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As I sat here on the bed tonight with the laptop strategically placed on a lap tray in front of me, Juniorette came in, stole some of my chocolate and got all uppity and brainy on me. “Napoleon established an authoritarian regime during the French Revolution. Could he be considered a dictator?” She then unwrapped the ill-gotten gain as if she was a member of the evil 1% living off the backs of the little people, and consumed it.
Fighting hard to hold back the spontaneous (yet voluntary) symptoms characteristic of Tourette’s Syndrome, I sought out and found an inner peace in the knowledge that there was still some chocolate left. Having found my happy place, I was then able to move into a place to ask some clarifying questions about the unexpected query about Napoleon.
“Bonaparte or Dynamite?”
She glared at me in only a manner that a teenaged girl is capable of doing, took more chocolate, and stormed out of the room. She then went and told Wifey that her husband was a freak. Wifey picked up on the fact that not only did I not answer her question adequately, but I also took the issue well out of the realm of reality. Wifey then continued the mockery.
Gosh.
In other news, I got some sad news today. A long time ago when your favorite blogger on the whole world wide web was a short, toe-headed kid in elementary school, part of his curriculum was art class. Back in the day, the school district employed an art teacher who would travel to all of the elementary schools in town and conduct hour long arts and crafts sessions to kids ranging in grade level from 1st to 6th. This usually gave our teachers a break to go fill the teacher’s lounge with aromatic plumes of smoke generated by the business end of an unfiltered Camel.
Mr. Grimes was his name. As memory serves, he was a tall man and proud of his Native American heritage. I have a vivid memory of one particular session where he had us drawing profiles of Indians. He would explain that the Indians had very distinct noses and high cheek bones. He pointed out his own features as an example.
Here’s the thing about Mr. Grimes that gave him the gravitas (as opposed to gravidas, which a whole different subject matter) among all of his students. It was his crayons. The dude’s wax was always in new, just out of the box condition. They were always sharp. The labels were intact. They were never rounded off or broken.
Anyway, Mr. Grimes passed away last fall and I just found out about it today. All things being equal, I haven’t thought about him in years. To see his name and obituary by happenstance today brought back all sorts of memories from my childhood which involved Elmer’s glue, colored construction paper, and a good set of crayons.
Kudos, Mr. Grimes.
Thanks for the inspiration.
