Category Archives: Whimsies

Saturday Smile: World Famous

Posted in Whimsies by

As part of my Thursday Thoughts this week, I included a paragraph about Jen and how she was going to buy Austin a new Garmin step counter and then have lunch. He told his mom it was going to be the best day of his life. On Thursday morning, Jen showed Austin his photo on my blog and read him what I had written. His exuberant response? Oh my gosh! Now everybody in the whole wide world can see me! I am happy in his confidence about my readership. While it’s true that potentially everyone in the world COULD see him, I’m afraid my loyal readership doesn’t include the whole wide world…..

As for Lilly, her response? How come there’s no picture of me?

So here you go, Lilly. Now everyone in the whole wide world can see you too…..

Have a great weekend.

Thursday Thoughts

Posted in Whimsies by

S-U-C-C-E-S-S
This week has been a bit of a blur.  Bec was the one who had hip replacement surgery on Monday, but when I saw her yesterday afternoon, she looked better than me. Par for the course, I guess. She’s a trooper, that one. She comes by it honestly, as both of my parents suffered a great deal at the end of their lives, and you would never have known it from being with them. Anyway, the surgery went exactly as it was supposed to go. Her surgeon – who looks like he was going to leave the hospital to get ready to go to the Freshman/Sophomore Hop at school – took about two hours to change her life for the better. She got out of the hospital on Tuesday, with a walker, a little plastic container from which she needs to suck air to prevent pneumonia, a couple of medications, and a go-get-em’ attitude……

Jen drove her home and spent the night with her. Aside from not really being able to get comfortable to sleep, she’s doing remarkably well. The pain yesterday was worse than it had been, but her doctor had warned her that it would happen like that as the anesthesia and the pain medication they had injected into her during the surgery wore off. Still, she dutifully walks around and does all of the exercises that she’s supposed to do. Thank you to everyone who sent good thoughts and said prayers. It all worked! However, I’m not sure why I’m tired.

Baby, It’s Cold Outside
Well, not really, but it has been a chilly week with high temperatures only in the mid-50s and lots of clouds. We even had a drop or two of rain the other night. Today is the first day of warmer temperatures and of the rest of my life too.

Dating Game
Jen has been out here for her annual spring visit with Maggie and her grands. She timed it so that she could be here for Bec’s surgery as well, which was very nice of her. As for her grands, well, Austin and Lilly couldn’t possibly be happier that she’s here. Yesterday, she got permission from Maggie and Austin’s teacher to take him out of school a bit early so that they could have lunch together and she could buy him a Garmin Step Counter to replace the one he broke. He proclaimed to his mother yesterday morning, “I think this is the best day of my life.” …..

On the other hand, Lilly was very put out that she was not included in the date. A very pouty lip and eyes filled with tears. Never mind that Jen told her that they would have a date today. When you’re 4, the next day is never going to come.

Our Year of War
I’m reading a very interesting book entitled Our Year of War: Two Brothers, Vietnam, and a Nation Divided, by Daniel P. Bolger. I’m not generally interested in books about war, but this book is fascinating, not the least because it is the story of two brothers from my home town of Columbus, Nebraska. One of the brothers – Tom Hagel — was in Bec’s class at school. The other – Chuck Hagel — is a couple of years older, and went on to become a United States Senator, and eventually the Secretary of Defense under George W. Bush. I recommend the book.

Ciao.

Dope

Posted in Whimsies by

When I was young, somewhere in the neighborhood of what we then called junior high (as opposed to middle school), I often walked from home or school to downtown Columbus with some of my friends. We would walk around downtown, wandering in and out of Woolworth’s or JC Penney’s or Montgomery Wards, or best yet, ride the elevator at Schweiser’s Department Store. Just ride the elevator. It was a THING.

