Sink holes are nothing to be challenged with, especially when county workers are attempting to fix the issue.  There is currently a sink hole on our street.  Since we live on a dead end road, we had no way of exiting our house, even to get toilet paper.  I went down to visit five “workers”.  Four of them were doing nothing…..I mean Nothing, and the other one was awake. That’s progress.

Holding my hand up with contrition, I worked for the county one summer while attending college.  As a rookie, I was instructed not to work so hard.  The county veterans said I was making them look bad.

I finished the summer while county veterans, on the county clock mind you, were spending the first three hours of the day traveling to a local convenient store collecting doughnuts and chicken gizzards, followed by finding a secluded park where they could eat their meal and read the paper, and then it was nap time for them.

While the 70 year old I was “working” with was snoozing in the park, I walked around picking up garbage just to make myself feel as though I didn’t have to attend confession after work.

We also had Fridays off.  Sweet deal.  I still found a different job.

Armed teachers?  On the way to school, you may as well give them a bottle of tequila on the way. This is not the way to solve this school shooting issue.

I don’t carry a gun.  As a former a teacher for fifteen years, I was involved in one lockdown only resulting in one death.    The boy took his life before entering our school.

I hate making light of this issue, because there is no light.  I know teachers.  If you arm them, they will end up shooting one another in the staff room.  Teachers can be as dangerous as the troubled children we teach.

I once threw a ripe orange at one of my best friends in the staffroom.  It hit him square in the forehead.  Just think if I’d had a gun.  You do the math.

Shootout at the middle school corral .

I just told a good friend of mine I’m tired of crying.

Recently, I lost a brother and a friend.  Now, we are losing a mother who only has twelve children left.

I will cry, but she will prefer me, and many others, to laugh………

Unable to attend game one of the 2017 World Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Houston Astros,  I celebrated it with my wife with grilled onions and brats.

Two of my best friends, Mark and Trevor St. Johnsonville Brats were in attendance.

My wife, brothers, and friends are watching the World Series tonight, and it doesn’t matter who wins or loses.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m rooting for a team, but the fun of the atmosphere may provide pleasure for those suffering in our country no matter the outcome.

Worry warts may be the worst, but sometimes, they turn a corner, similar to a mole, or skin tag.

My mother worried about everything from my brothers  jumping off a dock to jumping off a tree in the middle of the night.   She even worried about us smoking crack in our treehouse.  Strangely, that was thirty years ago when only my brother, Greg, was smart enough to develop a substance making us crazy enough to jump off a really tall tree.

These days, I only worry about my brothers and sisters…….and my wife, and my friends, and their families, and our country, and the world, and the solar eclipse.

Out of respect to my mother,  I don’t jump off of trees anymore.

Recently, my wife and I were having a sophisticated conversation regarding colors. What is your favorite color?  She loves Dodger Blue.  I told her I love the color gravy.

I will never lose weight, until she tells me to do so.  Does Crayola carry the color gravy?

Is crying more important than drinking?

Crying counts, drinking is fun, but crying is our reality.  It’s not fun, but it does count.

They don’t call me a fisherman.  I’m more of a fish monger.  Catching them can be exciting, cooking them is fun, and eating them is delightful.  Perhaps it is a silly metaphor, but it reminds me of the only brother who won’t be participating in a weekend fishing trip.  Exciting, delightful and fun would properly describe him.

Not only younger than my six brothers, I’m also shorter in size, strength, wit, generosity, public humiliation, and I wear a size nine shoe…on a good day.

Heading on this fishing trip with five of my older brothers, one of my brothers wasn’t invited, because we simply don’t like him and find his company disagreeable.  That’s nothing further from the truth.  His excuse for not partaking in our potentially angling mess is excusable. Sadly, he is the one who ties all of our knots and makes fishing, or anything, for that matter,  fun.

They call him Steve.