PHOTOGRAPHY CLASS

Mushrooms In My Back Yard

Ira bought me a camera for Christmas, two years ago.  It's a Canon Rebel T1i, and much too intimidating for a person like me to just take out of the box and start using it.  I'm not good with new gadgets.


In between customers, I figured out how to put it together and took a few pictures of the store.  The activity scared me for some reason.  I put the camera on a bookshelf, and it sat there until about a month ago.


I signed up for an adult education class, called, Introduction To Digital Photography.  The day the first class was to begin, I stood at the counter and worked with the buttons of the camera to remember how to turn it on and snap a picture.  It was the least I should know when I showed up to class that night.


When I got there, the room was packed with people holding their fancy cameras like a bunch of clueless big shots.  None of us had any idea how our cameras worked.


The first two classes, I sat in the back and spoke to absolutely no one, not even the teacher.  I listened to everything he had to say, and took copious notes.  This was the first time I'd heard any photography terms, like, shutter speed, aperture, ISO, depth of field, and such.  It's the same as learning a new language.  I wrote it all down with every intention to look all these things up on You Tube.


You Tube is a wonderful thing.  Everything I needed to learn was easily found there, including how to work all the buttons and knobs, on my very camera.


We were given our first homework assignment, to be done during Easter vacation.  We were told stand at a highway and take pictures of speeding cars.  We were to change the aperture and shutter speeds, or what showed up in my head, as turning the dials one notch, after each shot.  Once we've downloaded our photos, we could see how they've turned out.  Then, we were to analyze them, by taking notes of which modes the camera was on, when the shots were taken.  This way, we could get a good idea as to what our cameras can and cannot do.


I stood at the edge of my parking lot, and snapped pictures of cars going by, turning the knobs on my camera at every possible combination until I knew that I'd have enough material to bring back to class.

Man On A Motorcycle

Truck With No Wheels

Car With No Wheels

Speeding Truck

Then, there was the task of learning how to download the software that came with the camera, onto my Mac.  I'm not even good at using my new Mac, but I managed it.  From there, I had to figure out how to import the photos from my camera, to the new software.


After all of that, I had to learn how to find the photos that I'd want to print out.  Finally, I got the printer to work well enough to print out the 8 1/2 x 11 photos of my favorite shots, to show the class.


On the backs of each photo, I wrote out the combination I used to get each affect.  To get the information needed for that, I had to locate each photo on the LCD screen on the back of the camera.  It took a while to figure out how to get that info.  I couldn't find these details on the software.  I'm sure it's there's a way to find it, and maybe I'll learn how to do it some day.


I packed up my photos, and rushed out of the store.  Driving to class, I was very proud of what I'd figured out on my own.  There was so much new information in my head, that nothing was really clear to me about what I'd done.  But, it was my own invented way of learning how to start doing all of this stuff.


Walking down the hallway, and through the classroom door, I heard the teacher saying, "You know, you paid a lot of money for this class.  I can stand up here and give you verbal instruction until I'm blue in the face.  But, unless you pick up your cameras and try them out, I can't really teach you anything."  As I rushed to my desk at the back of the room, the looks on their faces told me that once again, I was the only person in the class that bothered to do my homework, just like the writing class.


We spent the next hour and a half discussing lighting, and different ways of using flashes, according to the affects the photographer would be hoping for.  The teacher looked at the clock on the wall, and said that we had thirty minutes left, and he had nothing else to say.  He asked us if anyone in the room had any questions, which no one did.


There was a woman sitting next to me with the same camera as mine.  I showed her the back of one of my photos, explaining to her how I got the effect, and showed her how to adjust the dials to do it.


The teacher came over to my desk, picked up my photos, and told the class that we were going to examine my work.  We spent the rest of the time in class, watching him hold up my photos and reading the backs of them, explaining what I did to get certain effects.  He said, "What are these little pictures you drew, here?  A tulip?  A running man?"  I said, "I don't even know the names of the symbols on the dial, yet, so I just drew them, so when I learn everything later, I'll know what I did."