One of our compulsory stops was at Tooley’s Drug Store, an all-purpose pharmacy and what-not store. We would look at the make-up, test the colognes, peruse the comic books, and finger the jewelry. Then we would head to their little café to enjoy a fountain drink. To be honest, I don’t remember my drink of choice. It was probably just a plain fountain coke as I’ve never been a big fan of vanilla or cherry flavoring. What I distinctly remember, however, is that one of my friends always – ALWAYS – ordered a Green River. My assumption then – and frankly, still – is that the soda jerk mixed club soda with some sort of lime flavoring and sugar or simple syrup. The beverage was served to my friend in a fountain glass just like my coke. I imagine she enjoyed this drink, but I can unequivocally tell you that she ordered it because it was green. She is 100 percent Irish, and green was her go-to.

What I didn’t know – and actually, just learned – is that the Green River soft drink  is indigenous to Chicago. It originated in 1919 in response to Prohibition. You might also recall that on St. Patrick’s Day, the Chicago River is dyed green. Hence, Green River.

Bill and I have a favorite hot dog place not far from our AZ home called Chicagoland. All things Chicago – hot dogs, beef sandwiches, gyros, etc. Recently, they added something to their Chicago repertoire – bottles of Green River….

Bill – who is a confirmed cola drinker (Diet Coke being his beverage of choice) — was nevertheless delighted to see the new addition and immediately bought a bottle, which we shared. Despite the fact that I love All Things Lime, I could take or leave a Green River, thank very much. Very sweet. Bill felt the same because See Above: he likes cola. Still, it brought back memories for both he and I.

It got me to thinking about what we called soft drinks when we grew up. In Columbus (and most of the Midwest) we called it pop. Bill said, however, that he grew up calling it soda. But, of course, he was one of those big city Chicagoans!

Interestingly, however, he said his cousins who lived in western North Carolina called soft drinks dope. As in, let’s go have a dope. That term originated from the fact that when Coca Cola was first manufactured, it contained cocaine, referred to as dope. I had always heard this rumor, but checked to see if it’s true. It’s true.

I asked him if they would even call an orange soda an orange dope. He looked at me like I was a crazy woman and said, “They would never have bought anything but a Coke or an RC Cola, so I have no clue.”

As a child, my pop of choice was strawberry. We never had pop in our refrigerator when I grew up. My guess is that few people did. At dinner, we drank milk or Kool-Aid. But on Saturdays when we would eat our noon dinner at Grammie and Gramp’s apartment above the bakery, she would give me 50 cents to go next door to the Ski Lounge Bar and buy a strawberry pop. Looking back, it makes me laugh to think that a bar would have orange or strawberry or grape pops. Today: wouldn’t happen.

For kicks, put on your reading glasses Baby Boomers and check out what Huffington Post says people call soft drinks in various parts of the country…..

The Best Part of Waking Up

Posted in Whimsies by

I originally posted these thoughts about coffee below on February 19, 2015. I am reprinting this blog post because I spent yesterday at the hospital with my sister Bec following her hip replacement surgery and was unable to be creative when I got home. Her surgery went fine and she will be climbing mountains before we know it!

I am almost always up before my husband. Frankly, I am up before most species of birds. I am, and always have been, an early riser. If I sleep past 6:15, someone should put a mirror under my nose.

By the way, being an early riser doesn’t mean I wake up whistling. Far from it. Bill, who nearly always sleeps longer than I, wakes up annoyingly jolly. He bounces out of bed and immediately begins talking and/or asking me questions.

How’d you sleep? What’s your blog about this morning? What are your plans for the day?

Fine. Read it for yourself. I’m retired so I have no plans. Please stop being so cheerful.

Because of this difference in our morning personalities, I love my little bit of quiet time in the morning before he gets up. My routine is always the same. (Now that’s redundant!) I turn on my computer, I walk around and open the blinds to let in morning light or at least watch the sun come up. I make the coffee. While it brews, I post my blog.

By time I’m finished posting my blog, the coffee is ready. I pour a cup, and put the rest in a thermos pot that I have heated up with hot water. Then I sit down with my book and take that first sip.

