Hiding our talents away… and why?

I watched a short YouTube video of the late Etta Baker playing the Piedmont blues on an acoustic guitar. The smile never left the 85-year-old’s face as she strummed and picked at the strings.

Her hands reflected a lifetime of hard work and plucking at a guitar in her scant spare time. Late in life, she was recognized and heralded as one of the blues greats. Ms. Baker played all of her life until she passed away in 2006 at the age of 93.

Listening to her, I was swept back to the days when my youngest boy was a teenager and played an acoustic guitar constantly. I’d sit at the bottom of the stairs and listen to him play tunes over and over until he had the finger picking just right.

Today, he’s a husband and father of four. He and his wife have a busy home life that includes plenty of time with the children and tending to the barnyard animals. Throw in a day job and commute along with renovating an old farm house, and their days are packed.

The guitars that were in his hands constantly are now put to the side as parenting and home-owner responsibilities take the front burners.

I wonder how many people have musical instruments tucked away in the tops of their closets, waiting for when they tell themselves life will slow down and they can start playing again.

There’s probably hundreds of us with a half-finished project stuck in the back of the laundry room. Maybe it’s a blanket we started to crochet or box of dried-up paint and a half-painted canvas.

Eventually we forget about those projects because we don’t have time for activities that don’t get the floor mopped or earn us overtime at work.

There’s also bills to pay, grass to mow, homework to check and the dog begging for an evening walk.

We need our jobs so we can put food on the table, and that means not only buying the food but cooking it, serving it and then cleaning up afterwards.

By the time most people finish with their “have-to” list, there’s little time for the “I wanna” list.

Life, we say, gets in the way.

Where we’d once sing the entire “Rubber Soul” album in our rooms – rewinding over and over to listen to “I’m Looking Through You” at least five times in a row – we now might put some earphones on and listen to John, Paul, George and Ringo while folding clothes or loading the dishwasher.

We hide away the things that once gave us immense satisfaction and pleasure because, as an adult, there’s never a right time and there will never be enough time.

Every once in a while, though, we can think back on a time when we did have enough time and little inhibitions. I’ll admit to dancing in my room as a teenager to “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” like I was Mick Jagger on the stage.

I’d be shaking my shoulders, trying my best to master the Mick swagger, snapping my fingers and head back and forth as if the whole world was my stage.

Now the only dancing I do is if I get in the shower and the water’s too cold. But maybe it’s time to dance whenever the music’s poppin’.

As Ms. Baker got to the end of the song, I made a quiet wish that my son finds his guitar, heads out to their front porch and plays a chorus or two of “Blackbird” so his children can hear and know the musical talent that lies in the strong hands that tuck them into bed at night.

 This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

 

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Movies, TV help us explain the difficult moments

One of my favorite shows on television is “Black-Ish.” The comedy features a wealthy black family living in Los Angeles and the way they handle life with four children and quirky in-laws.

“The Cosby Show” was the first to break that 1970s “moving-on-up” stereotype with the father as a doctor and his wife as a lawyer. There was humor in the show, but seldom did the writers venture into uncomfortable subject areas like “Black-Ish” does most weeks.

A recent episode was entitled “Hope,” and it caused quite a bit of reaction from viewers. The show opens with Andre and his family watching a riot in Los Angeles after a white policeman is acquitted of shooting a young black man.

The real question the show brings up is “how do we explain bigotry and hate to our children?” In light of the bombing in Brussels this week, the question is one all of us, no matter our skin color, find ourselves asking.

Bigotry isn’t new nor is killing in a deity’s name. In many religions, like the Aztecs and the Mayans, historians have found numerous accounts of human sacrifices to the gods because people believed a human sacrifice and a good crop went hand in hand.

Time hasn’t brought enlightenment because here we are in 2016 with extremists sacrificing innocent women and children to appease some god or to fulfill some expectation of their beliefs. Thousands of us are at a loss as to how to explain these extremists’ motives.

The “Hope” episode of “Black-Ish” took this situation on with the parents coming face to face with having to explain ugly truths to their children.

Sooner or later, all parents face this dilemma, whether it’s explaining why we can’t afford new cars like other families or why a family member’s actions seem odd. The hardest is explaining death to a young child.

