Category: True Stories

I was on my way to work one morning several years ago.  I needed some gas in my Jeep. I stopped at a convenience store on the way to work.  When I stopped at the store, I took the keys out of the ignition like I always do when I get out of the car.  I went into the store to pay for the gas because the pay-at-the-pump feature was not working.  When I got back to my Jeep, I found the door was locked.  I reached into the pocket of my jacket where I always put my keys, but they were not there.  I usually carry two sets of keys. One has the key to my vehicle and the other has the keys to my office.  I found the office keychain but could not find the one for my car.  I must have locked my keys in the car.  I tried looking through the windows of the car, but I couldn’t tell if the keys were in the ignition. If they weren’t there, they must be in the floor, maybe between the console and the seat.   My wife carries a set of keys for my vehicle so I decided to call her as see if she could let me in my car.  She said she was at Walmart, but it shouldn’t take her that long. She would come to let me in my car as soon as she was done.

Most of my followers are old enough to remember the old Columbia House and BMG music clubs.  They had deals where they would sell you 8 to10 albums for a penny if you would agree to buy a certain number later.  They started with albums but over the years, their selections included 8-Track tapes, cassette tapes and CDs.  The number of records in the deal also varied over time.  Ultimately, you ended up paying about the normal price for each record. The nice thing about the clubs were that you could start getting a lot of music for practically nothing.  The drawback was buying the other music to fulfill your obligation to the club, paying more for those albums that you would normally pay at the store.  The other hassle was the “selection of the month” that they would automatically send you unless you declined to inform them with a card you returned.  Many deadlines were missed, and albums shipped that people didn’t want.  The other hassle was trying to return albums you didn’t want.  

This story starts on Thursday, July 11 and there are several things that you need to know going in.  Here is a list:

• I was on vacation from July 8 through July 12.  I had taken off because of some of these other things that were happening.
• My wife started a project of refinishing our kitchen furniture on July 7. She planned to complete it before July 12 because of some of the other things happening over the weekend.
• My father’s 80th birthday was July 8.  We planned a birthday party for him on Saturday, July 13th at my sister’s house.  I would be cooking pulled pork BBQ for this event starting Friday night.
• My mother-in-law was coming to visit.  She would fly into Memphis late on Thursday night, get a rental car and go to her son’s house where she was staying.  We would not see her until Friday.
• I planned to cook smoked chicken for my mother-in-law and my wife’s family on Friday night at our house.  I would be able to visit while I was getting started on the food for my father’s party.
• The upstairs air conditioning unit at our house had been acting up.  A repairman was scheduled to be there on Thursday.
• Because things had not gone well with the furniture refinishing, a planned day trip had been canceled on Wednesday.  This meant that I was off all week and we hadn’t gone anywhere for vacation all summer.
• I planned to take my dad to a minor league baseball game in town on Thursday night.

A few years ago, I was cooking ribs on my smoker grill on a Saturday afternoon.  We planned to have friends at our house that evening to help us eat the ribs.  The other big thing that was happening that day was my wife was at my son’s house helping him paint before he moved in. When my wife gets involved in a project like this, she sometimes loses track of time.  I knew she would want to have plenty of time to prep the other food before our guests arrived.  I would send her text messages with updates on the progress of the ribs throughout the day.  

In the late 1970’s, Golden Gloves Boxing was big in Jackson, Tennessee.  Some of the local boxers, like Jackie Beard (pictured above), were good enough that they were winning national AAU titles.  I lived near Jackson and some of my friends expressed an interest in going to watch matches.  At the time, I didn’t watch much boxing but decided it was a good idea to go even if it was just because it would be something different to do.

In college, I was in a fraternity.  Each year, my fraternity would have a St. Patrick’s Day party.  One year this party was on a Saturday night. The guys arranged to have the party at the local Fraternal Order of Police lodge that year.  Their building was on a road just outside of town. I had been to parties there before but not so often that I was clear on where the drive to the building was located. There were lots of trees on either side of the road in the area where they were located, and the road had lots of hills and curves right around the drive.  My girlfriend, now my wife, was with me and it was raining that night.

When I was a senior in high school, a story started about a local cemetery.  The story was that there was a chair out next to one of the tombstones and an old man would come out at sit next to his wife’s grave.  The cemetery was out in the middle of nowhere, located next to a field.  There were no houses, churches or businesses close to it.  The old man was not supposed to be a ghost.  They said he lived close to the cemetery.  The only thing about the story that was creepy was that it was at a cemetery.  But that was enough for a small group of my friends.  We decided to take a trip out to the cemetery to see it for ourselves.

Things you should know before you read this story:

1. I work with a lady named Shonna Sharpe.
2. My employer offers flu shots and other vaccinations as part of their health plan

And for best impact, this story should be read aloud.

I don’t claim to be an expert on people’s habits of breaking wind.  It’s not something that we talk about that often.  Only family and the closest of friends usually discuss it. But as a rule, people don’t usually fart in public.  We don’t even talk about it in a lot of situations.  The scale of whether we talk about it goes hand in hand with the scale of whether we do it.  For formal events, dinners, religious services, and business meetings it is an absolute no-no.  Home settings are usually where it is more acceptable but even then, I’m sure the rules vary from family to family.  Families with younger kids might be more accepting of a bottom burp that a family with older kids. It really depends on when and to what extent the parents try to instill good manners in the kids.