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Dear Reader,
"Terrible, terrible me." On Monday I shared how my childhood friend Tommy and I stripped the bark from the side of a tree--just to see what was underneath. I asked you to share some of your 'terrible' stories and you did.
"We had cousins who lived on a farm and we were invited to dinner, so we drove from Philly out into the country. There were six--four girls and two boys in that farm family. Their parents had invited our family and a bunch of other extended family members to a big spaghetti dinner, farm style, pulling out all the stops. I will never forget what happened, because I got blamed for what all six of those brats did that day. They were supposed to help make dinner, and instead of cheese they shredded a cake of soap into the huge vat of spaghetti, with 20 hungry people waiting for dinner. They told their parents it was me, and since they thought their kids could do no wrong, they believed them. I had nothing to do with it. We didn't get invited back for a very long time. We went home hungry, and I was so angry that I got the blame for their horrible mischief."--Dorie F.
"Here's my tale of badness! Back when I was four or five, my mom made me take a nap and I was so mad because I had things I wanted to do. I got some scissors and cut up the most beautiful, handmade quilt you've ever seen, with hand-bound bias scalloped edging. My grandmother, who was so precious to me, had made it and it was one of my mom's most prized possessions! I obviously ruined it and I got whipped with my dad's belt, but the fact that I damaged something so beautiful haunts me to this day. I have the quilt now and I will keep it always--I can't wait to get to heaven to apologize to Mama Irene for not realizing how precious it was. Sad but true!"--Ruth P.
(Suzanne replies:) Ruth, maybe you could take the pieces of the quilt, add some material and make a new one that could be passed down in your family. And you'd have a story to pass down, too.
"I have four older siblings and when I just learned how to write, which was about four or five-years-old, I wrote on everything. I was so proud of my new skill. My parents had just bought this new Bible, it was big and white with gold lettering with beautiful colored pictures. Inside the front cover there was a place for your family names, parents and children. No one had filled it in yet. I guess I had some time, and thought I would fill in my oldest sister's name. I have no idea why I chose her name, but I wrote 'Nancy' in big sloppy letters with a blue ink pen. My parents were really upset with me, but they never did try to fix it and it was a story shared and laughed about through the years. I also learned my lesson after seeing the look of disappointment on my mother's face, and never wrote on things I shouldn't after that. Thank you so much for your morning column, I enjoy reading it everyday."--Sueann W.
(Suzanne replies:) Well Sueann, if you had to scribble in a book, the Bible was probably a good choice, because I think there's a verse or two in there about forgiveness.
Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.
Suzanne Beecher
[email protected]
AUTHORBUZZ: WALKING THE LLANO: A Texas Memoir of Place (NonFiction) by Shelley Armitage
Take a walk with me into a little known landscape, its mesas and deep canyons home to diverse wildlife and rich histories, as I recover the voices of ancient, Native, and Hispano people, their stories interwoven with my own. Time, space, and memory converge to remind us--no matter where our places--of kinship in a world ever changing. "If literature is the study of the human heart, then this is a quiet masterpiece,"--BK Loren
Go to: http://authorbuzz.com/dearreader click on WALKING THE LLANO to read more and to email author Shelley Armitage, you'll get a reply.
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