It was in that self-examination where I realized perhaps I didn’t believe the same things I believed when I was young, and that time and life experiences changed my naïve view of the world.

I remember taking my middle son to see “A River Runs Through It” because I wanted to see the mountains and rivers of Montana. I didn’t expect to see a story line about a son dealing with the effects his drinking would have on his family.

On the way home, my son and I talked about alcoholism, and I explained what it was like growing up in a home where a father has a problem with alcohol.

Having to explain how my father came to abuse alcohol wasn’t easy, but I found myself understanding why the more my son and I talked.

We went from what it was like to see a father drunk to how proud I was of my dad when he stopped drinking for good.

And I saw my son’s innocence slip away.

But, curiously, not in a bad way. He came to understand that all people have their faults, but they can overcome them if they are willing to walk the hard road. The talk benefitted us both and allowed us to understand human frailty a little more.

And so it was with the writers on “Black-ish” as they crafted a script that did its best to help parents explain to their children why people do bad things to others, just because of the color of their skin.

If only they could write a script explaining why people killed innocent men, women and children, all in the name of religion, then that would truly be hopeful.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

 

 

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The days of Maravich and string music

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What a picture really says

My cousin posted a picture on her Facebook page from a family reunion a few years ago. A group of us were on my Cousin Sam’s boat, ready to take a ride around Lake Charles.

The day was beautiful, the waves calm and we were all taking advantage of the reunion to catch up on each other’s’ lives.

Looking at the picture, I saw my youngest son standing in the middle of the boat surrounded by his cousins. I “shared” the picture online, but he wasn’t too happy. When Chris saw the photo, all he noticed was his thinning hair in the back.

“Thanks Mom; I didn’t think my day could get worse,” was his reply.

Truth be told, I never noticed his hair.

When I looked at the picture, I flashed back to that day and that particular boat ride. Our cousin Mike was the designated boat driver, and all afternoon, he’d been pulling a raft along the back of the boat, kids and adults having a grand time in the water.

My eldest granddaughter had fallen in love with riding on the raft and had gone on every boat ride that day, jumping on the raft every chance she got.

After much coaxing, my son convinced his 4-year-old son to ride on the raft, reassuring him he’d be right next to him. Chris rode between his two eldest children, his arms around their waists, holding them securely on the raft.

My granddaughter, who’s a bit of a daredevil just like her father and her great grandfather, tried to stand up and ended up in the water. She came up laughing, begging to go again to which Mike happily obliged.

I’m sorry that my son saw that picture and was critical of himself because that picture was a reminder of how much fun we all had that day. I was reminded of how much I enjoyed sitting next to my aunt from Florida, listening to stories of when she, my dad and my mom were young and starting their lives.

Earlier that day, I visited with my cousins, swapping stories of when we were young and comparing them to the antics of our own children and, for some of us, our grandchildren.

We were no longer the carefree Cajun cousins who spent our summers crawfishing and crabbing in the shallow waters by my uncle’s house.

Nor were we the daredevils who learned to water ski together and dared each other to suck the heads of the crawfish at loud, wonderful get togethers. We were older, some of us a bit more cautious, while some still had that limitless love of life our parents instilled in all of us.

My son’s reaction to how he looked wasn’t that far away from my reaction when I look at photos of myself. My first thought is “I need to start that diet yesterday” and a wistfulness at the older person I see in the photographs because she doesn’t reflect the way I feel on the inside.

Reading his comment and looking at the picture, I realized I need to take my own advice and stop looking at myself so critically. Instead I need to look at pictures and remember the fun we’re having and the memories we’re making, memories that last all our lives.

I hope my son goes back and looks at that photo again and can visualize the picture I have in my mind – that of a father, his strong arms around his two young children, all three basking in unabashed joy and happiness.

That’s what I see in that picture.

And, oh, so much more.

 This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

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Living life backwards, or is it frontwards?

I wore my shirt backwards all day. It wasn’t until late in the afternoon when I looked down and saw the shirt’s tag that should’ve been on my back underneath my neck.

“I’ve had my shirt on backwards all day long and nobody told me,” I said to no one in particular.

