Category Archives: Humorous Column

December 28, 2016 · 1:24 am

Life’s Sinful Pleasures

Today was a good day, I spent part of it watching a Blue Bloods marathon, another part organizing the cans in my cupboard and then there was the part where I ate…whatever I wanted….whenever I wanted.I got started on this train of thought when I read about the group that is encouraging people to talk about little weird things that they like…kind of a reverse little things that annoy you. So, I began thinking about all the weird little things that others might find annoying, but that I really like. I’ve got a few.

For instance, I love cheese. I know, I know, you’re not supposed to eat cheese, but I’ve never been able to walk by a block of cheese in the stores and it’s even worse when it’s in one of those round cylinders. The truth is, though, that I don’t just like cheese, which is bad enough for you. I love to eat cheese with Lays potato chips. Frequently, I can be found taking a bite of cheese and then a potato chip, luxuriating in the heavy dairy and heavy salt mix. I’m reminded of Mrs. Potato Head, who hides in her pantry to indulge her secret (and cannibalistic for her) pleasure. I don’t eat my cheese and chips in a closet, but I have been known to eat them crouched behind the kitchen counter so no one can see me from the windows.

Another of my weird enjoyments is the plastic bubble wrap that comes in packages. I LOVE to pop those little pockets of air and listen to the sound they make. My saddest day so far is when they began using those plastic wraps with the giant pillows of air. They are difficult to pop and not nearly as satisfying. Now, people may like popping lots of them at once, but not me, I like things to drag out longer, so I’m very meticulous about popping a row at a time and I’m not very happy if someone had popped some for me.

Now, when I’m popping these plastic wraps and eating my chips and cheese, I love to watch Blue Bloods. I watch marathons of the show on cable channels or on my own DVDs (yes, I’ve collected all seasons). I don’t watch it because of the exciting drama or the fact that Donny Wahlberg can outrun any criminal. I watch it for the family dinners. Those family dinners have more drama than a night on Broadway and I love it! Once the family dinner is over, I’m really not that interested in how they solve the current legal problem, I’m just bummed that Sunday dinner is done. (They have some fabulous meals as well.)

Another weird thing I enjoy is the fact that on Facebook, they are always putting out a math problem or a visual problem or a grammar or vocabulary problem on the timeline. I am addicted to these: I work like anything to make sure I come up with the right answer and it drives me crazy that they frequently don’t give the answers. It’s like asking someone to marry you, but never coming up with an answer. Answer provided or not, I can’t resist taking the quizzes, so I hope they keep them coming.

So now I ‘ve talked about some of the weird little things that not only don’t make me crazy, but that I truly enjoy. So I suppose you’re wondering why I mentioned arranging cans in the cupboard. Well, that’s another weird thing I enjoy: making statements like that to make people think I am somehow uncontrollably neat when I’m actually uncontrollably sloppy! Have a happy week, folks, I’m off to eat some cheese and chips!

 

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December 12, 2016 · 4:48 pm

The Little Joys of Winter

 

I’ve given this a lot of thought lately and I’ve decided that when God thought about punishment for bad behavior, that is when he thought up winter. And lately, I’ve been leading a pretty sinful life apparently, because all of the joys of winter are upon us!

I don’t want to say that I’m sick of snow already, but…okay, I’ll say it: I’m sick of snow already! It’s bad enough when it snows and then the sun shines, but when you go through days and days of continual flakes flying and just enough to mess up the roads—heaven forbid we should get a snow day or something—it becomes a showy snowjob!

I hate shoveling more than anything. I can bundle up all I want, and something always freezes before I have transferred the layer of snow on the sidewalk into a pile on the lawn. Usually, I have my chest wrapped in fourteen sweaters and my neck and shoulders are sweltering in the scarves and I am wearing, but I have never figured out how to keep breezes out. There is always a trickle of cold air sliding up one sleeve or snaking around one cold ankle and up the pantleg. Then there are my hands, which are either warm and stiff  in enough layers of gloves, or cold because I need to move my fingers to shovel.

The worst part has happened since I got glasses. If I wrap myself up well, I am always blowing warm breath on my glasses and eventually, I have such a layer of ice on the lenses that I can see better if I take them off! If I avoid wrapping my face so tight, they do their ice-over routine in the house. In desperation, I went out shoveling one time without them and ended up shoveling a nice, crooked path across the lawn!