Pet Country

When he held up the photo of the store, I said, "My camera was a Christmas present.  That's the first picture I've ever taken with it."  He said, "Class, what's wrong with this picture?"  A few of them said, "The snow is blue."  He went into an elaborate explanation as to how the reflection of the snow under the blue sky causes the blue affect, and how I could've done it differently to prevent that mistake.

Bee In Daffodil

Bee In Flight

Daffodils With Morning Dew Under Blue Sky

He held up the photos of daffodils -- one with a bee sitting inside it, and the other, of a bee flying around some daffodils.  The class really liked those, and asked me what mode my camera was on when I caught the bees so well.  While I was proudly explaining it, the teacher held up one of them and said, "By the way, does anyone have any comments about the composition?"  I said, "I wasn't going for composition!  I'm just trying to figure out how my camera works!  That's why I'm here."  He nodded his head, and agreed that the composition was not good.

Forsythia At The Edge Of My Driveway

As he kept going through my photos, telling the class what was wrong with each shot, and how I could've done it right, I felt that old familiar feeling come over me.  I watched the faces of the other students, who brought nothing.  They were taking what was mine, and looking for something wrong with it.  I thought to myself, 'There must be something in the water these people are drinking!  Once again, I'm the only person who's willing to do my homework, and show it to the class, and this is what I have to go through whenever I try to learn something!'  I wondered if anyone could tell how annoyed I was.


It was time to leave, and the teacher told everyone to do the homework that they were supposed to do during Easter, and bring it to the next class.  One of the women said, "Well, if you're going to pick on me the way you just did to her, I'm not bringing any of my pictures here!"


He put his hand on his heart, and said, "Well, it's just that I've been doing this for forty years, and I can tell an amateur right away.  For what she did with the limited skills she has, she did very well.  I'm going to help her become much better."

YOU GO, GIRL!

We hadn't even moved in.  There were no beds, no hot water, and there was at least a foot of snow on the ground. And yet, the most important thing in the world for Jay and Liz to do, was to bring Nick, my three year old grand son, up from Florida.  They wanted him to experience snow, for the first time.

They came with their sleeping bags, and slept upstairs.  I slept on a mattress on the living room floor.  We were to camp out like this until Ira returned from Brooklyn, the following week.

After a few days of watching them in my backyard, sliding down the hill on the little sled I bought for Nick, I was exhausted.  I told them that I was going to lie down, and take a nap.  That's when Liz decided that her son should try an indoor sport, and we should go rollerskating.

While Jay was upstairs, getting dressed, she cornered me in the kitchen, and said, "Jay feels guilty about leaving you alone and going skating.  He thinks because he only sees you about once a year, that he's obligated to sit around this house with you all week and do nothing."  I said, "I didn't say I wasn't going with you."

We went to the Roller Magic Rink in Hyde Park.   It was early afternoon, and we were going to skate during the 'kiddie session.'  Liz went ahead of us to purchase the tickets at the admissions desk. We stood waiting, with the crowd of little kids and their parents.

Standing in line brought back memories of when I was a little kid, waiting to get my skates, the way they were doing. Knowing that I was probably the oldest person in the building, I wondered where all those years went.

Liz came back, and handed Jay his ticket.  I held out my hand, waiting for her to give my ticket to me, but she didn't buy me one.  She walked towards the skate rental desk without looking back.  I felt very out of place at that moment. Knowing the game for what it was, I snapped out of it very quickly.  I turned around and went back to the admissions desk, and bought my own damned skating ticket.

When I caught up with them, they were still standing in line at the skate counter, waiting to pick up their skates.  She looked back at me, seeing the ticket in my hand, and she said, "Oh, I didn't know you wanted to skate."  When I  realized how it bothered her that I had a ticket, I knew it was going to be an interesting day!

We went to a bench to sit down and put on our skates.  She took off Nick's shoes and put the skates on his feet.  When he stood up and tried to skate, he started crying an throwing a fit.  While he was well into his tantrum, Liz took out her camera and told him to smile.  He just kept screaming that he didn't want the skates on his feet.  We put our things in a locker, and headed for the rink.  Liz handed me her camera to hold until she was ready to take more pictures of Nick.

They took off, with Nick in the middle, each holding his hands, trying to get him to warm up to the idea of trying to skate.  I found a safe area on the side of the rink, where I could hang onto the rails, and practiced skating for a while.

It had been thirty-five years since I'd skated.  I never mentioned to Jay that I'd met his father in a skating rink a few weeks after my fifteenth birthday.  It was one of those war stories that I'd buried long ago, and never allowed myself to think about.

I skated over to the cafeteria section, and noticed that there was a big crowd of at least forty people having a birthday party for a little girl.  I skated around them carefully, rolling up and down the area until my balance improved.

The thought of getting out onto the rink still intimidated me.  It looked larger than I'd remembered, and would take a lot more energy than I'd had in years.  I'd forgotten how the vibration of the rolling wheels made the soles of my feet tingle when I skated.  I'd forgotten that I had to use all the muscles in my ankles to keep my balance.  But, I was slowly getting back to who I used to be, so many years ago.

About twenty feet  away from me, the sound of Nick screaming and crying came from the video game that he was hanging onto.  I watched Liz trying to reason with him, telling him that she'd payed seven dollars to rent his skates.  She said that he could play the video game later, but he had to skate, first.  His behavior got worse, and the people at the party were staring at him, getting annoyed.  They were trying to sing 'Happy Birthday' to the little girl, and his screaming was ruining the moment.

I pointed at Nick, and said to the women nearby, "You see that kid, throwing a fit over there?  That's my wonderful grandson, and that's how his wonderful mother deals with him."  Liz saw me, and gave me a signal that she wanted to take pictures of Nick.

They watched me as I rolled over to Liz, and handed her the camera.  Then, I put some quarters into the slot of the video game, and got it going.  Nick shut up, and started playing with it.

The next thing in order, was for me to get onto the rink, and skate.  As I was passing the party crowd, I yelled to the women who were watching me, "Here goes!"  One of them yelled back, "You go, Girl!"  That was all I needed to hear!  I gushed to myself as I got out there, "She called me a girl!" Those words made me feel young, again!

There I was, rolling around the rink with about fifty little kids and their parents.  I went around the rink a few times to get the feel of the wooden floor.  Watching other people around me skate, I copied what they were doing.  As they went around the curve, they crossed the right foot over the front of the left ankle.  Then, they stepped to the left, with the left foot, and pushed with the right one, to pick up speed.  I remembered that it was the thing to do, and dared myself to do it.  I saw Liz and Jay standing at the edge of the rink. They were looking at me, like they were worried that I was going to fall down and kill myself.

Through the loud speakers, the rocking beat of the song made me forget about being scared, and I started to dance!  I began to focus on the lyrics, and tried to sing along as if I knew the words.  In between the drums and the horns, men were rapping, and screaming the words:  "GO, MUTHAH FUCKAH, GO MUTHAH FUCKAH, GO! -- GO MUCHAH FUCKAH, GO MUTHAH FUCKAH, GO!"

I thought about how inappropriate that song was, for the kiddie session, or any session in a skating rink, for that matter.  I wondered if anyone ever bothered to check the song list on the CDs, before they put them in the stereo.  I looked around to see if my grandson was listening, but he was still playing the video game.  No one else seemed to notice or care, either.  The guy in the middle of the rink, with the striped referee shirt and whistle in his mouth, the parents, and their kids, were all skating to the rhythm of the song.

As I rolled past the birthday party crowd, I heard clapping and cheering.  The women were waving at me, yelling, "Here she comes!  You go, Girl!"  I waved back at them, very excited!  I skated around, wishing I had a better song to work with, but then, again, I realized that the song fit the circumstances perfectly well.  I started singing, "GO MUTHAH FUCKAH, GO MUTHAH FUCKAH, GO!"  I spun around, did some fancy steps, skating backwards, dipping and swaying like the song was written just for me!