“Well none of us noticed,” someone said.

I’m not quite sure how to take that comment.

On the one hand, the baseball-style shirt had printing on the front and the back and had a rounded collar. So it could be easily worn backwards and no one would think twice.

On the other hand, maybe my friends think it would be perfectly natural for me to wear my clothes backwards.

That’s an even scarier thought.

I’ve made embarrassing clothing mistakes in the past, but I usually had my kids to blame the goof on. When the boys were young, I remember walking out of church with a big crowd.

I looked over my shoulder to say “hi” to a friend, and I noticed the seam of my sweater was on the outside instead of on the inside.

“Oh my gosh,” I told my friend. “My shirt was on inside out and nobody told me.”

She looked at me with a sympathetic glance.

“I thought you meant to wear your shirt like that,” she said, the embarrassment of having such a dumb friend evident in her eyes.

“Only crazy people wear their clothes inside out,” I snapped and then ran into the bathroom to turn my sweater right side out.

That incident stands out as much as the time I forgot to take the plastic stick-on tag off the front of a new sweater. I bought an extra-large size because I don’t like tight sweaters and, frankly, that size was the one that fit best.

I bought the sweater for a very special occasion – my eldest son was in the homecoming court for Stephen F. Austin High School, and the court was being presented to the football crowd that evening.

Nick and I walked out to the middle of the field, waiting to see if his name would be called. When they said his name as the homecoming king, I was one proud mother as dozens of cameras took pictures.

Standing on the sidelines after all the celebrating, I looked down and realized I’d never removed the plastic see-through stick-on tag with a big XL down the front of my sweater.

Maybe nobody noticed, I thought. I’d know for sure when I saw the photos our newspaper’s photographer, Russell Autrey, had taken.

I went into the newspaper office early the next morning and pounded on the dark room door, begging Russell to show me those pictures.

He pulled the image up on the screen and there, the lights reflecting on that plastic strip on the front of my sweater, were two big letters – “X” and “L.”

I fell to my knees and begged Russell to help me. Thanks to Russell’s wizardry with Photoshop, he removed the embarrassing faux pas.

I consoled myself with knowing the only ones who might have noticed the tag were my family. And maybe the homecoming court. And maybe the hundreds of people in the stands.

If there’d been a hole nearby, I’d have crawled in it and never come out.

As I turned my shirt around in the ladies room, I had to admit being oblivious to my clothes wasn’t new behavior for me.

So maybe when the guys in the white suits come to take me away, I’ll feel right at home in that straitjacket that buckles in the back.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

 

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Sometimes the journey is the most important part

A couple of years ago, my husband and I took a winter trip to Rockport with the Coastal Prairie Chapter of the Texas Master Naturalists to see the whooping cranes.

These men and women work to educate the public about the importance of protecting Texas’ natural resources.

They also work at local parks, especially Seabourne Creek Park, so residents and visitors will have a positive encounter with nature.

On the last visit, I spent the time visiting historical sites. I learned a lot about the area’s background and enjoyed driving around Rockport.

This time, however, I concentrated more on the journey instead of the destination. Most of our trip found us on Highway 59. They should rename this section of highway the “Smokehouse Strip” because the stretch was filled with barbecue joints.

I wish we could’ve stopped at all of them, but we decided to have lunch in Victoria. On road trips, we shy away from the chains and look for a local place to eat.

When we saw a sign advertising Ramsey’s home cooking, something told us to pull into the lot.

Ramsey’s wasn’t anything special on the outside, but the inside was like a favorite diner found in rustic Texas towns where the blue-plate special is always a sure-fire winner.

The restaurant opened in 1948 by the Ramseys. Even though there’s a new owner, he kept the name and many of the original menu items, wait staff and cooks.

There was a table of regulars in the back that seemed to know everybody who came in the door. They were friendly to us and even asked what we were thinking about ordering.

I asked about the soup, and a silver-haired lady at the table next to me suggested the special for the day. That choice sounded tempting, but I went for the cheeseburger and onion rings.

For me, those two workhorses are the hallmark of a great restaurant. It’s easy to overcook the burger and really easy to serve up a greasy pile of onion rings.