Winter diseases have struck as well. If someone isn’t coughing up a lung in line behind me, someone manages to throw up during a noon-day lunch. These diseases are so friendly, they always want to spread their germs around! It’s inevitable that about the time the first cold weather strikes I get the cold that just won’t end and of course, like a good wife, I share it with Roy. After a while we are both popping Vitamin C like drug dealers and the evenings are full of so much coughing we sound like a chorus for some weird, hacking opera. Take my advice, don’t buy tickets for a performance!

In our house, winter is also the season when things fail. The rule is that the colder and the darker it is, the more likely it is that something will fail. Now, I can’t even begin to tell you all the joys of having a sewer pump go out, but I can tell you that  I have never had to help change one in the summer. The two I have been involved in replacing were both done on a late, cold January night, when we were attempting to keep the sewer from backing up into the basement.

There’s also the time when I froze my coat to the roof while trying to pour water into a vent to open it up. Beyond that the things most likely to fail are garage doors when a blizzard is blowing and you have to get out of the car to drag the door open, the snowblower, when the snow is piled up hip high or best of all, the furnace, when the weather has turned to subzero highs. All of these are joyous memories of winter and I wish I thought that those kinds of memories were behind me, but I don’t like the sound of the heaters in the basement and the doorbell has chosen this opportune season to retire.

Now, I know that you are all going to tell me that you don’t enjoy these winter weather blues any more than I do, but I know that someone out there must have truly misbehaved to get us to these snowy and really cold days. So as I wrap myself in three blankets and pop cough drops like peanuts, I would like to ask all of you: can’t we  just behave ourselves? Then maybe God will bring spring on earlier this year!

© Jackie Wells-Fauth and Drops In the Well, 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Jackie Wells-Fauth and Drops In The Well with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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December 5, 2016 · 2:20 pm

Up on the housetop, reindeer pause; out jumps good old…Santa Cat?

It’s that time of year, folks. The time of year when I must enter the annual battle between the pets in the house and the Christmas decorations. Anyone who has pets knows exactly what I’m talking about here. Animals, who lay on, crawl through or knock over any Christmas decoration that impedes their path and owners who pull out their hair as they try to rescue the bulbs, lights, statuary, greenery, ect. which hit the deck under furry paws.
I never worried about this in the days BDC (Before Dogs and Cats.) But it began with our first housedog, Patch, who was fascinated by the Christmas tree. She would shove her doggy nose against the bulbs and she apparently didn’t like what she saw because she would bite those glass Christmas bulbs until they popped and glass scattered everywhere. I would hear a glass ball explode and race to the living room in time to see her delicately spitting the shards out of her teeth.

“You’re gonna die if that stuff gets in your innards,” I would threaten, but she was unaffected. She would simply turn back to the tree, selecting her next victim. She is the reason I learned to put the stuff on the bottom that I really didn’t care about.

The next dog we got, Ammie, was much more interested in the texture of the artificial tree. For some reason, she felt the most inward portions of the tree were best, so I would have the thrill of walking into the living room and watching the tree doing a crazy, drunken dance because Ammie was under it, chewing on the under branches.

Our current dog has continued the Christmas “dance with disaster.” She is particularly fascinated with anything wooden (those ornaments are now at the top). In addition, flashing colored lights have a bad effect on her. She barked non-stop for the first two weeks after I hung the flashing lights in the window last Christmas and then she solved the problem by chewing the whole string in half. I told her that if there was any justice, her eyes would have lit up like the Christmas lights, but apparently, there is no justice for this, because she survived her electrical Russian roulette.

Cats are much more likely to climb the tree, but in my house, they quickly decide that the Christmas scarf under it is their own private bed. Hosmer, the cat we have now, cannot be stopped. I’ve put things in front of the tree and presents where she wants to lie. She merely cleans things out and lays there anyway. She also likes the nativity barn and has never heard that there was no room at the inn, because she has been known to push out the Christ child so she can lay inside. 

Gifts are another issue, since I have learned not to put them under the tree. The cats will claw anything soft open. I awoke one morning to see the cat peacefully sleeping on a pillow I had handmade for my mother, the shreds of the paper wrapping surrounding her on the floor. The dog was even worse, since one year I awoke to find a half dozen presents torn open and a box of chocolates (which had been wrapped in plastic as well as wrapping paper, open and gone. She had smelled the candy and torn through the gifts until she found it. I suppose I could consider myself fortunate that she found it after destroying only half a dozen gifts!

Any hopes that I had that this year would be calmer have been destroyed already. The cat has succeeded in crawling over a line of ceramic Old World Santas to take up her regular abode under the tree and the dog has already knocked over the large ceramic camel and two wise men in my nativity set. A star appeared in the east and the wise men came, but they reckoned without the giant dog who knocked over their camels and sat on the Christ child! Everyone have fun putting up your decorations and have a joyous season!

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October 24, 2016 · 6:40 pm

I miss my commercials…

If anyone is looking for me, I’ll be hanging out in a closet at the back of my house. It’s not a large closet…in fact, it’s small and dark. But it’s quiet and I don’t have to listen to any more political backlash.

I really don’t mind avoiding politics, but I do miss my commercials. After all, if I don’t watch all the non-stop commercials, how will I know how to live?

Roy comes to check on me occasionally, and although he’s concerned about me, I know he doesn’t really understand.

“There’s a debate going on tonight,” he tells me. “Don’t you want to watch?”

“No,” I answer quickly, “But be certain to tell me about the commercials.”

“The commercials?” he was truly puzzled. “What do you need them for?”

“How can I decide what car insurance to buy? How can I determine the best way to determine if my teeth are white enough?” I felt a little frantic, sitting there in that tiny dark space.

“I wasn’t aware that the whiteness of your teeth was keeping you up nights,” he said dryly.

“It isn’t just that,” it frustrates me when he doesn’t understand. “ How will I know which pills to take for my ailments? What about my shoes? Coat? Cool sunglasses? I can’t decide which ones to get unless I have my commercials and I feel like I’m in withdrawal.”

“Then come out and watch your commercials,” Roy withdrew his head from the closet and prepared to leave.

“I can’t do that! If I come out to watch my commercials, I”ll have to listen to all the political stuff and I just can’t stand that…and I don’t know which tranquilizer will be the best. Oh, this is really terrible!”

I buried my distraught face in my kleenix, but I don’t know if this brand is still the softest and best, so that was pretty upsetting as well.

Roy really does try to be encouraging, “If you hear some political programming, you might learn about the issues.”

“Someone is actually talking about the issues?” I asked incredulously, “When did that start?”

I spent some more time in that dark closet worrying about which restaurant will allow me to have the laughing best time and which cereal will give me the best start to the day. I thought a lot about air fresheners (it was stuffy in the closet), and I wasn’t at all confident about which energy system would save me the most money. And worst of all, what if I needed a new vehicle (while sitting in the tiny closet)…where would I go and what would I buy????

Still, I will stay in my closet. It may not be the best solution, but I can’t handle the so-called, “election process” and I think bipartisan cooperation may be something we will only see today in the history books.

The closer we get to the election, the more vicious and unreasoning it becomes; I have irrefutable proof of this. While I was sitting in the closet worrying about how I would use the best bleach and how I would vacuum my rugs (the one I was sitting on was kind of dirty), Roy suddenly opened the door again.

“I don’t want to come out of the closet,” I screeched at him.

“I didn’t come for that,” he answered quietly.

“Then what?” I was truly puzzled.

“I just watched the last debate,” he answered grimly.

“And?”

“And, I want you to move over; I’m with you now.”

Golly, I really hope my teeth are white enough for this up-close contact, but on the other hand, the closet is pretty dark.

I hope you all survive the election season!

 

© Jackie Wells-Fauth and Drops In the Well, 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Jackie Wells-Fauth and Drops In The Well with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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October 10, 2016 · 12:38 pm

Skol Vikings!  Let’s Lose the Beer!

I love a good road trip. And a road trip so Roy can watch the Vikings play in their brand-new stadium? Why not? It would be fun!

Our road trip required that we get to the Minneapolis area the night before, so we’d have plenty of time at the stadium. So, we got pretty much the last motel room in Chaska on the outskirts of the city. We got our key and checked out our room…and sat down on the bed…and lifted the covers to check out the slab of marble that had to be what it was made of, it was so hard.

A quick visit with the desk clerk wasn’t helpful:

Me: Could we get a room with a mattress and a box springs instead of two box springs?

Clerk: Are you trying to infer that the bed is hard?

Me: No, I’m saying right out that this bed is so hard, Goldilocks would have sued for back injuries!

Clerk: If you are dissatisfied, you are welcome to vacate the room.

