Dear Reader:

We unfortunate “children of the sentence diagram/language requirement decades” still bear scars from the terrifying call to go to the blackboard to diagram a sentence.

I remember my sixth grade teacher would tap her ruler against the black board, loudly, as one poor “victim” classmate shook in terror (eraser in hand) while the teacher yelled at the rest of the class not to verbally give the “victim” any help. We became accomplices to the crime through terrified silent submission.

By sixth grade sometimes the “complex” sentences were so long…it would take a whole sheet of Blue Horse composition paper to “build” all the slanted line attachments to the main sentence.

I remember crying over these homework assignments…even poor mother would groan, loudly, when we got to the unit on sentence diagramming.

These childhood memories have slowly died away… today children are spared this ‘teaching tool’ but I still have to confront the “ghost of  present“… who drives me insane with my typing keyboard on my desktop computer.

I took typing lessons in high school when we had to literally wear blind folds, over our eyes, to take the unit tests so we couldn’t watch where our fingers were going. Another terrifying youth memory! But it did work…I can type anything quickly on a regular keyboard and am pretty proficient at it…if I say so myself…..

*Much better than pecking with random fingers or thumbs- like my kids do on their smart phones or iPads. I still find myself lining my fingers up correctly to type on any form of keyboard…big or little.

*And when did my fingers get so fat? I keep hitting two letters at the same time on those itsy bitsy new “keyboards” the “children” and grandchildren use. *I think this question is one of those cyber space questions that live on forever floating around the universe.

Whoever first placed the “i” before the “o” in this succession on the keyboard should be taken out and shot. If I had a dollar for every time I type “live” instead of “love” I would be a millionaire.

Maybe it is just me…but my brain neurons always want to hit “i” instead of “o” for every single word these two vowels are in. And sometimes this leads to very embarrassing situations.

For instance…yesterday…Honey and I were emailing back and forth…she was letting me know that getting the Covid vaccination was just as hard in NC as SC -she and Mike are having a terrible time trying to get started on their first Covid vaccination. I was telling her about having to get my bone density shot (Prolia) in the same arm I had just gotten my Covid vaccination four days earlier and it was still sore….

Thank goodness Lena, nurse, was able to put it in the back of my arm instead of the front. (Can’t switch arms because of the cancer causing lymphedema condition in my left arm.)

Anyway….I finished the email response and sent it to Honey…later in the day I re-read it and broke out laughing…once again…the “i”-“o” problem had popped up as I told her I was able to get my “sh_t” (hit that “i” again) at the doctor’s office. 🙂

Even when I sent Ambika a message last week….instead of talking about her three adorable little boys…I typed ‘adorable little “bits” instead of boys.

But on the bright side…maybe it is a Freudian slip and not just a brain “dis-connect”….that if we are “living” life right it should be filled with “loving”….so from now on…if you catch an “i” over “o” problem on the post…just nod and say “Becky did it again…but she is still “living loving” every day!

And she is! 🙂

So until tomorrow…

“I ‘live” all my readers and with what brain cells I have still “git”…thank you for “pitting” up with me on this crazy “afterniin!”

“Tiday is my favirite day”  Winnie the Piip

…And Remember to “LIve MIre” or

This week is Kindness Week at James B. Edwards Elementary School…each day there is a different theme about kindness that allows the children to express themselves through artwork and dress-ups. Jake and Eva Cate have had so much fun participating…yesterday’s theme was “Kindness Rocks Day” and a “Tie-dyed to Kindness Day!

I do have such respect and admiration for their teachers on the front line every day and still managing to keep creative endeavors included in the curriculum… attributes we want all our children to emulate. Kindness is one of the most important characteristics of all.

Quick reminder: We parents and grandparents need to be role modelsof kindness if we want the next generation to emulate and imitate this characteristic.

America… we are better than the way we are acting…come on…we need to put some kindness in our hearts towards our fellow man  and be the best role model for the little eyes that are quietly watching us. They aren’t going to care what we say about kindness if we don’t act on it. Hypocrisy and greed are the worst enemies of kindness.