By Chuck Wiser, I write the words to share what my eyes see and my heart feels
As of yesterday morning, I had no clue as to what my column was going to be about this week. Then, prompted by the second National Holiday within a weeks’ time, a whole host of topics came to mind. Being reminded of the first, that being “Daughters Day,” I dutifully dug out a flattering photo of my daughter and shared it on Facebook. Two days later I saw what I thought were postings for the National Holiday “Sons Day.” I couldn’t find a picture of just the two son’s “alone together”, so I posted a nearly current picture of all three offspring, two sons and a daughter. I put that term “alone together” in quote marks as I thought it was a good example of an oxymoron. I guess I could say I was speaking “oxymoronicably”. I used the picture I posted as my ID picture for this article, and it has been noted that the photo shows “a rose between two thorns.” The sons might contest that however, so I will remain paternally unbiased.
National Daughter’s Day was Sept. 25th and National Son’s Day was September 28th. My Google search for “Son’s or Daughter’s” dates was initially confused by the fact that indeed there is a national Son’s and Daughter’s holiday, which occurred on August 11th.
I am a fan of coincidence. Many of the featured characters in the FAME (Fiction, Action, Mystery, Entertainment) books I read, disclaim that phenomenon. I noticed two “coinkydinks,” as Red Skelton, the iconic comedian of my youth, would have said. The dates of those above-mentioned holidays seemed coincidental, as they coincided with personal events. September 25th is my eldest son’s birthday and September 28th was my mother’s birthday.
I count myself blessed to have the wife I have, and for the precious children that were born to us. A couple of years after becoming husband and wife, we discussed the planning of children we were to have eventually. I stated that I think the perfect number of offspring, at least for us, would be three. I further explained that expressed wish, by hoping for at least one of each gender, and preferably in the order; boy, girl, boy. My reasoning was that every girl should have an older brother and a younger brother; one she could look up to and one she could nurture. Don’t ask if I can explain it with any scientific meaningfulness, it’s just a feeling that I have. I had an older sister, and, if a third child of my mother’s had survived childbirth, I would have had the reverse of my preference, in that I would have had one sister older and one younger. At least I had a “tom boy” older sister, and glad I did, as she stood up against the bullies for me when I was but a lad.
Closing out the discussion on Holidays, it has been suggested that many of these lesser known “National” holidays are what have been dubbed “Card days”. I may have made that term up, but I didn’t make up the thought that many relatively modern holidays were invented, and promoted by, the Greeting Card industry. While Valentines Day is not new, it is surely an example of Card days. Valentine’s Day must be in the top 5 of “card producing” holidays. It hasn’t hurt the “confectionary” industry either.
On I Wramble… I was re-folding a piece of mailed correspondence the other day and caught myself folding it the “proper” way. I wondered if they still teach, or mention, that in school, either in a Business or English class, or somewhere else. They used to.
If that topical comment makes you scratch your head, there IS a right way and a wrong way of folding a letter to place it in an envelope. But then again, who actually “writes”, and “mails,” a letter these days? No wrong way to fold your “e-mail”, but it is easily possible to mis-direct it. Twice, within the last week, I sent (mailed) an email to the wrong recipient. Under the “device” autocorrect/autosuggest options, when you begin to type/keyboard the name of an intended recipient, a list of “suggested” names from those previously used, pops up. If you click, or touch, on one; or press the enter key thinking it is on the correct one, and it isn’t, the result is that someone receives an email that makes no sense to them. That is already a characteristic of my sent messages, to intended recipients, using Facebook Messenger, even when intended.😏. That story reminds me of an incident from my preteen and young teen years.
I was by no means a Casanova, but I had a fair share of childhood, teenage girl friends (as opposed to girlfriends) that I communicated with via snail mail. After all, a 3¢ stamp, was a pretty cheap date, albeit by long distance. I met a number of girls, many of whom also attended local stock car racing events in the 50’s and early 60’s. I typically established a correspondence with them. One such activity between myself and two separate young ladies came to an abrupt halt when I mistakenly matched the wrong letters to, and in, the envelopes to each.
