Pick A Winner
Volumes of thoughts by Great Thinkers have been published...How will thoughts of today's Great Thinkers be preserved?
My Mom's writing letter again... Some arrive with a bonus "Pick Your Own Adventure" component!
Remember letters? Those pages covered in thoughts, questions, memories set down in scribbles that most often didn’t, resemble any of those available in Word, with font sizes that, in my mother's case, flagrantly vary from 8 pt to 24 line to line, or word to word? (If yours is a post-1985 birthday, you might not…)
Writing letter fell out of favor with Mom, too, for scores of years, as did a lot of things… (Who knows, she might start some of those “other things” back up again, too... Let’s not think of the ramifications and implications of that, now.)
For purposes of this post, let’s return to Mom’s letters. She started sending them shortly after she started reading the Reno Gazette. I won’t say she started reading the newspaper “again” because I can’t recall my mother ever before reading a newspaper, or watching the news. Not since Walter Cronkite retired, anyway. (If yours is a post-1985 birthday, you might not be familiar with Walter Cronkite. For the record, Ron Burgundy might never have been if not for him.)
Will Ferrell's Ron Burgundy came after Walter...way after!
Cronkite was the CBS Evening News Anchorman of my youth. For that matter, heaps of other pre-1985 era folks, too. For the record, he was the first “anchor of American network television's first nightly half-hour news program.” Cronkite ended his Anchorman career the way he did every night's broadcast: “And that's the way it is: Friday, March 6, 1981."
With a twist announcing he was handing over the reins: "I'll be away on assignment, and Dan Rather will be sitting in here for the next few years. Good night."
Mom’s letters arrive like happy little mailbox bursts, decorated with stickers, glitter, slogans, stars, ANYTHING that will stick to an envelope. I’m thinking they must brighten my mail carrier, Candye’s otherwise dull deliveries. (I’ll have to ask her one day.) I wonder who Candye thinks is sending the letters? (Reading other people's mail is a Federal Offence, so legally she shouldn't be reading beyond the address.)
Mom was sending Family History Letters. She wanted to record all about our ancestors before she died. She dedicated each letter to one family member, or decade, or event—as the mood struck her. She made copies of these memoirs and mail them to everyone in our immediate family and a few cousins and friends.
After a few months, we ran out of family history or mom ran out of memories, whichever. All I know is one day the history letters stopped and notes with magazine and newspaper clippings started.
After those drear Family History Letters, Mom’s Notes with Clippings come as a welcome relief. Now that she’s a subscriber, Mom reads the newspaper every day cover-to-cover and while doing so, clips out articles of interest and mails them to us. For grandson Bennett, she cuts out articles and photos of animals. For me, recipes she’d like to eat, beauty tips she’d like me to try (sparkle eye shadow, pants with peek-a-boo legs), human-interest aka photos of “new citizens” being sworn in dressed as hot dogs, and horoscopes.
Always her and my horoscopes: Virgo & Leo.
Receiving out-of-date horoscopes irritated me no end. Why?
- What good is reading out-of-date advice?
- Often, Mom cut off the Sun Sign so I didn’t know whose it was—Virgo or Leo or?
- Sometimes she cut off part of the horoscope—perhaps the important part…
Yesterday’s mail brought this horoscope--again with the date cut off:
“Leo (July 23-Aug 22). You’ll get the wonderful feeling that you’re in the right place and right on time, too.”
As I read that horoscope, it dawned on me that there was no “By accident” about it. Mom knows exactly what she's doing when she cuts off the dates. I called to confirm. Her response:
“Keep the good ones and throw away the bad. After all, who needs bad advice!”
I’m thinking she’s onto something. After all, who says, just because history or horoscopes are written one way, we can’t rewrite it?
How about you? Ready to choose your own horoscope?
And that’s the way it is…or can be!
