Until then . . .

It had been about a year, and I was sitting in the parking lot of the WaWa just outside the Richmond airport.  I wasn’t alone; a beloved friend was with me while we waited for Steve and Lori to finish the coffee run, after which we would head to their place to continue the visit and allow peristalsis to deal with the effects of Carrini’s Italian Restaurant.

Without there being any plan for it to happen this way, it turned out to be the moment I had asked of this treasured young lady several months ago . . .

Where's the plug?

A sign of a society in its death throes - division.  The lines along which it is drawn are irrelevant.  

Chimay, Mom, and my Space Buddy . .

So I was sitting at a favorite booth, debating on whether I’d stay awake long enough for another Chimay.  I picked up my phone for probably the 17^th time just to make sure something vitally important hadn’t escaped my notice on Facebook.  You never know, you know? 
Wait. How can you know if you never know if you never know? 
Never mind.
Anyway, I wake the phone up and there’s a guy smiling at me.  Weird smile, sort of like it starts at his ears and works its way down to his mouth.  And it’s not just a picture – it’s a video.  I know because I look up and to my right while I try to figure out what’s going on and when I come back the guy is coming back from looking to his left, like he’s trying to see what I’m looking at.  It’s a live video.
What the . . . ?

Where am I?!

You wake up one day in unfamiliar surroundings.  By day’s end, you realize the unimaginable horror – you have been transported to a society that consists entirely – except for you – of Biblical Christians, all of whom obey the Scripture in every point.
Five years later, after suffering as the sole individual who doesn’t believe that God came to Earth in the form of man, you recount the nightmarish existence of life in this foreign place.

Courting . .

A young fellow sees her for the first time.  And all time after that is unalterably changed . . .

After a month or so, the young man makes a quiet visit to the young lady's Dad. No fanfare, no one knows but the two of them. The young man tells him that he has had the opportunity, through circumstances that brought the two of them together that neither had specifically sought, to spend time around his daughter. At first, he'd say, she caught his eye, but now she was continually intruding into his thoughts, even when he's busy with other things. He'd look into her father's eye and say that he would like his permission to spend time with her. 

He'd explain that it wasn't dating he was after; he'd tell him that dating usually meant opportunity for temptation, foolish spending, and attempts to create false impressions. Instead, he'd like to spend time at her home, or if they were away, in the presence of mutual friends, and always in public places, and always with a particular time they were to be home, and always no later.

Farewell, my friend.

Fascinating . .

Brown Sugar Cinnamon.

Seriously.

It was the only flavor of Pop-Tarts that I would tolerate. All the others had fruit in them. Who wanted fruit when you could have sugar? Stupid ..

The important thing was, they were part of a trinity, the culinary leg of a table of entertainment where I sat during the fall of 1967 and on through the winter, finally ending after a full year. It was then that the corporate mobsters of NBC brought the magic to an end.

In 1965, CBS released a series that would last 4 seasons. Described as "James Bond in a saddle," it was meant to give the dying genre of Westerns a new twist.  "The Wild, Wild West" married Q-styled technical creativity with horses and single action Colts, and would ultimately contribute to the rise of a fascinating cultural phenomenon known as Steampunk. 

I ate it up. Loved it. Friday night, 7:30, there was no doubt where I'd be.

But after a year it got even better.

Can we please use our heads for something besides hat racks?

Obviously, an explanation is in order, because the ignorance and doltery regarding the 14th Amendment is out in force . .
Let’s imagine a happy family. You’re the Mom and you have among your children Sally, a precocious little 10-year-old with a remarkable degree of independence.  One day you discover that Sally has taken on an unusual project – washing the laundry of three of her friends as well as her own.  When you ask for an explanation, you learn that Sally and her friends have determined that it’s gross to wear a shirt or a pair of jeans more than once without washing.  The trouble, in their way of thinking, is the fact that you and the other parents require at least two wears for a shirt and three for jeans with exceptions for spills and other minor disasters.