Golden Lady

Back in catholic high school, we had a retreat where we watched a movie about a sweet young college girl.  One day, the girl heard some jazz music, saw a clarinet player on stage in a bar, and the next thing you knew, the girl was drinking, smoking and doing some other clearly non-catholic things. Later in our all-girls class, the nun explained the movie to us by saying that the musician was Satan, the clarinet was a phallic symbol, and we would probably end up in Hell if we dated musicians.  She stressed that drum sticks, guitar necks, and anything that could be squeezed, stroked or blown into was a phallic symbol and should be avoided at all costs.

I spent the better part of a week reading Webster's Dictionary trying to figure out what the heck a phallic symbol was. There was no spell-check back then so I  concentrated my search on words that started with the letter "F" not "PH". And I was a little shocked when I finally found it.  Let's face it, I doubt Scripps ever used that word in their National Spelling Bee.

Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word

A couple of weeks ago, I made a young woman cry.  Not just cry-first she teared up, then sobbed, then wailed, THEN threw herself down in dramatic fashion in loud, convulsive gasps.

And I'm surely going to Hell because I did it in church.

It all started when the music director at my church made a plea for musicians to join the bell choir. She said bells were easy-all you need to know is how to count to four.  Sometimes only three.  No problem-just like when I told Wingman I could play tennis. Sure, I had a tennis racket in the back of the closet that I won at a work picnic. Sure, I had a couple of tennis balls that we use to throw to the dog.  What could be so hard about a hitting the ball over the net? Two hours later, a frustrated Wingman told me I needed to find a new sport. I apologized for my teeny little fib, and he took me for a drink.