The cook did neither. My burger was juicy and cooked just right, and the onion rings were crisp and fresh. I wished I’d saved room for a slice of pie in the display case because that coconut cream confection looked to be about six inches high and was surely calling my name.

But we left, happy with our lunches and change in our pockets.

Our next stop was at the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge center. The refuge is the winter nesting grounds for whooping cranes, and thousands of people flock to this area in the chilly months to catch a glimpse of the tall birds.

We stopped in the Visitor’s Center, and friendly volunteers directed us to spots where cranes had been spotted that day.

At the two-story tall observation tower, we were able to look out over what seemed like a hundred acres of pristine marshland and waterways. People talked in quiet voices, and the sounds of birds singing and leaves rustling were the loudest sounds we heard all afternoon.

We met up with the Master Naturalists late in the afternoon near the docks in Rockport. As they compared notes on the birds they’d seen on the trip, I watched the shrimp boats come in from their day out on the gulf and marveled at the elegant ballet pelicans performed as they swooped over the waters.

Sometimes education comes from a visitor’s center or a nature book. We can also learn from taking guided tours and checking Google for the local history of a town or city.

Other times, knowledge comes from quietly watching the sun set over an endless sea, the perfect way to end a weekend journey.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

 

 

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A real gem – Virginia Scarborough

One of the perks of being a newspaper reporter is one has the opportunity to meet some pretty terrific people. A question often asked is “who’s the most famous person you’ve ever interviewed?”

For me, fame isn’t just measured by the number of times someone’s name has been in the headlines, the political office they hold or the amount of money they have.

Importance is what that person means to their community and how they spread kindness and knowledge to make their corner of the world better.

One of the most famous and most humble in our midst is Ms. Virginia Scarborough. A few years ago, I had the good fortune to interview Virginia, as she asked me to call her, for a story about the burial site of Deaf Smith. Legend had it that Smith was buried in Richmond but nobody knew exactly where he was buried.

Immediately, I wanted to track the story down. I started at the Fort Bend Museum, and a volunteer told me if I really wanted to know, I’d talk to Virginia Scarborough.

When the third person I asked about Deaf Smith told me to ask Virginia, I knew I’d better call, and she invited me to come by her home and visit.

She greeted me at the door with a smile and we sat down at her kitchen table and chatted over cookies.

Virginia believes Smith is buried somewhere in the middle of the street near the museum in downtown Richmond. She also thinks he might’ve been buried upside down, going out of the world in the same direction the Texas pioneer entered it.

I remember laughing at the way her eyes twinkled when she told the story. We also chatted about her involvement in Fort Bend County history, and I was amazed at the lengths to which Virginia went to searching for lost cemeteries.

She’s traipsed through meadows in mud boots, tracking down long-forgotten headstones. She said she once got chased out of a field by an angry bull, and she had to climb a fence in a hurry to get away from the angry bovine.

Virginia was past retirement age when she pulled off that trick.

It’s not often one comes across someone who’s thought of so highly, but after meeting Virginia, I know why. It’s not just her soft way of speaking that’s never condescending yet filled with information.

It’s not that she’s quoted in numerous history books.

It’s not even that Virginia’s family can trace their roots back to the Old 300, settlers who came to Fort Bend County with Stephen F. Austin or that a school is named after her late sister and educator, Antoinette Reading.

Perhaps it’s because Virginia’s been an instrumental source of knowledge for the Fort Bend Historical Commission and helped oversee the preservation of Morton Cemetery, the burial site of Jane Long and Mirabeau Lamar.

She has the credentials — she’s a member of the Daughters of the Confederacy, the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Daughters of the Republic of Texas.

Although those are all stellar reasons for being respected, the reason Virginia is such a treasure to Richmond and Fort Bend County is because she’s a genteel, gracious, humble and giving person whose intelligence and dedication to preserving the facts benefits all of us.

I’m extremely fortunate I’ve had the pleasure of visiting with Virginia. I hope one day she’ll invite me back and we can sit together at her kitchen table where I can once again fall under the enchantment of this gracious lady.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

 

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Where’s the center of my universe? My purse…

I can’t find my car keys.