There is nothing better than that first sip of hot coffee in the morning. Nothing. Better. Period. Not the second cup. Not even the second sip. That first sip of coffee, so hot it can burn your tongue if you’re not careful, is divine.

If you looked up coffee connoisseur in the dictionary and then checked for its antonym, you would see my picture. I am simply not a coffee snob.

A few years ago when I started reading food magazines and watching Food Network, I began to focus on what needed to happen so that my coffee was extraordinary. Freshly roasted whole beans that you grind every morning. The beans must come from certain parts of the world. The water had to be a certain temperature when it brewed. The coffee had to be poured at a certain temperature. It had to have a chocolate taste followed by tobacco and saddle leather flavors at the back of your tongue.

One day it occurred to me that I was just as happy with a cup of coffee from Circle K as I was from beans grown by a lonely farmer at the foot of Mount Kenya.

Yes friends. I have no coffee palate.

By the way, right now both of my sisters are absolutely cringing and checking our family tree to make sure I am actually from the same bloodline. On the other hand, my brother is thinking, yeah, I’ll meet you at Circle K for a cup of joe. My sisters really are coffee connoisseurs. Unlike us, they don’t have holes in their stomachs from cup after cup of crappy coffee.

But even I draw a line.

A while ago, I decided that I was going to try to make homemade tortillas.  I read that you could use a big coffee can to flatten your tortillas.

So off I went to Walmart to find coffee in a big can. To my surprise, coffee is no longer sold in metal cans. They all come in bags or in plastic containers.

After looking and looking, I finally found one lone brand of coffee in a big 3-lb. can. Three pounds of coffee for something like $5.75. At that price, it must really be swill, I thought to myself. Still, I needed that can.

About that time, a woman somewhere around my age reached for that same coffee. “It’s my husband and my favorite,” she told me. “It isn’t too strong and we like the flavor.”

So I bought the coffee.

The next day I brewed up a pot of the coffee. I sat down with my cup and took that much-anticipated first sip.

It was, to put it bluntly, undrinkable. Simply awful. I did the unheard of thing and poured an entire pot of coffee down the drain and, what’s more, poured the remaining unused coffee grounds into the garbage can.

Even I have standards.

You Da Man

Posted in Whimsies by

I had an acquaintance once who had a particularly annoying sense of humor. She would say things like, “Wow, you wear that shirt a lot; you must really like it. Just kidding.” Or maybe “Did you put your make-up on in the dark this morning? Just kidding.” Somehow, to her, adding just kidding to the end of her comment made it less hurtful. It didn’t.

I struggle with a lot of the Bible. Not struggle as in disbelieving the word of God. Struggle as in understanding why God did some of the things that the Bible says he did. The Old Testament, in particular, has many instances of actions taken by God in which I say to myself, “Really? That seems mean.”

Right up there on the top of the lot is the story of God asking Abraham to sacrifice his beloved only son, Isaac. The part of the story that I have always struggled with was why God felt the need to make Abraham prove his love. Doesn’t God know everything? Didn’t he already know how much Abraham loved him? Asking Abraham to do such a horrific thing and then stopping him at the last second by saying – basically – “Ha ha, just kidding. But you did good, boy!” seems insecure and mean-spirited.

But the truth of the matter is that there are a lot of things that I don’t understand about God and his world. For example, what was the point of the transfiguration? What was Jesus talking to Moses and Elijah about as they appeared at his side as they were – according to Mark’s gospel – “conversing with him”? I even go so far as to wonder just how Peter, James, and John even KNEW it was Moses and Elijah. Were they wearing nametags? Did Jesus greet them? “Hey there, Mosey. Thanks for stopping by.”

Seriously, these are the things I wonder as I listen to God’s Word being read at Mass. I’m pretty sure God’s going to have a good talk with me when and if I make it to the Pearly Gates.

