely gotten the second phrase out of my mouth when Arthur came running up my driveway, his twin 8-year-old boys right behind him.

            He leaned over the pool and smiled.

            “It’s just a water snake,” he said. “Perfectly harmless.”

            To which I gave a very logical reply.

            “Good,” I said. “Kill it. Kill it dead and kill it quick.”

            He told me that snake wouldn’t hurt anything and was actually beneficial to our back yard. The snake, he said, killed rats and other undesirables lurking in our back yard.

            “That’s nice,” I said. “Kill it.”

            Being the animal lover he is, Arthur got the snake out of the pool and relocated it to the furthest reaches of our back yard. That had to be hard to do when an irrational woman was screaming “Kill it Arthur! Kill it!”

            But tonight, Arthur wasn’t home.

            My husband wasn’t home.

            It was me and the snake.

            I had an advantage, I thought. I was in my car. That vehicle weighs 2,000 pounds, much more than a snake. One push on the accelerator and I could squish that snake flatter than, well, a snake.

            Almost as quickly as I thought about using my car as a battering ram, my hopes were dashed. The snake was right next to the small step up into the garage and the car tires would go right over the reptile and he’d be free to chase after the car and the driver that tried to kill him.

            And then I knew what I had to do. The only way to get in my house safely was for me to get out of my car, run into the garage, get the hoe and hack that snake to death.

            After five minutes of trying to talk myself out of it, I finally opened the car door, put my foot out and touched the toe of my sneaker to the concrete. And then the snake did a remarkable thing.

            It slithered away into the grass.

            It was safe. I was safe. No harm. No foul.

            I pulled my car into the garage, ran into the house and slammed the door shut. I knew that I’d come a long way toward conquering my fear of snakes, just by putting my foot out of the car.

            But between you and me, dear reader, I’m not sure I conquered anything. Let’s just say in the battle between woman and snake, hesitation was the definite winner.

 This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

I looked over at the table behind my desk and saw a stack of mounted photographs that hadn’t been there earlier in the day. On top of the photographs were some well-read Leon Hale novels, and I immediately knew where they’d come from – Russell Autrey, one of the best photographers in the state of Texas.

            Russell’s the Herald’s former head photographer, and he retired a few years ago. Back when we both worked full-time for the newspaper, we were usually the first ones in the newsroom in the mornings – Russell because he loved to drink his coffee in relative quiet and me so I could leave on time to pick up my boys from school in the afternoon.

            Holding a cup of coffee in his left hand and the computer mouse in the other, every day Russell would pull up photos, crop and edit them for the newspaper and the Website.

With each picture, Russell offered me advice about what the photographer did right or wrong, and I soaked up every word.

            After he finished his coffee, Russell picked up his camera and headed out the door to find a picture for that day’s paper. I don’t know how he managed to find a picture every day, but he did. And every one was a masterpiece.

Sometimes the photo would be of children playing in the park. Other days, he’d take a beautiful picture of people engaging in every-day life.

And that’s what’s so amazing about Russell – he captures the every-day in an extraordinary way.

When my Aggie boy moved into his own house, he asked me to help him find decorations with a Texas slant. I immediately knew who to call – Russell. He said he’d gather some photos for me, and his choices were spot on.

The first one is of an old house and a solitary windmill out in the country, both surrounded by dainty yellow flowers. Russell said he took it back in the 1980s. Thirty years later, the picture looks as fresh as it did the day he snapped it.

The next photo is of a grizzled cowboy standing behind a mesh fence. Only one eye is visible behind the boards in the fence, but Russell captured that cowboy’s steely gaze. The lines on that old man’s cheeks had to come from hours spent in the saddle under the brutal Texas sun.

The next one is of a lone rider in the middle of a canyon. The majestic mountains and sprawling desert practically overwhelms the man and his horse, and Russell perfectly captured that lonesome feeling.

When I got to the next picture, I recognized it immediately. An older cowboy is riding a white horse, herding cattle. The cowboy sits tall in the saddle, and his hat has seen its share of the sun, wind, rain and cold over the years.