I haven’t a clue where I left my cell phone.

And my closet looks like a tornado ripped through it.

The only solution?

Clean out my purse.

How, you may ask, does cleaning out my purse help solve any of these dilemmas?

Well I’m not sure, but whenever my life’s a wreck and out of control, the first thing I do is clean out my purse because my purse is an extension of my life.

When I was a teenager, I needed a big purse, mostly for my hair brush – which back in the 1970s was as big as a barbell. There also had to be room for three tubes of lip gloss and two packs of gum.

As a young mother, my purse took a back seat to the diaper bag. That bag was great with the first child because I thought I needed everything baby related at all times.

In that diaper bag, I carried five or six extra diapers, a big tube of diaper-rash ointment, the large container of baby wipes, blankets, an extra set of clothes and plenty of toys.

With my second child, I started relying on my purse instead of the diaper bag. I pared down to two extra diapers, wipes and an extra shirt.

By the time the youngest one came along, one extra diaper, a travel pack of wipes and three or four Matchbox cars all fit quite nicely in my purse and I ditched the diaper bag.

My purse, I discovered came in quite handy with young children. It served as a booster seat in a restaurant, a pillow for a sleepy toddler and a physical barrier between two squabbling brothers. And because I had an indestructible purse, it didn’t matter when the purse was stepped on, thrown up on, used for third base or dropped in a mud puddle.

When the boys were older and no longer in need of toys or diapers, my purse became a holding ground for a reporter’s notebook, a big cell phone – which is how they were made back in the day – at least 10 pens and my camera.

Friends would show me their expensive purses, and I’d admire their accessory but I knew I had a real keeper with my reliable, sensible purse.

More importantly than the useful duties my bag carried out, my purse reflected my mood. The first time I realized my purse and my life were related was a few years ago when I couldn’t find my checkbook.

I realized I also couldn’t find the grocery list or a paycheck stub. I put two and two together and decided to clean the bag out and see if my mood improved.

I started with the wallet and emptied all the change. I realized first off that’s why my purse was so heavy. Then I took all the receipts out and made a stack of those.

Next to come out were the empty candy wrappers, runaway Tic-Tacs and Life Saver candies and all the pens that no longer worked.

I only put back when I needed, and a sense of calm came over me. I now carried around an in-control bag.

My life couldn’t be far behind. And, maybe it’s because I tricked myself into believing that fact, but now whenever my life’s a wreck, the first thing I do is clean out my purse and my wallet.

And after a hectic and busy week, where my car keys went missing every day and a candy bar melted in the bottom of the front section, a little cleaning just might be in order.

Now if I can just find my purse…

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

 

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What we learn from our parents

I went to a local high school girls’ basketball game recently, ready to watch some friendly rivalry between two cross-city teams. Watching the athletes warming up, I wondered how they’d gone to school all day long and then had the energy to play basketball.

The stands were filled with family and friends, and I thought the game would be pretty exciting because the teams were evenly matched.

The athletes were great – some of the fans were the problem.

This isn’t my first encounter with over-the-top fans. I went to a Pee-Wee football game once to see if the league was a good fit for my youngest son. While we were watching the game, an elderly man in the stands kept yelling “Spill some blood! Spill some blood!”

Right then and there, I decided Pee-Wee football was not for us.

Most parents enroll their children in organized sports because they want them to be physically active, make friends and learn to play on a team. Then there’s others who believe their child is better than everyone else and they push and bully their child and the coaches.

They’re the ones who scream at their child from the sidelines and blame the coach and every other child on the team for any and all losses. They’re in the minority, thank goodness.

But I’m realistic and understand the enthusiasm of football fans, especially with the Super Bowl coming up. Entire cities wear their team’s colors, fly their pennants from their car antennas and wear that team’s jerseys every game day. 

Years ago, we had season tickets to the LSU football games. Charles McClendon was LSU’s coach at the time, and, like most college football coaches, people either loved him or hated him.

There was one man who sat a few rows down from us at the games, and every other play he’d yell “You couldn’t beat Bunkie,” a small Louisiana town of less than 4,000 people.

