Monthly Archives: May 2025

Jackie Wells-Fauth

We bagged a pheasant this week. And about a month ago, we tagged a deer as well. Now I know perfectly well that it’s not hunting season. Unless, that is, the wildlife is hunting us. Because our method for taking out wildlife is to use our vehicles for the kill; and if we have to sacrifice the motor vehicle, well, that’s just the chance we take.

There is no one out there right now who can honestly say they have never done this, or at best, they have narrowly missed the event. If you have driven a vehicle, you have inevitably played chicken with a deer, a coyote, a pheasant, etc. And while these encounters generally end with a deceased animal, it’s an expensive truth that the vehicle doesn’t escape unscathed either.

It doesn’t pay to take it less than seriously, either. Once, in southern Colorado, we were greeted with a flashing sign which warned: Beware of migrating animals.

I laughed and said, “What are they migrating for? And why do we need to beware of…” I got no further, as a deer leapt from the mountainous forest above us on the driver’s side of the car, slammed into our vehicle, sprinted over the top and without even stopping to apologize, galloped and tumbled down the other side, where there was a very steep slope. We didn’t even have time to ask if she was one of the migrating animals—or if she had insurance.

We spent the next half day of our vacation trying to report our encounter with Bambi’s mother, (the migrating deer) and we became acquainted with the cheerful local mechanic of the area who bent the driver’s door out enough so we could open and shut it and artistically duct taped our fender together. So much for the natural course of nature!

Sometimes, I will see a deer standing on the side of the road as I approach and I know it’s thinking, “Let’s see now, just how close can she get before I dash out and challenge her right to the road. If I can make her slam on the brakes without getting myself killed in the process, all my buddies watching from the ditch will think I’m the baddest deer on the prairie.”

Our latest encounter with the baddest deer on the prairie resulted in the loss of a side-view mirror on our car and a loss of some hide from the deer as he made contact and then fled the scene. Whether he checked into the nearest hospital or just needed a few Bandaids and some aspirin will forever be a mystery.

And as for the pheasant, well that was sadly a fatality. The unlucky bird lost his game of chicken (pardon the expression) and we lost the windshield in our pickup. That was one pressed pheasant on the glass as we were treated to a shower of tiny, glittering glass fragments and cracks in every direction. The pheasant who made this undoubtedly memorable impression could not be found, but we were picking tiny shards of glass out of our hair, clothing, seat covers and even our mouths.

So, no wild game feed from either of our latest hunting trophies, but a lot of repair bills to get our four-wheeled hunting weapons back into shape for the next round of “who’s the roughest and toughest one on the highway?”

Drive with care folks—the next shattered windshield could be your own!

Jackie Wells-Fauth

Roy reached over to flip on a table lamp this week and grabbed nothing but air. He was a little surprised, but not a great deal. After all, it’s that time of year.

“Is the lamp going to be making a premier in a play sometime soon?” he asked.

“Two plays,” I answered. “It gets to be in both.”

That’s right, it is spring play time and in the absence of the ability to collect props from other places, I tend to have a lot of my own things making their stage debut in whatever play I have going on. This is not a new situation, as Roy has frequently gone to one of my productions and seen something walk across the stage that belongs to him.

“Now I know where my tool belt went,” he said after seeing one production. “It was on the main janitor in the piece.”

“And looking good; it should really think about a career in theater,” I said encouragingly.

“Yes, but then what would happen to the hammer, nails, screwdriver, file and tape measure that it abandoned on the tool bench? That tool belt has obligations and can’t just run off and join a traveling side show,” he replied. “I presume it will be home soon.”

Normally, that’s the intention, but he hasn’t stopped mourning the hammer (with the red handle) that he claims never returned after its performance in a spring play some years ago.

The closer we come to any production, the less he questions things missing in the house. He remembers to look before he sits down, in case his chair is on stage instead of in the living room. He never questions the fact that he can’t find his favorite mug and he knows that the chimes are missing on the porch because they are delighting a theater audience somewhere.

The opposite can also be true. It’s almost as entertaining to have him come and help me bring things home. As he was loading up the dresses in bags the other day, he protested, “These can’t belong to us. I’ve never seen them before.”

“That’s because they are hanging in my closet, not yours. They belong to our house, their use on the stage is over, so back they go, to hang, neglected and catching dust, in the closet. If you really want to feel like they belong, you are welcome to hang them in your closet.”

Not surprisingly, he didn’t take me up on that offer, but that isn’t the only thing he doesn’t seem to recognize. As we were taking down the little corner table stand, he said, “Well, I know this doesn’t go to our house; I’ve never laid eyes on it before.”

“It has been standing in the corner of the living room for the last eight years. It has a large bouquet of red flowers on the top shelf and a music box that plays regularly on the second shelf. You look straight past it to watch television every night,” I reply. He loads it in the pickup without another word.

The play season is nearly over and for Roy, it’s probably a good thing. We were enjoying supper the other night when the landline phone began to ring.

“Aren’t you going to answer it?” he asked as I continued to eat my food.

“I can’t.” I said, as the person on the other end began to leave a detailed message. “The handset isn’t here, and I can’t answer the base. I didn’t have enough phones for the telephone skits in the play so the handset is on stage.”

“Well, I suppose I can use my cell phone until the play is over,” he comforted himself.

“Speaking of your cell phone,” I replied. “We’re still short a few phones, so….”

For the sake of my marriage, play season needs to get over soon!

Jackie Wells-Fauth

I spent all the years of my teaching career in the high school. I always felt capable of teaching students who were old enough to tie their own shoes and cut up their own food.

This philosophy has not held true in my days of substituting. Sometimes, it is necessary to hire a teacher to substitute who is not—shall we say—skilled at the art of elementary education.

