Category: Memoir

Daddy and the Perfect Bag

Every day I spend a little time thinking about my Daddy. I don’t plan to; it just happens. He was quite a guy, and he impacted our lives in many ways.

Studly Doright and I were privileged to have Daddy live with us the last few years of his life, and it was a great experience for all of us; although, I’m sure Daddy often thought we were nuts. That’s ok, he was a little nuts, too.

Daddy loved golf and was in part responsible for Studly playing. But, by the time he moved to Melbourne, FL, where we lived at the time, Daddy’s COPD prevented him from hitting the course as much as he’d have liked. 

He still played a few times, though, even earning a “Closest to the Pin” trophy in a charity tournament.  Man, was he proud of that trophy! Any visitor to our home was invited to gaze on it in awe.

Long after Daddy stopped playing he would sit out in our garage imagining courses he’d played in years gone by and putting together the perfect set of clubs for a round of golf there. Often Studly would go looking for one of his clubs only to find it taking up space in Daddy’s “dream bag.”

“Gerald,” Studly would ask, “Have you seen my 5 wood?”

“Yeah, it might be in my bag,” Daddy would say. “I was thinking of number 4 at the Floydada Country Club. I thought I could reach the green with that 5 wood.”

Even now that Daddy has been gone for many years we still go looking in his bag anytime a club is missing, just in case he needed it for that perfect round.

Miss you Daddy. I hope you’ve got just the right clubs for whatever course you’re playing now.

Daddy holding his oldest great-grandson.

 

Algebra is Such a Lonely Word

In response to the Daily Post’s Daily Prompt: Land of Confusion. Which subject in school did you find impossible to master? Did math give you hives? Did English make you scream? Do tell!

I was a smart kid. Not motivated, and certainly not well-directed in my educational goals, but I had a talent for learning and for taking tests. 

My family wasn’t particularly concerned with my academic performance. They were pleased that I earned good grades, but there really weren’t any expectations that I’d go on to college. 

For the first eight years of my formal education all the subjects were ridiculously easy for me: English grammar and literature, Social Studies, even Science and Mathematics. Seldom did I need to study, even though had I done so on a regular basis I might have ended up near the top of my class. 

In ninth grade my good grades landed me in an accelerated algebra class and my educational wheels fell off. I worked my butt off in that class, but the concepts were so abstract that my brain was unable to process them. 

I literally thought that I must have missed the lesson explaining what “n” and “x” were, so night after night I’d reread my algebra text from the beginning trying to unlock the code. Surely, I thought, if I could just figure out their values I’d be okay. The concept of a variable just made no sense.

With the help of a good and brilliant friend I managed to stay afloat, even though she occasionally became exasperated and annoyed with my questions. It seemed simple to her, why couldn’t everyone “get it?”

Our accelerated class churned through one and a half years of algebra in one school year, then we moved on to Geometry. Holy crap. If I’d been merely struggling in algebra, geometry put me down for the count. I lasted half the year and then dropped the class since it wasn’t required to graduate. 

I can’t even remember what replaced Geometry in my schedule, I just know that for the first time in my academic life I doubted myself. It was a lowdown, crummy feeling.

Following my junior year my family moved to a slightly larger town. I met my future husband (Studly Doright was so cute back then) and even though I went to junior college for a year my heart wasn’t in it, and I was petrified by the idea that I wouldn’t be able to conquer college algebra. So I married my Studly and we settled into our lives together.

When our children were in elementary school we decided that I should go back to college, and with a totally new focus I rocked that scene. To my surprise and delight I was still a smart kid. With trepidation I faced my college algebra class. What was once too abstract for my 14-year-old brain now made sense. Amazing!

It was the only class I didn’t earn an “A” in, though, preventing me from graduating college with a perfect 4.0. But, that “B” felt like a victory after all those years, and summa cum laude looked great on my transcript.

Take that, algebra!   

Peace, people!

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

When our first son was very young, perhaps not yet two, he and I were snuggled under the covers on a cold, snowy morning. Studly Doright had left for work, so little Doright and I were catching a few precious zzzz’s.

As we basked in that delicious laziness that comes with sleeping in, little Doright asked sleepily, “Mommy, who is that man?”

I said, “What man, sweetie?”

“That one, Mommy, in the curtains.”

I saw nothing, but my heartbeat sped up just the same. Who knows who or what little Doright saw.

On another occasion I awakened from a nightmare in which Studly was chasing little Doright and me with a knife. I’d just finished reading Stephen King’s The Shining, so that dream was something of a logical consequence. However, from his crib in the room next to ours I heard little Doright crying, “Daddy, don’t hurt us! Daddy stop!”

Whoa! That was a surreal moment! Written in response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt.