Happy Friday!  This week I wanted to share a little story about potatoes that has been around for a while.

Enjoy!

I am sure you know that all potatoes have eyes. Well, once upon a time, Mr. and Mrs. Potato had eyes for each other.  They fell in love, got married, then one wonderful day, they had a little sweet potato, whom they called ‘Yam’.

Of course, the parents wanted the very best for Yam and when it was time, they told her about the facts of life. They warned her about going out and getting half-baked, so she wouldn’t get accidentally mashed, and get a bad name  for herself like ‘Hot Potato’, and end up with a bunch of Tater Tots.

Yam said not to worry, no Spud would get her into the sack and make a rotten potato out of her! But on the other hand she did not want to just sit around the house and become a Couch Potato. She also decided that she would get plenty of exercise so as not to be too skinny like her shoestring cousins.

Before she off on a sightseeing trip to Europe, Mr. and Mrs. Potato warned her to watch out  for the Hard Boiled guys from Ireland as well as the greasy guys from France called the French Fries. And when she traveled to the Western US, they told her to watch out for the Indians so she wouldn’t get scalloped. Yam said she would stay on the straight  and narrow and wouldn’t associate with those high-class Yukon Golds, or the ones from the other side of the tracks who advertise their trade on all the trucks that say, ‘Frito Lay.’

Mr. and Mrs. Potato saved up their money and proudly sent Yam off to Idaho P.U. (that’s Potato University) so that when she graduated she’d really be in the Chips.

Yet, in spite of all they did for her, one day Yam came home and announced she was going to marry Tom Brokaw.

Tom Brokaw! Mr. and Mrs. Potato were very upset. They told Yam she couldn’t possibly marry Tom Brokaw because he’s just a……………..Common Tater.

Thought for the Week

Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something. ~ Plato

Labor Day has come and gone and now summer is unofficially, officially over.  Most kids have been in school for a couple of weeks and are trying to get settled into the new routines.  A new school year brings so many great opportunities:  new classes, new teachers, new friends, new challenges.  However, a new school year also brings new school pictures.

At first that may not seem like a big deal.  Well, yes, it really is kind of a big deal.  If you think about it, a school picture is a permanent record of how cool, or usually in my case, how dorky you were each year.  

In my early elementary school years, “Picture Day” was a time that all the moms found something nice for their children to wear and sent them off to school where we were marched one class at a time into the gymnasium where we got to stand on risers with our teacher on one end and the principal on the other end to have our picture taken as a class.   The great thing about these black and white class pictures was that one was able to kind of blend in with all the other kids so that no one really stood out.  There was always going to be a couple of kids with their eyes closed, a couple of kids with an odd expression, and a couple of kids whose mother forgot it was picture day and forgot to dress accordingly.  The point being there were always enough “bad” pictures in the class picture that no one kid stood out.

However, during my middle school years, there were two ominous developments related to school pictures.  First, the pictures would now be in color and second, and more disastrous, everyone would have their picture taken individually. While both of these may sound like a good idea, remember I was in those middle school years where even the coolest kid, which I was not, looks kind of dorky.  

Now there was no place for me to blend in or hide, just me and the camera and the results were not pretty.  To illustrate my point, the picture above is what I consider to be one of the worst school pictures I ever had.   This picture is a “permanent record” of several things.  First, not once in my life was my hair “cool.”  Second, I  will finally admit that glasses always made me a look a bit nerdy.  Third, I have realized that I never had a “fashion sense” (an accountant can play it pretty safe by just sticking with white shirts). They say a picture is work a thousand words, I would say this picture is worth a lot less than a thousand words.  I think two words: “nerd” and “dork” come to mind.  Along with two questions: 1) Who bought that shirt? and 2) If my Mother loved me, why would she ever let me out of the house wearing that shirt?

Perhaps you never gave school pictures a second thought, just wait a few decades and you will.

Happy Friday!  Happy Labor Day Weekend! This week I wanted to share some “facts” about TV and motion picture action star Chuck Norris.  In case you have not come across these, Chuck Norris “facts” are satirical factoids about the actor that have taken on a life of their own and spread around the world.  Here are some of my favorites.

Enjoy!