Of course, he knew that every hotel in the area (including his by that time) was sporting a no vacancy sign. There was no help for it…we had no choice but to stay with a bed that had all the comfort of a metal table in a morgue. About five o’clock a.m., after tossing and turning for a while, I finally decided to sit up in the overstuffed chair in the room. It was apparently overbalanced as well, and I immediately went over backwards in the chair, hitting my head on the wall with the required swear words along with it. Roy sat straight up in the bed, hollering, “What the …..” He wasn’t too upset however, or he was just too asleep to react, because while I struggled to get out of the overturned chair, he fell back asleep!

I left the hotel, bent over from a serious “bed-back,” and headed out to the game, fortified with a great breakfast consisting of a banana! We got to downtown Minneapolis and then searched for a place to park. The closer the parking space was to the stadium, the more it cost, so we finally found a parking lot charging only $15, compared to $25 or $30 by those with geographic advantage. Our lower price parking was offset by the fact that we walked for half an hour to get to the stadium.

But what a stadium! It was amazing with the huge doors standing wide and music playing and souvenirs being hawked. As we headed inside, I was thrilled to see that at 9:30 a.m., the hawkers were standing in the entrances to the stadium trying their best to sell the people coming in some beer. Even more disturbing is that they were succeeding.

Now I don’t mind if a person wants to enjoy a beer, but at 9:30 in the morning? Really? And of course, the person who was buying and consuming the most ended up right behind me…as usual. He courted disaster by taunting fans from the other team with comments about their looks and actions. He screamed so loud in my ears that I am still not hearing entirely right, but I know I’ll hear him yelling, “Come on, ref, throw a “f……” flag once willya?”

He was pretty well greased when he got to his seat, but he continued to buy beers from the vendors coming around. They came around with beer three times as often as any other (non-intoxicating) refreshment. I know the beer was cold because what he missed guzzling down, he spilled on my arms and neck and spit on me as he was screaming at the game. After he left permanently in the fourth quarter, I discovered that my coat pocket (with my camera in it) had been soaked at some point with beer as well, no doubt courtesy of my inebriated friend.

It really was a very nice road trip, and a great game in spite of hard beds and too much beer. Fortunately, my camera survived its alcoholic sponge bath, but I have to ask the venders at US Bank Stadium if maybe, in the future they could sell hotdogs, soda and water and maybe some peanuts and just lose the beer?

© Jackie Wells-Fauth and Drops In the Well, 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Jackie Wells-Fauth and Drops In The Well with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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October 3, 2016 · 5:21 pm

Hey waiter, there’s a fly in my mouth!

I rarely get angry letters from parents, thank goodness, but I remember the October I got a note from a rather puzzled mother regarding her child’s clothing.

“Dear Mrs. Fauth: My little Suzie (not really her name) came home yesterday with some nasty brown stains on her clothes and a preposterous story about how you spit on her. I know that this can’t be true, however, because even if you chewed tobacco, you wouldn’t be doing so at school…right? Signed, Susie’s Mother.”

“Dear Suzie’s Mother:” (I replied) “I fear that little Suzie is in fact telling you the truth, but rest assured, I wasn’t chewing tobacco in school. I actually blame the whole thing on the fall weather. Allow me to explain by telling you a story:

It seems that since the weather has been cooling off, my resident annoying fly, Horace, has invited a few of his less housebroken friends into my classroom. The other morning, in this environment, I set down my morning coffee to walk around the room helping students with assignments.

I did not see Horace crawl into my cup, where he evidently noticed a friend of his already taking a dip in my fresh coffee. “Hey, Clyde, “ he whispered, “Get out of there! We aren’t allowed to use the coffee pool, especially first thing in the morning. Come on! She’ll catch us.”

“But it’s so warm!” Clyde insisted, fluttering his wings. “You should try it.”

“Oh, alright,” Horace gave in to temptation and glancing over his shoulder to where I was across the room, he added as he crawled in, “But watch for her to come back, so we can get out in time.”

Well, Suzie’s Mother, they got pretty comfortable in my coffee cup (some might say they drowned in the sensation), and I suddenly remember that I had a cup of coffee on my desk. I grabbed it without looking, and it was while I was on my way over to help little Suzie, that I took a sip….and felt a couple of small lumps pass my lips into my mouth…and realized immediately what Horace and Clyde had done.

It was at this point, Suzie’s Mother, that you can picture what happened. I needed to get two flies out of my mouth at once and since they were in a mouthful of coffee, I was forced to expel the whole works without time for consideration, shooting the flies across the room at a speed they never achieved on their own and spraying coffee all over poor little Suzie.