As I pondered the readings later on after Mass, however, here are a couple of thoughts that occurred to me regarding God’s request that Abraham sacrifice the son he loved so much. (And I absolutely didn’t go out and get my Ph.D. in theology last night, so these are just the random thoughts of a struggling Christian.)

Abraham is a pretty important guy in Jewish history, and therefore in Christian history as well. He was the father of the Jews. According to Genesis: I will bless you abundantly and make your descendants as countless as the stars of the sky and the sands of the seashore; your descendants shall take possession of the gates of their enemies, and in your descendants all the nations of the earth shall find blessing.

By the way, here are some of my mom and dad’s descendants, and therefore Abraham’s…..

Because Abraham is such an important person, he needed to be totally in love with God and incredibly loyal and strong. While it’s true that God knew that Abraham was loyal and would obey his command, perhaps he needed Abraham himself to recognize just how loyal he was to his Lord. Abraham needed to truly believe that he was God’s chosen leader of men and that he fully deserved this position, as demonstrated by his obedience. No doubts.

It further  occurred to me that according to Genesis, once Abraham and Isaac reached Moriah, he told his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.”

Once they built the altar, Isaac asked his father where the lamb was that they were going to offer. Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.”

In the past, I have always assumed that Abraham said these things so as to keep everyone calm and to prevent Isaac from freaking out. But it dawned on me as I pondered this reading that perhaps Abraham told his servants that they would be right back, and told Isaac that God would provide the sacrifice, because every part of his being knew that God would never make him sacrifice his beloved son. No way, no how.  Perhaps he didn’t know the point of the exercise, but he knew his God. He wasn’t lying when he said they would be right back; he was fully telling the truth.

Now that I’ve address that concern, I will get to work on the Transfiguration. Hmmmm…….

Saturday Smile: Honey, I Forgot to Duck

Posted in Whimsies by

Despite the fact that the temperature was only in the 50s and it was mostly cloudy, and despite the fact that the Rockies lost to the Diamondbacks 7-5 when they had been ahead 4-1 at one point, the opening game of the Spring Training season was yesterday, and the fact that Bill and I were among those watching the action made me smile. After all, it was the first game and they were out of practice. Some of the boys looked about the age of our grandson Alastair and you could still smell the farm league on their clothing. And though the weather was not perfect, there was no wind and when the sun would poke out from the clouds, it was extremely pleasant. And a beer at a ballpark tastes good in any season…..

Our seats were tremendous, only six rows up from first base. We saw lots of foul balls head our direction. In fact, one thing that didn’t make me smile was that one of the balls whizzed past us at an amazingly high clip, and hit a woman not 50 feet from me right in the face. Not good. The medical squad appeared quickly, and she was walked out looking like she had no black eyes, but maybe a broken nose and perhaps some missing teeth. I suggested to Bill that maybe those seats weren’t the best choice after all.

Nothing says welcome spring like the start of Spring Training, and it made me smile (despite the fact that I still take the world’s worst selfies)…..

Thursday Thoughts

Posted in Whimsies by

Premature Reporting?
Bec told me yesterday that when my blog post showed up on her email and she saw her picture, she was afraid I had written an obituary for her, just in case, and accidentally posted it. I assured her that I no obit prepared as I was fully confident in the skills of the surgeon and her own stubbornness regarding her surgery on Monday morning. “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated,” said Bec and Mark Twain.

Cookie Monster
I have two – count ‘em – two granddaughters who are Girl Scouts. Being the good grandparent that I am, I ordered five boxes of cookies from each. I swore this year I wouldn’t do it, and yet…..

The cookies are particularly onerous because my favorite cookie-eater Bill has given up sweets for Lent. So they sit on top of my desk, tempting me.  My plan is to divvy them out to myself until the weekend, and take any unopened boxes to our church food collection basket. Or maybe since she will be unable to protect herself, I will take a box or two to Bec.