Every time I am in the younger grades, I am reminded of my deep admiration for elementary teachers. Their jobs are complicated in ways that high school teachers don’t face. In addition, the maturity level of their charges is much more delicate, in my opinion.

The first time I substituted in a kindergarten classroom, I lined them up to go out for recess and then took a good look. Most had coats on, but few were buttoned or zipped. Gloves and hats were not properly fixed, and some had boots on while others didn’t. High schoolers frequently don’t wear winter things at all, even on the coldest days, but any who do would not thank me for helping them button or zip up their coats and hook their boots. That recess was cut short because the teacher had to run down the line and get everyone ready. By the time we were dressed for outside, it was nearly time to come in. And of course, they needed just as much time to get out of their winter wraps!

I made a note to not sub for the kindergarteners, but then I waded right in with a second grade classroom. They had an art project the day I substituted. They were to make snowflakes from cooked spaghetti, glue and glitter. I have since seen the project properly done, but that day, I had no idea and neither did the second graders. What resulted was a bunch of limp spaghetti, tortured into shapes that looked like dark symbols of antiquity, drenched in glue and glitter. I have since become friends with the teacher, but I don’t think she has ever gotten over my lack of ability to conduct a second-grade art class.

After that, I kept my resolve for the sake of all those little ones who cry when they see a strange face at the teacher’s desk.  I accepted sub work in the high school and even the junior high and prayed that no one in a math class would ask me any questions.

That is, until recently, when I hit a new low in subbing for the younger elementary. I accepted the challenge of a half day in a first-grade room. How bad could it be? I couldn’t do that much harm in just half a day, right?

At first, it went pretty well. I read them a story and then we worked on a packet which had to do with shapes. I went about the process wrong, but veteran first graders who have spent almost the whole year adjusting to routine, will soon put you in your place. We were well on the way to successfully finishing out the day when snack time arrived.

Now, in high school, snack time is non-stop, all day long and they serve themselves. I’ve never had to worry about which snacks to serve and the beneficial qualities of any of them. But first graders understand the concept of snack very well and they are also keenly aware of what works and what doesn’t.

We spent quite some time debating the merits of bananas or Oreos or Goldfish or Fruity Pebbles bars (I didn’t know there was such a thing.) I stood there, with some of everything in my hands, drowning in the 15 opinions of 15 first graders as to what we should have. Pandemonium reigned as they shouted that they needed healthy and unhealthy snacks and that they needed a choice. I had begun to think “take it or leave it” was going to be the choice, when I was rescued by the young art teacher, who, trying to set up a lesson, shoved two things in my hands. I went around the room, serving snacks and feeling like teaching Shakespeare to seniors is a real snap, compared to snack in first grade.

The knowledge that I flunked snack was reinforced at the end of the day, when one youngster slipped a hand in mine and said quietly, “You were a good substitute…except for snack.”

Jackie Wells-Fauth

I walked into a store the other day while it was still pretty early in the morning. The doors were open and the lights were on, but  there were no customers except me, and worst of all, there was nobody at all in sight.

There was a ladder in the aisle I needed to go to and it looked like someone was interrupted while stocking shelves. It began to feel a little eerie. But, once I selected what I came in to get, and went up to the counter, I thought someone would surely appear: no, still pretty quiet, with me beginning to feel like the world had departed without leaving a forwarding address.

It was then that I began to replay all the murder mystery documentaries that I’m hooked on, in my head.

“At 9:40 am on a casual Tuesday, a local housewife walked into a small store and received the shock of her life. Calling out in the echoing silence, and walking through the deserted aisles, she heard nothing but the clapping of her own footsteps. Following some unexplainable instinct, she proceeded with pounding heart, to the back of the store where to her horror, she discovered the broken and bloodied body of the unfortunate clerk.” (Cue blood-curdling screams.)

Or, the much worse scenario, “Unnerved by the silence, she turned to flee the empty store, and was bludgeoned to death by the killer, who was still lurking in the silent aisles. (Cue sound of body hitting the floor.)

Fortunately, I had simply missed the on-duty clerk working in the store, who was nearby and she immediately came to help, so both of us ended the encounter alive and upright and certainly not the subject of a grisly documentary.

It started me thinking about my television viewing habits and how they might be affecting my wild imagination. I really do love documentaries of all kinds, but I find I also enjoy murder mysteries as well. Everything from Jessica Fletcher cleverly solving murder in the violent town of Cabot Cove, Maine, all the way to the investigative skills of Tom Barnaby who lives in Midsomer, England, undoubtedly the bloodiest district in the whole of the United Kingdom!

When I think of my fascination with these shows, I am a little bothered by the fact that I have become hardened to the idea that someone must die for these shows to work. “Oh, that woman is a real pill. She’s gonna die.” I can always pick out the victim. And that bothers me less than it should.

Probably worse is my enthusiastic attitude towards documentaries; history, ghosts and crime. It reminds me of the comedian who said, “As my marriage goes on, I find I annoy my wife more and more and she watches more and more murder documentaries. I hope the two are not connected.”

Because of this kind of television viewing (and although I do watch a lot, I don’t think Roy needs to worry) I run a lot of weird scenarios in my head. A strange sound late at night and I know there’s a ghost or a serial killer in my basement. A procession going by on the street makes me wonder how they will write this historic moment into a documentary.

Best of all, if you watch enough television, you never have to go to the doctor for diagnosis again. You just need to call them up, explain that the pharmaceutical commercials told you what disease you have and that all the doctor has to do is fill out the prescription.

Now that spring is here, perhaps I’ll get away from the television and get out and enjoy the fresh air. “At 10:30 on an ordinary Friday morning, a local woman went out for a walk. Alas, this decision would prove fatal…”