Every time I passed the party crowd, their cheers got louder and louder, yelling, "WHOOOOH!   Girlfriend's got it goin' on!" Flashes from Liz's camera blinded me for a few seconds, but I kept skating, hoping not to run over anyone.

Jay came out to the rink and joined me.  He started bouncing and doing steps, in time with the music.  I followed along, doing the same steps.  We joined hands and danced until the song was over.  We slowed down to rest, sweating and catching our breath.  Jay said, "Ma, you didn't tell me you could skate like that!"  I said, "You didn't ask."

ONE BIG DISAPPOINTMENT

In 1968, I was fourteen years old, a freshman in high school, and on the drill team of the Carlisle High School Marching Band.  Being that our sports teams were the 'Carlisle Indians,' our drill team was known as, the 'Indianettes.'  This meant that, not only did we march in parades, but, almost every Friday night, we would get on a school bus and be transported to other schools and march on their fields at football halftime.  It served as a guaranteed way to be out with my friends.


We had band practice every Saturday, marching for hours, all over the football field, and getting yelled at by our music teacher and band leader, Mr. Wyrick.  Before each practice would begin, Mr. Wyrick would tell us that when and if he had to call us out by name and yell at us, we were not to take it personal.  He assured us that he wasn't meaning anything by it, except directing us as to where we were supposed to be marching, or standing.  He said that we were 'working together as one big machine,' and when he yelled, he was just trying to get the machine to run smoother.  He gave us an analogy of 'keeping us oiled, and working out the kinks.'


While he stood on a bench on the edge of the field, he yelled and cussed us all out through a bull horn.  He would yell so hard that blue veins would actually pop out of is forehead!  At first, it scared me, but the older kids stood in the field and snickered while he referred to us as a bunch of 'losers and shit heads.'  He would call out the kids that laughed and said, "You can laugh all you want to, but you're still a big machine made up of a bunch of little-bitty nothings from the middle of nowhere, and that's all you're ever going to be!"


We quickly learned how to judge for ourselves what we were supposed to be doing, to save the poor bastard from stoking out.  When practice was over, he would have a big smile on his face and graciously thank us for our hard work, and point out the slightest improvements that any of us made.


After several weeks of marching in the cold wind and rain, we developed some not-so-elaborate formations.  Some of us were bright enough to be bored with, and ashamed of them, especially when we marched on the football fields of other schools.


For instance:  One of our routines involved marching out onto the field to the tune of the jingle from the 'Excedrin Headache' commercial.  The first group marched in the form of a person's head.  Two lines, marching in single file was his throat, and a group of us marched closer to the bleachers, forming an oval shape, which was supposed to be a person's stomach.  At the end of the song, around the last six beats, and a drum roll, the drill team captain, Jeanie Shumaker and her best 'frenemy,' Vicki Carpenter, would appear on the field.  Each would be carrying a large, white, circular piece of cardboard, with a big letter 'E' on each of them.  They were supposed to be a couple of Excedrin aspirins.


Then would run past the kids that were supposed to be a pair of lips, opening as they ran through.  Then, they would run in the center of the two marching straight lines of the kids that were the throat.  When they finally reached the oval shape of us that were supposed to be the stomach, the cymbals clanged, and the trumpets and tubas would do a 'TA-DA!'


After that, everything stopped to a silent stillness.  The crowd in the bleachers would be sitting there, very perplexed.  At the same time, all at once, the whole town took one big deep breath and said, "Huh?"


As we marched off the field to a pathetic rendition of, "Winchester Cathedral," the feeling of disappointment among us kids, was so thick, that we couldn't march away fast enough!


The few times that I ever looked out at the crowd of people in the stands, they were pointing and laughing at us, and as I marched, I felt both anger and embarrassment.  There was never any applause.