Grammar Groans: Facebook is a venue (or avenue) for amusement and amazement. I always chuckle when I read a poster’s comments that critiques someone’s grammar, therein displaying their own improper “grammer, when there speeling and they’re own use of punctuality is pour.”
I don’t intend to belittle or insult anyone by pointing out these common mistakes, but I also don’t readily accept their excuses as just “not being good with English.” Accepting their own weakness is kind of a cop out. You should take pride in how you speak and write. I have always been very aware of people’s speech affectations, especially my own. I know I have fallen into the rut of starting a sentence with the word “So,” as in: “So, I said to my friend the other day that…”. I had never noticed that frequent use, by starting a sentence with that word, until a former student of mine pointed that out. Jason Marsden, the student, was one of those “adult learners” who attended night school to advance their learning and careers while working a full-time day job. He pointed that one out to me one day after I asked my students to make me aware of any of those “speech traps” used, that are common to many of us. The most common used by many, are: starting each sentence with “ummm”, or the word “so,” or by ending a sentence or statement with “you know?”
I wanted to improve my speaking methods and to avoid using those common speech patterns and told the class that they could help me by pointing out my poor habits. I recalled my days as a “night school” student and actually counting the number of times a professor would use the word “Now” starting a sentence I guess that shows that I was (or wasn’t) paying attention, at least to the appropriate things being said. One of my college Psychology teachers, Professor Bliss, explained that the use of those speech habits, particularly the use of “ummm,” was like taking a mental pause to collect your thoughts or to think about what you were thinking as you were saying it.
I do apologize for sounding like a bit of a prude with that topic, yet again. It was triggered by listening to a politician trying to explain something of a very serious nature on TV the other day. It detracted, or at least distracted, from the message he was trying to get across (or acrossed 😏).
Shopping observation. We shop at BJ’s quite often and despite the significant price increase in their “two pack” snacks packages, we continue to buy the Lays chips products that way. It seems to us that the “Classic” chips in the yellow bag, are smaller than those in smaller bags purchased elsewhere. My wife prefers the larger chips and we have noticed that the chips in those bags tend to be more uniform in shape, but smaller. Same thing goes for the “Wavy” Lays in the red bag. My wife has recently taken a liking to the “Sun Chips,” so I combine, or pair those up, with my purchase of the large bag of “White Cheddar” popcorn. Gas purchase at BJ’s in Henrietta Wednesday, was at $3.16/gallon. I thought from reading their sign out front that it was going to be $3.06 but that price was only if you used their credit card. I don’t own a credit card and haven’t since I paid off my Home Depot credit card many years ago. I had quickly built the credit charges up over $1000 in no time at all. That is easy to do when drawn to “tool” purchases following the “Siren’s call” at someplace like Home Depot. Too easy to do with the convenience of a credit card. I now use ONLY a debit card; “If I don’t have the money in my account, I can’t afford to buy it. “I won’t say that we were exactly “poor” when I grew up, but we sure scraped the bottom of the money barrel a lot when my single parent Mom was raising us. From that I learned to be “frugal”. My children would call that “cheap”. I was going type “kids,” instead of “children,” but I thought that might “baaaaa-ther” them.
I am living the life of luxury in the arts and entertainment category, being blessed to be able to sing in two different musical organizations. I am once again active in the Genesee Valley Chorus as I have noted in previous Wramblings and am also once again active in the Maple City Barbershop Chorus in Hornell/Painted Post. Both organizations are openly recruiting for new or re-joined former members, but the Barbershop Chorus is currently working on and promoting their Christmas Season sing outs and activities. Here is a clip of our promotional literature. If interested please contact our President, as noted on the poster, any member, or reach out to me through our Facebook page and/or at Wellsvillesun.com.