I’m a Bit Chilly
I mentioned that we the owners of this home in Mesa, AZ, had to install a new air conditioner. For reasons I can’t quite explain, it also necessitated the need for a new furnace. It had something to do with, I don’t know, something. Anyway, for the first time since we arrived in AZ in January, I actually turned on the heat yesterday morning. While I promise I’m not complaining (Jen bitterly sent me a screen shot of the Weather Channel’s temperature indicating 1 degree yesterday morning in Fort Collins, Colorado), I still made a pot of chili this week. The highs will only be in the 50s. Bill and I have tickets for the home Spring Training baseball game between the Rockies and the Diamondbacks, and it might be a bit cool. I might even have to wear a sweatshirt over my Rockies shirt.

Pentagon Papers
Bill and I went to the movies yesterday and saw The Post. Never mind that Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep are such incredible actors. The story was fascinating. I was in high school when all of the Pentagon Papers stuff was going on, so I’m afraid I didn’t remember much about it. I will confess, however, that towards the end of the movie, when Katherine Graham/Meryl Streep makes the decision to publish the story and told her naysayers, “This is not my father’s paper; it is not my husband’s paper; this is MY paper now and I will make the decision based on what I think,” I literally let out a tiny little cheer. Very quiet. And I might have pumped my fist in the air. Just a little bit.

Angry Campers
The theater was filled with people about our age. We thought it would be empty because we were at a 4 o’clock showing and we thought people would be heading to their early dinner and the movie has been out for a while, but there was not a seat to be had. At one point, there was literally a yelling match between two men who were not even sitting in the same row. From what I could tell, one man didn’t have his phone turned off and kept getting either calls or texts. The other man yelled at him to turn off his phone. Yelled. A few moments later, he yelled at him again. The man with the offending phone yelled back, “I’m trying to figure out how to turn off my phone.” And you wonder why they get impatient with winter visitors.

I Got a Hitch in My Gitalong

Posted in Whimsies by

Growing old is not for wimps. – Just About Everyone Who Has Reached the Age of 60

I’ve said this many times before on this very blogsite, but it’s worth repeating. As we Baby Boomers age, despite the fact that our bodies ache more than they did when we were 21, it just doesn’t seem like we are older. Not really. Our brains still think we are young; it’s our bodies that keep us honest.

I admitted to Bec just yesterday morning that I am constantly complaining about the old folks in front of me in line at Costco, or the old folks in Buicks who drive too slow, or too fast, or change lanes without looking. But as I told her, I have to remind myself that those old folks are ME! They are probably complaining about something I’m doing that’s getting on their very last nerve. Why do I think of myself as somehow being different when they are likely my very age?

I remember many years ago when Bill’s mother Wilma was visiting us at our Denver house. It has two stories, and back then I found the need to go up and down the stairs many times a day. One day she was sitting in our living room and I came down the stairs the way I always did in those days – full speed. Thump thump thump thump thump. She said to me, “I can’t tell you how much I envy the fact that you can run up and down the stairs as you do. I wish I could still do that.”

I didn’t think about it much at the time, but that conversation comes back to me nowadays when I don’t run up and down the steps nearly as fast, and in fact, try to limit the number of times that I walk up the stairs. Combine trips, donchaknow. And it’s more like thump….thump…..thump…..thump…..thump.

The reason I was with Bec yesterday is that I attended a meeting with her in preparation for surgery that she is having on Monday. She, along with some-852 other adults around the world, will be having a hip replaced. Thanks to arthritis, her old one simply wore out. Imagine that.

The good news, of course, is that we live at a time when hip surgery is considered no big deal. An hour-and-a-half or so in the company of the surgeon, a night in the hospital, and you’re sent home with care instructions and pain medications and painful physical therapy to look forward to. The doctors and nurses will have her up and walking by Monday afternoon. (Well, the nurses will. The doctors will probably be on the golf course by then.) She will be touring France by the fall…..