IT ALL ADDED UP

In 1992, the morning rush hour commute from my stop in Brooklyn, to Mid-Town Manhattan took an average of an hour and a half.  On our bus, we worked as a team, to make sure that we sat together and amused each other on the way to our jobs.


At the last stop in Brooklyn, before we got onto the Prospect Expressway, we stopped a the 'check point,' where all the other busses came in.  Lots of passengers would transfer onto our bus, if we had available seats.


One of my 'bus buddies' noticed a behavioral pattern between two people and pointed it out to the rest of us.  The man would get off the Mill Basin bus, and wait for the woman to get off a bus that came in from the Canarsie line.  On the sidewalk, waiting to get onto our bus, they pretended to not know each other.  When they sat down at the seats right across from us, they got very cozy.


He was a greying, rather overweight man, with a mean face. His mis-placed ego was as large as he was.  Judging from his ultra-trendy clothes, he was obviously going through a serious mid-life crisis.


She was slender and much younger, with beautiful long, dark hair.  She never spoke much, but when she did, it was in the form of 'baby talk.'  That's what we named her, 'Little Miss Baby Talk.'


She always brought coffee and Danish from 'Dunkin' Donuts, for the both of them.  He provided the New York Times. During their breakfast, he did all the talking.  She hung onto every word, clapping her hands at everything he said, like a little baby girl.


He spoke very loud, as he went on and on about himself.  He bragged about his impressive career and his impressive life. Everyone listened, whether we wanted to or not.  When he showed her photographs from his family vacations, we craned our necks to see them.  We wanted to know if his wife was in any of them, and what she looked like.  She was in most of them.  Somehow, they managed to gloss over the fact that she existed.


Once breakfast was over, and we were well into a traffic jam inside the Battery Tunnel for the next 45 minutes, things would get even more interesting.


They would take the New York Times, and build a sort of 'tent' to hide from the rest of us.  Under their tent, they would make out all the way through the Battery Park and Wall Street areas.  By the time we weaved around and along the FDR, going north to Mid-Town, passing the Brooklyn Bridge, he would re-appear.  She, however, would be mysteriously missing!  


We looked around at her empty seat and asked each other where she went.  Finally, we decided that perhaps they had a basement in their little 'love nest,' and that's where she would go, unless she crawled through the floor and left the bus. Our group was amazed at his talent in making her 'disappear,' and so, we named him, 'The Magician.'


One day, 'Miss Baby Talk' was in the basement, and the 'Magician' was engrossed in the news article that he was pretending to read.  An old woman had just stepped onto the bus and payed her fare.  She was delighted to see what she thought was an empty seat, and she hurried down the aisle to claim it.  She sat down for a second, and sprang to her feet, very confused.  


'Miss Baby Talk' suddenly popped her head out of the newspapers and sat on the seat.  The 'Magician' was annoyed that the disappearing act was abruptly interrupted. The rest of us clapped our hands and cheered at the performance, yelling, "One plus one equals two, after all!"


At 'check point,' from then on, we saw them meeting to get onto a bus together.  They never bothered to ride our bus, ever again.

JEEPERS CREEPERS!

The first time I ever laid eyes on John Daly, was just before Christmas in 1989.  He was standing at the alter, waiting for my mother to march down the aisle and marry him.


I was sitting on a front row seat, next to my two brothers.  It was the first time the three of us sat together like that since our father's funeral, and the second time our mother got married since his death.  The deep level of sadness we were feeling, and the slow, droning organ music were the same on both occasions.  The flowers at the funeral were much more festive.


Looking up on the stage, trying to figure out who my next step-father was going to be, I saw John standing there, alone.  Hoping that my eyes were playing tricks on me, I shut my eyes tight for a few seconds, and said to myself, "Please, dear God, let him be the best man!"  I stared at him, thinking that maybe if I stared long enough, I could find something to like about him, but it didn't happen.


I leaned over and asked the person sitting next to me, "Is that him?"  and somebody nodded their head, 'yes.'  I said, "We've got a problem here."  I don't even remember who I said it to, but it doesn't matter.  No one ever disagreed with me on this one.