This picture has been used in magazines throughout the county, and I’m so thrilled I have an original print. The photo reminds me of the story Russell and I once did on the new breed of cowboys in Fort Bend County. That experience remains one of my favorite feature story adventures with Russell.

The last print is a black and white, and it’s an old house that’s barely standing –paint barely visible on the weathered boards. Russell knows how to put just the right people in the photo, and this one has two riders – one wearing a modern baseball cap and the other wearing an old cowboy hat.

As I looked at the pictures, I remembered all the stories Russell told me over the year. My son grew up listening to Russell’s tall tales, and now he’ll always have a reminder of one of the best raconteurs and photographers in the state of Texas. Thank you, Russell, for allowing us to have you in our lives forever.

 This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald where I first met the fabulous Russell Autrey.

           

Football games are underway, and that not only signals autumn but also the start of the fall semester at colleges and universities.

As young adults make their way to the financial aid office to see if and how they can swing a college education, I thought about how difficult it is to choose a career path these days.

There are so many choices, especially for those who love computers and know their way around the Internet. I came of age in the generation where what you chose after high school was what you did your whole life, usually in the same town where you were born.

You worked for a company for 30 years, retired with a gold watch and then sat on the porch, shelling peas, waiting for the grandkids or the Grim Reaper.

Times have changed. Today, government statistics state that millennials will have 15 to 20 jobs over the course of their working life. They can easily go from one career to another and never think about that gold watch.

There are times I wish I could go back to those early days and experiment with different careers. When I left high school, I had all kinds of ideas about what I wanted to be.

I was from a small town, and I wanted to see the world, but I didn’t have any money to finance that dream.

One career offered a chance to earn a salary and see the world – becoming a stewardess. Back in the 1970s, stewardesses – we now call them flight attendants – looked like they had a jet-setting career.

Television commercials featured stewardesses in cute dresses, hats and high heels traveling all over the United States. Some even traveled to exotic, romantic locations like Paris, London and Rome.

Sure they had to serve coffee and deal with travel-weary passengers, but the end result was seeing the wonders of the world for free.

I was living in a working-class blue-collar town, and I wondered what adventures were out there besides an oil-refinery job.

When I told my parents I wanted to work for an airline, they weren’t happy.

“Stewardesses are nothing more than glorified waitresses,” they said.

We know this isn’t true — flight attendants work hard, stand on their feet and might have to deal with a dangerous person. Still, my parents wanted me to go to college instead of right to work, so I went to college and then to work for a reliable company where I could retire with a nice pension.

The choice was safe. The choice was conservative. The choice was what was expected.

I always wondered how life would’ve turned out if I’d been brave enough to travel the world. Who could I have met? What could I have seen? Was Paris really as mysterious and beautiful as it looked in the magazines?

But the “what-if” game is a dangerous one and tricks me from facing my “what-is” reality which is pretty good. I’ve learned to accept how things are and stay in the present. The future is unwritten and the “right-now” is what I make it.

Besides, I wouldn’t change my life for anything. I wouldn’t be a mother to my three wonderful sons. I wouldn’t have the joy of finally having a daughter in the family and I wouldn’t know the deep love of being a grandparent. I wouldn’t have a spouse willing to sit on the porch and shell peas with me while we wait for the grandchildren to visit.

Maybe I can still travel the world. It’s never too late to start down the path toward realizing one’s dreams because plans, and life, change.

And as they do and the older I get, the more I realize I better start down those paths now rather than later.

I wonder if Southwest Airlines is hiring.

 This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

When I woke up on my 15^th birthday, the only gift I wanted was to get my driver’s license. I remember going with my grandmother to the DMV office, and I was waiting at the doors when the instructor unlocked the door.  

I knew the rules of the road because my dad had been teaching me how to drive since I was 10 years old. I always sat right next to him, and he’d pass on his driving knowledge, especially on long trips.

     He told me to look at the interstate as a slow-moving play and I needed to pay as much attention to what was behind me as to what was in front of me.

There weren’t that many cars on the road back then, so it was easy to plot out where I needed to be so I wouldn’t get stuck.