Bec traveled to China last year despite her arthritis. She’s a trooper!

I’m making it sound a lot easier than it will be, of course. But her friends and family know that she has been fighting with that hip for months and months. I’m pretty sure she is more than willing to go through the next few weeks in exchange for being able to get out of a car easily or walk around the park without pain.

As for me, I, along with her kids and other siblings and nieces and nephews, will take care of her any way we can. Meals are being prepared and will be in her freezer by Sunday night. We are all praying so incessantly that God is saying, “Alright already. I hear you!” She will be so sick of having helpers that by the end of the week, she will be telling everyone to JUST GO HOME. And thank goodness for Kindles and cable and Netflix.

Getting old might not be a walk in the park, but at least nowadays things can be done so that we can take a walk in the park even as our joints wear out!

Remember her in your prayers, friends.

Summer in the Sausage

Posted in Appetizers, Recipes, Whimsies by

My mom made dinner almost every night of the week when I grew up. On occasion, there would be a few things to munch on before Mom served our meal. Nothing fancy, mind you. Often she would open up a couple of cans of Vienna sausages…..

…..slice them in half, and we would grab them and eat them as fast as we could. Nothing fancy in which to dunk the sausages; just plain ol’ Vienna sausages. The first time I opened up a can of Vienna sausages and laid them in front of Bill, I believe he thought I’d lost my mind.

But perhaps more often than that, Mom would lay out summer sausage and a hunk of cheddar cheese. Actually, in the Gloor household, summer sausage might be an appetizer; it might be a picnic lunch; it might be a snack in the afternoon. We fought over the end pieces, for reasons I now can’t even begin to remember. What I know, however, is that to this day, if there is summer sausage available, I can’t keep my hands off of it.

I had never thought about making summer sausage or even how it was made; it was just one of those things you buy in your neighborhood grocery store’s deli. Still, our neighbor here mentioned that he made his own summer sausage, and shared his recipe with me. One of my challenges for 2018 was to prepare food I have never made before. With this in mind, I gave it a try this weekend…..

I had everything on hand except the home meat cure. I checked the grocery stores, but like the Elmer’s glue I sought last week, I couldn’t find it at Fry’s. I’m pretty sure, however, that it isn’t an ingredient in slime. Anyway where do you go if you want an unusual ingredient and you want it fast? Amazon, of course.  Dear Amazon: one bag of Morton’s Quick Tender Home Meat Cure, some Elmer’s glue for slime, and a kangaroo to give to Bill for his birthday please. Two days later – ding dong.

My neighbor stressed the importance of getting the fattiest ground beef, so I started with two pounds of 80% lean hamburger meat. To that, I added liquid smoke, mustard seeds, finely minced garlic,  coarse-ground black pepper, and red pepper flakes. I shaped the mixture into two tightly formed logs…..

The meat logs were wrapped in aluminum foil, shiny side against the meat. I placed the aluminum-wrapped meat into the refrigerator for 24 hours.

The next day, I punched holes into the bottom of the foil with toothpicks and placed them on a broiler pan into which about a half-inch of water was added to the bottom…..

The meat was baked at 325 degrees for an hour-and-a-half, and then removed to cool on the counter for a bit before it is once again placed into the refrigerator for another 12 hours.

After 12 hours, I unwrapped the meat, and there’s what I found….

Friends, it is good. It is, in fact, delicious. Even made from scratch, I can’t proclaim summer sausage to be health food. I haven’t had the guts to look at the ingredients in the curing mixture, but I’m pretty sure salt is the number one ingredient. Remember, that’s how Laura Ingall’s mom preserved her meat over the long Missouri winters. I don’t remember ever hearing Laura say, “Ma, I’m a bit concerned about our blood pressure. Could you cut back a bit on the salt?”

But the flavor is delicious and I haven’t even tried it with cheddar cheese and a piece of melba toast. Yum. Here is the recipe I used for my sausage…..