I have no doubt that Suzie was startled by the brown spray that hit her, but she could not have been surprised to learn that flies were the culprits. They have been swarming in my room like the carcass of a rotting dead water buffalo was lying in there. I have killed and killed and killed these slow, lazy flies until my room resembles an insect burial ground and still more keep showing up through whatever portal Horace opened for them.

I will, of course, pay for the cleaning of little Suzie’s clothes, but I would suggest that we wait to do that until all the flies around here have gone to whatever they call a happy hunting ground, because until they do, I fear there could be another coffee spewing incident and I can’t guarantee Suzie will not be in the line of fire. Perhaps she would like to wear her raincoat to my class? Sincerely, Mrs. Fauth”

May all of you out there survive the “fly season” with grace. And for any funny guys who would like to gross me out by asking what fly tastes like, I will be happy to share the experience with you by adding a few of Horace’s friends to your morning brew! Happy week!

© Jackie Wells-Fauth and Drops In the Well, 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Jackie Wells-Fauth and Drops In The Well with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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September 19, 2016 · 9:56 pm

A little bit of a cough…

“I’ve got a little bit of a cough,” I have heard that before. Someone  says, “I’ve got a little bit of a cough,” and then they proceed to sneeze, cough, and drip all over you.

When I was young, I used to think, “It’s a little bit of a cough, I can tough it out.” It never occurred to me that while I was being tough and brave and going to work, that I was also exposing all the people who had to come into contact with my “little bit of a cough,” and would then be infected.

Now, it’s happening to me in the opposite case. “I’ve got a little bit of a cough, but I really want to have a practice.” More than one student told me that this week, and I went ahead and let them practice…and cough…and sneeze…all over! Now, I’ve got the disease and it’s more than a little cough, I can tell you!

I began to get the runny eyes and nose, the scratchy throat and the congestion within hours of ending the practice with ill performers. I have spent my weekend sleeping, coughing, and then sleeping some more. I went out into the beautiful weather once but it was too much for my light-headed brain, so my entire walk was a stride out the door and a U-turn right back inside. So much for enjoying the great outdoors when you have a little bit of a cough.

I sent my husband to his mother’s for the day on the worst day of my symptoms. I figured he would enjoy her company and her cooking and he wouldn’t be in danger of getting my “little bit of a cough” from all the germs I might drip all over the phone, sinks, toilet, etc.

The question now is, how much of a “little cough” should I have before I don’t go to school and disease all over my students? I always agonize over this. As I already said, I used to just tough it through, but I’m not so quick to take my germs to work anymore. So I agonize: how sick is too sick to be exposed to other people?

I’ve seen all the commercials about pills you can take that will make it so that you don’t look like you have a cold or you don’t feel like you have the flu, but I wonder if those are a good idea. Won’t it take longer to recover if you just keep powering through, hyped up on some symptom-covering drugs?

I’m sure I’ll figure it out, but maybe not until the over-the-counter medication wears off. But for now, I’m going to go to bed and hope that tomorrow morning will mean I’m ready to go to work. However, if I wake up and I’ve been dreaming about meeting and falling in love with a deer and going off to live happily together in the woods…I’ll know that I still have some recovery left to do and my “little bit of a cough is not yet done!”

Have a healthy week everyone and I hope I haven’t breathed too many germs on you!

 

© Jackie Wells-Fauth and Drops In the Well, 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Jackie Wells-Fauth and Drops In The Well with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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September 13, 2016 · 3:36 pm

It’s that time of year again; everybody hide

No, I’m not talking about hunting, or even referring to school days. The time of year I mean is professional football time. That’s right, folks, those millionaire goal-post runners are at it again and that means life at our house becomes much more complicated. I have to somehow figure out how to live with the constant din of football games in my ears for at least three days a week and Roy has to figure out why, when he’s shouting excellent advice at them, the Vikings don’t do a better job for him.

It’s not that I am unfamiliar with the Vikings…my father is also a die-hard Vikings fan; but I found out what real Viking-mania was all about when I got married. Sundays at our house are a screaming good time with the Vikings at the center of the maelstrom.

No one is safe. The dog is personally terrified when the screaming, yelling, jumping out of the chair and agitated pacing begins each week. She has become so traumatized that I think all I’d have to do is show her the color purple and she would immediately slink downstairs with her tale between her legs.