Chuck Norris can cut a knife with butter.

Chuck Norris can speak French… In Russian.

Chuck Norris can hear sign language.

Chuck Norris can speak braille.

Chuck Norris counted to infinity. Twice.

Chuck Norris knows the last digit of Pi.

Chuck Norris can divide by zero.

Once a rattlesnake bit Chuck Norris’ leg. After five days of excruciating pain, the snake died.

Chuck Norris can kill two stones with one bird.

Chuck Norris doesn’t wear a watch. He decides what time it is.

Big foot claims he saw Chuck Norris.

Chuck Norris makes onions cry.

When the Boogeyman goes to sleep every night he checks his closet for Chuck Norris.

Chuck Norris tells Simon what to do.

Chuck Norris is the reason Waldo is hiding.

Chuck Norris’s Blood Type is AK-47.

Chuck Norris can strangle you with a cordless phone.

Chuck Norris can do a wheelie on a unicycle.

Chuck Norris doesn’t dial the wrong number, you pick up the wrong phone.

Chuck Norris won the tour de France, on a stationary bike.

Chuck Norris can slam a revolving door.

Chuck Norris can start a fire by rubbing two ice cubes together.

Chuck Norris made a Happy Meal cry.

Chuck Norris Runs until the treadmill gets tired.

Death once had a near-Chuck-Norris experience.

Thought for the Week

“Bacon is the Chuck Norris of food. There’s no reviewing it. It’s bacon. It reviews you. Now go.” – Anonymous 

It occurred to me the other day that it was thirty-nine years ago this month that I first joined the ranks of those who are gainfully employed.  It was just about the time that I was beginning my senior year at Meadowdale High School when my Dad came home from Sherer’s with a couple of hot fudge sundaes and a scoop about a job. He told me that there was a sign taped on the cash register at Sherer’s that they were looking for help. Now if there was ever a job that I was destined for, this was it! I got up right then and went to talk to Mr. Sherer.  I came back ready to join the work force at a whopping $1.30 an hour. I still have my first pay slip and a $1 from my first pay.  For some reason, Mr. Sherer did not have ice cream sodas on his menu board, so I guess technically I was not a soda jerk. I guess I was just a plain jerk.

I always enjoyed going to Sherer’s as a kid to get a cone or a malt or a sundae or to bring home a half-gallon of his ice cream that was made on the premises in a ten gallon freezer.  Sherer’s stood on North Main Street in Dayton for sixty years as a constant in an ever-changing world. Many other businesses came and went, Forest Park Shopping Center cropped up and crumbled down, but Sherer’s was always there. It was the place to go in Dayton for real home-made ice cream.

We pretty much always have some Ice Cream around my house these days and the stuff you buy at the grocery is pretty good. But as a kid, the stuff at the grocery store tasted more like fluffed air than ice cream. So, it was a treat to go to Sherer’s for two scopes of chocolate ice cream on a cake cone, back before my first job opened my eyes to the wonderful world of flavors that existed beyond chocolate, vanilla and strawberry.

I learned a lot of things working at Sherer’s, skills that have come in handy at just about every job I have ever had: to listen and be polite to the customer, to make change (without a screen telling me how much the change was), answering the hard questions like “What does the root beer ripple taste like?” (Gee, it tastes like vanilla ice cream with root beer mixed in.) I also learned how to put whipped cream on a sundae so that it doesn’t immediately slide down the side, a skill that I can still use to impress friends and family. I learned that the ice cream business is a little slow when it is twenty degrees below zero as happened that winter. I learned that you have to work a little faster when it is eighty degrees outside and you have a room full of people waiting to order ice cream.

I learned that hot fudge is good on just about any ice cream flavor with the possible exception of rum raisin. I leaned that marshmallow topping should be part of any ice cream fan’s topping arsenal. I did not make a lot of money, but I learned what it was like to have a job, to show up on time, to help keep the store clean. Perhaps I did not realize it then, but I also learned that it is a tremendous benefit it is to work for good people.

One thing I am pretty certain of is that I will never again have a boss who every time he comes in after his dinner break his first words will be “Why don’t you make us a chocolate malt and put a little whipped cream on top.”