Homemade Summer Sausage

Ingredients
2 lbs. 80% lean ground beef
2 T. mustard seed
1 T. finely-minced fresh garlic
2 T. liquid smoke flavoring
2 T. meat curing mixture (I used Morton Tender Quick)
1 t. coarse black pepper
1 T. red pepper flakes

Process
In a large bowl, mix all of the ingredients using your clean hands just until thoroughly combined. Form into two equal logs, and wrap each log in aluminum foil with the shiny side facing the meat. Refrigerate for 24 hours.

Poke holes in the bottom of the logs using toothpicks. Place the logs on a broiler rack into which you have added about ½ in of water.

Bake in a preheated 325 degree oven for 90 minutes. Remove from oven and cool slightly on the counter. Place the sausages into the refrigerator to chill for 12 hours.

Enjoy!

 

You Talkin’ to Me?

Posted in Whimsies by

A few weeks ago, I somehow came across an article with a headline that caught my eye: REPORT: IT’S NOT OKAY TO JUST START TALKING TO PEOPLE YOU DON’T KNOW. The article went on to explain that a study conducted by a major university analyzed conversations between strangers over a nine-month period and concluded that conversations with complete strangers is not acceptable.

This headline caught my eye because I am constantly embarking upon conversations with strangers in the grocery store, the library, Target, or while waiting for a table at a restaurant. You name the place, I have started conversations. As you can imagine, it was with great relief that I noticed that the article was attributed to The Onion, a digital media organization that offers completely satirical news stories. They were fake news before fake news was a thing. The difference between The Onion and Katie Couric telling the world as she hosted NBC’s coverage of the opening ceremonies of the Olympics that the Dutch people are so good at speed skating because the people ice skate to work is that The Onion is unapologetically fake, and hilariously funny.

The truth of the matter is that, though the article was tongue-in-cheek, it really almost never works to strike up conversations with complete strangers. Ask me. I know. Does it stop me, however? I am sorry to say that thus far it has not.

You might recall that I recently mentioned, for example, that I complimented a man for opening the car door for his wife. It turns out that it was a rare example of an unsolicited conversation that seemed to end fine.

I have many examples of times when my conversations haven’t panned out. Take the time on the cruise ship when I said to the stranger standing next to me in the buffet line, “Have you ever seen so many delicious looking items in your life?” She gave me a dour look and replied, “I am legally blind, and can’t see the food at all.” Or on the same ship, when I was carrying an ice cream cone to my room and said to the man riding in the elevator with me, “I can’t seem to go by the ice cream machine without making myself a cone,” and he replied, “Well, then you’re just going to get fat.” Maybe the worst example was when I asked the cashier at the grocery store if her shift was almost over (something I often ask as if it is ANY of my business). When she responded that she was going home soon, I cheerfully said, “Well that’s nice. You have the whole rest of the day to enjoy.” Her response? “My husband passed away a month ago. I actually hate going home and having all that time to fill without him.” Really….how do you come back from a gaffe like that?

I have fallen flat on my face in so many unsolicited conversations that I have really been working with myself to stop doing it. I know the article was fake, but what it said is absolutely true: “Ninety-five percent of the time, the people being talked to experience an extreme spike in anxiety. The only thoughts going through their heads during these unwanted conversations with strangers are ‘Stop talking to me. I don’t know you. Please go away.’’

Perhaps even worse than the people who put me (properly) in my place by a response are the ones who simply look at me like I am either nuts or a pain in the rear end, or perhaps both. I’m afraid that look is very familiar to me. Familiar enough that you would think that I would have learned by now.

I will continue my quest to learn to keep my mouth shut, even if the person in line next to me is wearing the same t-shirt as I. I will remind myself that The Onion is correct when they state that “the study confirmed that in 0 percent of cases do individuals ever want to be spoken to by someone they don’t know. And if you see me coming, definitely look the other direction.