 “Just play it slow and think out your moves,” he said.

That was then.

This is now.

And, sorry to tell you Dad, but the rules have changed.

There is no playing it slow on the interstate. Driving on any major thoroughfare is similar to Luke Skywalker trying to blast the Death Star as he barrels down a narrow corridor with enemy ships all around.

Cars, trucks, motorcycles, buses and SUVs zoom along I-10 at a minimum of 70 miles per hour in bumper-to-bumper traffic. One slam of the brakes results in a chain reaction of dented fenders a mile long.

People don’t use their turn signals. In fact, they usually change three lanes at a time at break-neck speed. Turn signals are obviously optional accessories on their vehicles, and there’s never time for other drivers to use logic to figure out what to do – it’s survival of the quickest.

     One of the moves I always dread is merging into traffic. When I first got my license, I could count on the generosity of other drivers.

Cars on the interstate either moved over to the left-hand lane when somebody was entering or slowed down to let the merger in.

Not today.

Most of the time, the incoming cars either hit the gas and zoom in front of you or they go too slow, causing the impatient drivers behind them to swerve around the slow vehicle and cut in front of you.

I can grumble all I want, but there’s no getting around the importance of vehicles in a Texan’s life. Our cars aren’t simply gas guzzlers to take us from Place A to Place B. They’re our home away from home.

We talk on the phone in our cars, check our email while at red lights, send text messages when we shouldn’t and some of us eat most of our meals in the car.

 We have family meetings in the mini-van on the way to soccer or baseball practice, and we hold Bluetooth phone meetings on the commute home.

We usually don’t mind spending that much time in our vehicles because they’re pretty comfortable – leather seats, air conditioning and sound systems that resemble Carnegie Hall.

Even better, today’s car is smart. In fact, it’s smarter than most people.

Your car knows the temperature inside and outside, when the engine’s about to overheat and the tire pressure on all four tires at all times.

Your vehicle will nag incessantly if you leave the keys in the ignition, the oil’s too low or if you left the headlights on. Better yet, the car just turns those off for you.

But some driving skills never go out of style – pay attention to what’s around you, courtesy goes a long way and always check the rear-view mirror.

And most of all, when you merge into traffic on I-10 or Highway 59, may the Force be with you.

 This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

School starts in about a week for most of our youngsters. Even though I don’t have any young ones at home, I remember the excitement as summer wound down, knowing they’d be in school all day long.

Because I’m no longer up at 6 a.m. fixing school lunches, running frantically down the street in my slippers with a forgotten lunch box or searching for a non-existent blue and red pencil on the school supply list, here’s some advice for parents to help make those first few weeks a little easier.

First, no matter how you approach your child’s lunch, you’ll get it wrong. Either they didn’t like what was on the cafeteria’s menu, they dropped their tray on the way to their table or they didn’t like the sandwich you packed them – even though it was their absolute favorite the day before.

Secondly, if you have boys in third grade and older, do not put notes in their lunch box. Especially notes where you sign your name with pink hearts and smiley faces.

If your child takes a lunch to school, do your kid a favor – pack some junk food so your kiddo can be the top trader at their lunch table or just enjoy a treat. Sometimes, a Little Debbie cake goes a long way toward a smooth school day.

We all have questions when they come home, and we all get the same answer – “I don’t know.” If you ask the all-encompassing “how was your day” question, you will get one of two answers – “fine” or “horrible.”

Both will leave you with more questions than answers. Does “fine” mean they made friends, had a good time at recess and their best friend remembered they were their best friend?

Or does “fine” mean “don’t ask me any more questions because school was so wretched, I can’t even talk about it.”

Worse is the “horrible” answer. If your child is talkative, you’ll have 30 minutes of complaining about everything from the stupid note you put in their lunchbox – “only babies get notes from their mom” – to how stupid the kids are, how stupid recess is and how stupid school is in general.

You can’t fix stupid so ask questions that will put a smile on your child’s face and get you an answer. How about “so who picked their nose in class today?” Trust me, you’ll get an answer to that question.