I expect college football fans to react with passion and volatility – people take their college sports, especially football, seriously. How else can you explain how grown people will walk around with a foam block of cheese on their head?

Football fans love a winner and hate a loser, and LSU fans are no different. A few months ago, rumors were flying around Baton Rouge that LSU was going to get rid of long-time head coach Les Miles.

His record over the past 11 seasons with the Tigers is 112-32, and I thought the fans admired him and were happy with his coaching.

But I found out differently – it seems Miles has trouble beating Nick Saban who was the former LSU head coach and current head football coach at the University of Alabama. Saban left LSU for “greener pastures,” and beating him is a matter of pride for the Tigers.

Did it matter that Miles had beaten Ohio State for a national title? Did it matter that Miles has four times as many wins as losses? Nope. It only mattered that he hadn’t beaten Saban enough times.

But I’m not in Tiger Stadium. I’m at a high school basketball game and most parents are cheering great plays, three-point shots and when a player returns to the bench.

But a few parents are yelling at teen photographers for blocking their view. They’re yelling at the officials, they’re yelling at the coaches and yelling at the players.

If we ever wonder why young people today know how to behave at public events and scratch our heads because others have trouble, we don’t have to look far for the answers.

They learned from their parents.

 This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

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Trying hard not to listen to the doomsday prophets

           Whenever I’m taking an interstate trip, I check the Web for closures and major traffic work along the interstate. Researching a recent trip to Louisiana, I came across an article from Red Dirt Report stating the I-10 bridge in Lake Charles is hazardous.

            This writer stated that the bridge is “very dangerous and should be closed.” The bridge’s underside was rusting away and could collapse at any moment, he stated. His advice? Take the 210-loop around the bridge and live to see another day.

            It’s hard for me to disregard a posting like that, even if I think it’s bogus. And as I approached the Lake Charles city limits, I debated which route to take. In the end, I took the 210 loop, but I felt like a wimp when I did it.

            My neighbor’s a bona-fide bridge expert, and I talked to him when I returned. He’s paid to inspect bridges, and he said the language used in these reports is technical and often misleading.

            The way comments are worded depend on the person writing the report. In his years of inspecting bridges, he’s only found two to be structurally unsound.

            I mentally slapped my forehead. I’m the person who checks on Snopes.com whenever I see some outlandish story on the Internet. From my days in the newsroom, I know to always double check the sources.

             But I still allowed that one report to sway my opinion, and it’s not the first time that’s happened. There’s one incident in my past that still causes me to cringe. When I was in high school, the local radio station reported there was going to be a trucker’s strike.

            The newscaster warned there’d be a shortage of everything – food, water and even toilet paper.

            For some reason, that last item in his report got to me. I begged my parents to make sure we stocked up on everything, especially toilet paper.

            There was no trucker’s strike, but for Christmas that year, my dad gave me a four-roll pack of toilet paper.

            Back in the 1970s, on the back of a Barbra Streisand album was a warning that we only had 10 years left. After that, we’d be shivering in the dark, our planet a used-up shell, thanks to mankind’s greed.

            My father and I had many arguments about that situation. He believed her warning was a made-up scheme by the oil companies and I believed we should heed Bab’s warning.

            Forty years later, we still have oil and Babs is still churning out albums.

            Today, National Public Radio reported on the Zika virus. This virus has been around since 1947, and a scientist on the show said it was very unlikely it would ever cause damage here in America. But the NPR folks are reporting on the virus as if the seven plagues of the pharaoh are loose in the land.

            And that’s not the only trouble we’re facing. The Democrats/Republicans are going to lead us into Armageddon, if any of them can even find their way to Washington D.C. The heavy snowfall in the north means global warming is real and the return of water to Texas means the drought is over but the mosquitoes will be back and that means West Nile Virus.

          But we can take some comfort. The bridge in Lake Charles hasn’t collapsed yet, there’s plenty of “Off” on the store shelves, and I don’t plan on going to Africa so I don’t think I’ll be exposed to the Zika virus.

           The only thing I’m worried about is catching a case of “Chicken Little” and falling for every panic story that comes along.

            But just to be on the safe side, I think I’ll stock up on toilet paper.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

 

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