The organ music changed to the sickening one-note chord that signaled us to stand up and face the back of the church, to behold the blushing bride.


Wearing a long, beige, lace dress, and holding a bouquet of flowers, she stepped in time to, "Here Comes The Bride." The smile on her face was scary.  It wasn't a smile that reflected happiness.  It was more a 'performance' smile.  As she came closer and closer to the alter, the personae she adopted during her last husband, morphed into her concept of what she thought her next husband wanted her to be.  She was trying on that person, as she marched down the aisle, on her way to her new life, as Mrs. John Daly.


After the wedding, I politely introduced myself to my new step-father, and my two revolting step-sisters.


Months later, my mother gave me much more information than I'd ever ask for, by telling me what happened on their wedding night.  She said that they did not have sex at all.  He stayed in the bathroom half the night, throwing up, because he was so nervous.  I thought that it should've been the other way around.  She should've been the one throwing up at the thought of having sex with him.  In any case, it was an omen.


From the moment he said, "I do," John managed to ruin every family gathering that I ever attended.  Christmas, birthdays, funerals, you name it.  He put his own unique spin on making us understand that our family, as we knew it, was officially dead.  He ran the show, and it was guaranteed that we would only be miserable.  When it came time to leave, we left angry.


My brothers named him, "The Commander," because he made it his business to control every move we made.  It always took me at least two weeks to recover emotionally, from all the 'divide and conquer' tactics that he put us through, and got away with.


Geraldine's three kids wanted to keep a semblance of what once was our family, but it was too much for us to ask.  She completely ignored the fact that we were so profoundly unhappy.  After a while, I decided that it was time to start protecting myself from this abuse.  The last event I allowed myself to suffer through, was Christmas 1996.


Sometimes, Geraldine called me discreetly, from the guest room of their home.  I always recognized her voice, but I never knew who I was going to be talking to.  The conversations were never anything to do with who we really were, or what was really going on. That wasn't allowed.  It was always the superficially pleasant, one-sided mother-daughter chat.  She had this need to keep things wrapped up in a nice, neat little package, in order to live with herself.  Every word that came out of her mouth was a form of manipulation.  In between her false concerns, we'd go over how she'd re-invented herself, and how the rest of us were expected to play along.  She always ended the call with an insinuation that we had a close relationship, and she was a devoted mother.  It felt like anything but love.


Shortly after the call ended, and we hung up, the phone would ring, again.  When I picked up the phone and said, 'hello,' the person on the other end would listen for a few seconds, for the second 'hello,' and then hung up on me.  It didn't take long to notice the pattern.  It wasn't a stalker.  It was the heavy hand of John Daly hitting the 'redial' button to find out who she was on the phone with.


He probably didn't recognize my voice at first, because I'd be crying my eyes out by then.  I cried every time I talked to those people.  The truth of why I cried was too much of a burden for them to be bothered with.  To stop being a burden, I stopped talking to those people.  When I stopped talking to those people, I stopped crying.

JESUS AS MATCHMAKER

Grandma Mary used to say, "I believe in romance, and I know I'll love, again.  Jesus is going to send the right man to me, when I'm ready."  And so, this match made in Heaven came to pass.


According to Grandma, she was working in her strawberry patch on a warm, sunny day, when she heard a truck pulling up in the gravel.  She said, "I wasn't expecting company, and couldn't imagine who it 'twas.  When I saw Floyd coming towards me, I asked him what in the world he was doing there. He said, 'Mary, I've got something to tell you.  I was in church, praying to the Lord for a new wife.  I heard the voice of Jesus tell me to come over here and ask you to marry me.'"  How could she argue with that?  She took his word for it and married him right away.


Grandma and Floyd assured their collective offspring that they weren't going to change their wills.  They just got married because they were in love.  With their inheritances protected, Geraldine and her two sisters gushed over their concept that Grandma owned half of Eaton, Ohio, and Floyd owned the other half.  Together, they had a 'family dynasty.'