If only the Vikings would cooperate, but they have this terrible tendency to do what they think is right, which many times clashes with Roy wants them to do.

“No, no! Don’t run the ball through that line,” he will scream, holding his head and moaning. “You need to pass, can’t you just pass the ball, for pete’s sake?”

I have learned to make myself scarce during these traumatic Sunday events. There’s always laundry to do or cleaning in some other room to take care of. Unfortunately, I’m all he’s got to vent his game day hysteria on.

“Jackie, you’ve got to see this! You won’t believe it! They’re gonna show it on replay; hurry up or you’ll miss it!”

So, I run in from wherever I was hiding and watch a football play involving some men with a football, running down a field and eventually—falling down.

“Do you believe that?” he will exclaim in the voice of a man whose frustration is vindicated.

There is only one response  in these situations. I put a properly sorrowful expression on my face and shake my head slowly and deliberately to indicate my inability to comprehend such a stupid play. That’s if he looks and sounds angry or disgusted.

Now, if he sounds happy and excited (not usually), then I clap my hands and say, “Wonderful!” in the same voice I would use if my grandson voluntarily used the potty.

The Vikings won on this particular Sunday, so all is sweetness and light at our house. The dog is upstairs, happily hanging out with Roy and I am able to read a book in relative peace, except for the times I must listen to another rave about something the Vikings did right, but “could have done better.” I wear my practiced, “oh that’s serious and you are so right,” expression for this conversation and all is good.

Vikings, if you could manage to get Roy a contact into your games, so he could call the plays and you would do them right, I would be very grateful. I’m not alone in this request, either. I had a friend at work the other day say, “It’s pretty loud and obnoxious at my house when the Vikings are on. It’s really kind of embarrassing when the windows are open.”

I replied tiredly, “I feel your pain. Just shut the windows and keep reminding yourself that you are not alone. Also, touchdowns are good things!”

 

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September 6, 2016 · 2:11 pm

No room at the inn…

It was a strange bathroom. I groped my way inside the extremely tiny space and found the toilet. I made the mistake of sitting down before I reached over and turned on the light switch. And found a bug….no two bugs…no three bugs on the floor. Of course, the third bug might not count because he was dead.

It doesn’t happen very often because Roy and I are both paranoid about making sure we have good motel rooms when we travel, but occasionally, we get stymied. We decided on the spur of the moment to take a little trip over the weekend. Except, it was Labor Day weekend and we soon discovered that EVERYBODY books rooms over the long Labor Day weekend and we were just a little late. Like Mary and Joseph, we discovered there was no room at the inn…at least, any of the inns we normally frequent.

At last, however, in a small town outside of the immediate area of our destination, we were able to book a room at one of those non-chain, smaller venues. It was alright, though, because when we got to the motel, there was a long line of people also checking in. Must be a great place, right? Except we soon discovered in talking to people in line that we were about the only ones who had made any kind of reservation. The rest of them were traveling impromptu as well and were stopping here as a last resort, hoping for an open room. We were all standing in line praying for a good experience.

The girl at the counter spoke so softly that even those of us not hearing impaired had to hang over the counter to hear her. The fellow working with her made up for that however. He indicated that he was ready for the next customer by pounding on the counter and bellowing, “Next!” We all jumped and flinched like frightened recruits on Army induction day.

It was finally our turn and when we had filled out the necessary paperwork with the soft-spoken girl, the loud drill sergeant reached into a box behind him and handed Roy an unusual, metal-looking object.

“What is that?” I asked Roy as we left the office.

“It’s a key,” he answered, wonder in his voice.

“That didn’t look like a key card to me,” I said skeptically.

“It’s not a key card; it’s an actual KEY,” he said and held it up, glinting in the late afternoon sun. Now, it’s not that I like those key cards; it’s just that they suggest a little bit more up-to-date facilities than the old-fashioned keys. However, beggars quite definitely can’t be choosers.

As we walked down the hall, we passed a table containing a coffee pot and some individually packaged, dry-looking granola bars. I indicated the table with a jerk of my head as I told Roy, “If that’s the continental breakfast, we’re going to need to find a Perkins somewhere instead, tomorrow morning.”  It was and we did.

We unlocked the door of our room with the actual KEY and were cautiously surprised to find a fairly modern looking room before us. Of course, it packed two beds, a night table and a luggage rack in a mighty small space, but by using the sink as a desk for our computer, phone and camera to recharge on, it worked pretty well. I was feeling pretty good about it until I went into the bathroom and encountered the refuge from Raid convention.