At the very least, the question will lead to a discussion of why your child should not pick their nose in class and the importance of washing their hands on a regular basis.

Some children are natural talkers. My boys liked telling me who threw up in class, who said they had to throw up in class, that they were the one who threw up in class and the teacher said she was going to throw up in class if anybody made one more throw-up remark.

Taking them to school sounds appealing. You’ll have a picture of your little darlings piling into the car with smiles on their clean faces, their hair brushed and all supplies neatly snuggled in their backpacks.

Reality is quite different. If you can get everybody into the mini-van, you won’t get out of the driveway before somebody yells that they forgot their lunch, their homework or their backpack.

As you wait for said child to run inside and get the item, you’ll notice nobody brushed their teeth or their hair. One child will probably be wearing the same clothes they wore the day before, so that child has to run in and change.

On the way to school, you’re driving as fast as you safely can, all the while giving all the children a lecture about being on time, the importance of choosing their clothes the night before and that their inability to remember things makes everybody late.

You’ll screech into the school parking lot, everybody will pile out without a backwards glance and you’ll breathe a sigh of relief. Then you’ll hit the “play” button on your iPod and listen to the entire “Hallelujah Chorus,” a smile on your harried face.

And then realize you have 180 more fun days just like this one in front of you.

 

Denise Adams’ email is dhadams1955@yahoo.com.

“Winter must be cold for those with no warm memories.”

Recently my mom and I were on the couch, sharing a blanket on a rainy night, when we came across one of our favorite movies:  “An Affair to Remember.”

We’ve seen that movie a thousand times, but we still tuned in for the last part of the film because it’s the best part. It’s when Nickie Ferrante finally figures out why Terry McKay didn’t meet him at the top of the Empire State Building.

He realizes she was too proud to tell him she couldn’t walk and she didn’t want to be with him unless she could stand on her own two feet. Today, all he’d have to do is call her cell phone or check her Facebook status to see what really happened.

Maybe that’s why my mom and I are huge fans of movies from the 1950s. Movies like “Madame X” and “Imitation of Life” were unrealistic but they made us believe that love could conquer everything.

The late Nora Ephron must’ve grown up with the same playlist as she brought “An Affair to Remember” back as a major plot in the 1993 film “Sleepless in Seattle.”

Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan play the star-crossed pair, Sam Baldwin and Annie Reed. In the movie, Annie and her friend, Becky, are obsessed with the movie. At one point, Annie and Becky mouth the dialogue along with the actors and admit they’ve watched that movie too many times.

Mom and I said the same thing as we recited, word for word, every line in the last five minutes of “An Affair to Remember.” And, just as we did 50 years ago, both of us sniffled and teared up at the end – the music swelling, Nickie hugging Terry, knowing they’d live happily ever after.

Well at least until the credits stopped rolling.

Because let’s face it – Nickie Ferrante is a painter in the movie, and we all know most artists are starving.

Terry McKay, who was hit by a car on her way to the Empire State Building resulting in her not being able to walk, somehow managed to get on that couch at the end of the movie without a wheelchair in sight.

But reality doesn’t count in the movies from the Golden Age of Hollywood. They all have beautiful people, convoluted story lines and sappy endings.

Today, people say we need darker, more realistic films that reflect the current times.

As a result, someone thinks having the most wholesome character in comic-book land, Superman, fight one of the most popular good guys in the D.C. universe, Batman, is a great idea.

For this I’m going to plunk down $9.50?  No thanks.

When I watch movies, I’m looking for inspiration or a few laughs.

And why?

Because we live in a world where people down the street turn out to be terrorists that kill innocent people and mothers shoot their beautiful teenage daughters in their front yards.

Where major airlines get shut down seemingly for no reason — conspiracy theorists can’t post their rantings fast enough — so we pile on the panic.

Pardon me if a little escapism is what some of us need from time to time.

So my winter won’t be cold. I’ll have memories of snuggling up on the couch with my mom, watching Terry console Nickie and the audience with the promise “If you can paint, I can walk. Anything can happen, don’t you think?”

I’d like to think that yes, in this crazy world, something good can certainly happen.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.