When Chuck found out how Grandma got married so quickly, he called Geraldine to inquire if the old guy 'knocked her up,' and if they had a 'shotgun wedding!'


Things went sour when the two 'love birds' went to Florida for the winter. Grandma went down there to enjoy herself, but it never happened.  She was too busy cooking and cleaning for the constant company Floyd invited over.  He and his guests had to be talking and eating, all day, every day.  She didn't know them, and she didn't like them.  It didn't matter to Floyd, as long as he was the center of attention.  


She went along with his obnoxious behavior  until she just couldn't take it any more.  They returned to Ohio, much sooner than planned.  She said that she had to get back home, and away from him, before she died from exhaustion.  


My younger brother, Jeff, got the scoop on a more intimate level.  She answered a lot of unasked questions, when she told him that Floyd was always 'wearing her out in bed.' She complained that she was always tired, and her 'crotch was constantly irritated from having so much sex.'  I told him, "That's her way of bragging that she gets laid more than you do!"


Grandma had a bottle of prescribed pills, and doctor's orders to get bed rest.  While she was trying to recover from him, Floyd complained to her that she slept too much.  He said that if he knew that she was going to be so sick all the time, he wouldn't have married her, and he was getting bored.


One afternoon, she was knocked out from her pills, when Floyd packed up his belongings and moved back to his old house.  Grandma woke up and caught him going through her jewelry box.  He was taking back the engagement ring, and wedding ring that he bought her.


When she realized what was happening, she got out of her bed, to see what else that he took with him.  He took everything, even the toilet paper.  So much for 'Jesus as Matchmaker.'

JESUS CHRIST!

Although it was an unpopular thing to do, I actually liked my father.  No one else noticed that fact, but him.  He guarded that little secret well.  Liking him in that house was simply not allowed, even after he died.  If and when I defended his memory when Geraldine spoke badly of him, (which was always the case), it was perceived that I'd betrayed her.

In my father's lifetime, I couldn't count on one hand the things he's done that were ever good enough to meet up to Geraldine's standards.  It would be easier for me to name the times she spoke of how great her life would be, if he would just drop dead.


Well, her fantasy came true.  At the age of 54, he did just that.  The official cause of his death was conjestive heart failure.  In my professional opinion, I'd say, that the man died of sheer boredom.  Living alone with her would kill anyone.


On the night that he died, they were in the living room, watching "Magnum P.I.," the TV series with Tom Selleck.  Within the last fifteen minutes of the show, she went to the bathroom during a commercial.  On her way there, she said something to irritate my father.  She commented on how 'good looking' Tom Selleck was.  


Sitting on the couch, he made a sarcastic remark in retaliation to hers, took his last breath, and croaked.


A few years after my father left the planet, I got an unexpected call from Geraldine.  With a very excited tone in her voice, she said that she'd called to tell me that she'd just got married.  I said, "I didn't even know that you had a boyfriend.  How did this happen?"


She said, "Well, I met him in church.  I looked up, and there he was!  I prayed about it, and the Lord told me that I was supposed to marry him!  Ten days later, we just went off and got married!"


I said, "The Lord, huh?  Okay.  What's his name?"  I could feel her blush on the other end of the phone as she giggled.  With the voice of a small child, she said, "Beeeyil."


I said, "Bill?  Did you say that his name is Bill?  So, what's your last name, now?"  She said, "Snively," with another giggle.


I said, "Snively?  You mean, like 'Snidely Whiplash' on the Rockey and Bullwinkle cartoons?"  She just giggled.


I said, "Anything else I should know?"  She said, "He has four kids. Two boys and two girls, so that means you have four new sisters and brothers!  He has a daughter named, Kathy, too!  Just like you!"  I said, "Well, that's an excellent selling point."


She said, "He's standing right here, and he wants to meet you.  I'm going to hand him the phone, right now!  Here he is, now -- MEET Y'ER DADDY!"