“There’s a bug in here,” I called to Roy, “in fact, there’s several.”

“Well, kill them,” he returned, “I’m busy with a couple of wall crawlers out here.” His shoe hit the wall for emphasis and I knew we were one cricket less.

I returned to the main room when I had finished the bug stomping party in the bathroom. “I’d like to sit on these extremely hard beds and watch some television, but I see there isn’t a television.”

“Look up,” he replied and sure enough, there was a nice, not flat-screened television, hanging from a holder on the wall.  “Which of the three stations it gets would you like to watch?”

We made it through the night and we reminded ourselves a number of times that we had been lucky to get the room at this place, or we would have been forced to spend the night in our car, so when we thought about it that way, it didn’t seem so bad. However, the next time this Mary and Joseph go traveling, they are going to be sure they have booked their accommodations far in advance!

 

 

© Jackie Wells-Fauth and Drops In the Well, 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Jackie Wells-Fauth and Drops In The Well with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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August 29, 2016 · 7:14 pm

School Communication in the New Year..

We’ve all been through it. The child comes to school and says to the teacher, “So, what are we doin’ today? Nothin’, right?” The teacher then spends at least an hour demonstrating that instead of “doin’ nothin’” as the student wishes, they will indeed study Shakepeare, hone their writing skills and improve their vocabulary—for instance, ‘nothing’ instead of ‘nothin’.

The child will then return home to the eager parent, who is hoping for a good educational experience for their child and the parent will ask, “So, what did you do in school today?” The child’s inevitable reply? “Nothin’.”

Another school year has begun and speaking as a person who has been on the parent and the teacher side, I can tell you that despite all the efforts of parents and teachers, there is a serious communication gap, because the channel used for communication between parents and teachers is a child. I would love to be able to clear some of this communication problem, but, unfortunately, we are still, to this day,  using the child as a communication tool.

“Mom, my teacher said we will have an overnight campout and make whores.” A mother, not sure whether to laugh or cry, told me this story once. When the mother, slightly alarmed, finally contacted the teacher, she discovered that her 7-year-old child had replaced “sm” with “wh” as she described what they would make at the camp.

It always makes me wonder what messages go home from my classroom. When I tell students my usual grammar jokes, do they go home and tell their parents the teacher didn’t teach them, she just did a stand-up routine? And judging from their faces in the classroom, I’m guessing they don’t say I did a funny stand-up routine, either.

High school students are as likely as elementary children to get the wrong message across. “My teacher took a picture of me in journalism class,” a student reported to a friend of mine one day.

“Really?” the mother was busy preparing supper. “What were you doing that she took a picture of?”

“I was going to the bathroom,” the teenager returned casually.

My friend said she held off on her first impulse, which was to run to the school and demand to know why they were allowing pervert teachers to take pictures of students at the urinals. Instead, she asked some rather sharp questions of the teenager, who, alerted by her excitable attitude, was able to clear up that the teacher took a picture of him in the hallway as he was headed TO the bathroom.

Dates of special events are particularly difficult to communicate. Of course, most schools issue a public calendar so parents always know what is going on and where and when. However, students can really mess that up. “Mom, I have to be at the school on the 26th at 6:30 for the concert.”

“6:30? On the 26th? Are you sure? That’s today,” Mom then piles the child in the car, instructs them in how to change as they go and somehow manages to put two curly pony tails into the child’s hair without driving the car into a wall. They arrive at the school at 6:35 p.m. and no one is there. Why is no one there, you may ask? Because the date was actually the 29th and the child has a little trouble with 6’s and 9’s. Perhaps that’s something the teacher and the mom might work on communicating about!

I have said so many times that we teachers love our students. We hector them, we nag them, we scold them, we stretch them and challenge them and guide them. And along the way, they cease to be our students and become the children of our hearts. I love each and every one of them, but as this school year begins, I will make a deal with the parents: Do not take what the child says for the absolute facts—they may have gotten a few important things wrong. And if you do that, I’ll give you the same courtesy when they come to school and say, “My parents split up this morning,” and I find out it means you went in opposite directions to work that day!

Everyone have a great…and effectively communicated…school year!

© Jackie Wells-Fauth and Drops In the Well, 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Jackie Wells-Fauth and Drops In The Well with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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