There’s a saying: The older I get, the smarter my father gets. I’m embarrassed to say it’s taken me nearly 60 years to figure that out. Somewhat hard-headed. Like him. For my father, being on time meant arriving early. In his mind, if you were on time, you were late. I did not inherit this gene. Even in his last days, Dad kept one eye on the clock. “They’re late,” he said on the Sunday before officially departing this life, visibly ticked off at the tardiness of death’s knell. “Those guys in the dark suits. They’re supposed to be here.” But they weren’t. Not yet. It had been a difficult…
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Spelling bees bite
I can still taste a tiny bit of barf creeping up into my throat after misspelling that stupid word in the Detroit News Spelling Bee at Goodale Elementary’s auditorium in 1971. Like Ralph and the flat tire scene in “A Christmas Story,” I said the F-word. But not aloud. A good Catholic girl, I was stoic, polite and thoroughly humiliated. The word, which will forever give me hives, was blossom. I spelled it with a U instead of the second O. Jesus God. “B-L-O-S-S-U-M.” WTH? That was it. I was toast. Take your seat, young lady. No trip to the 45th Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, for you, sister.…
