The young lady at Subway never asks if I need the senior discount anymore, she just gives it to me as I start to pay. I used to be carded at Hardee’s for the golden ager’s coffee discount, now they just ring it up.

To assist myself and maybe some of you who have reached the senior citizen discount arena, here is a little humor to lighten your day.

You are a senior soul if:

You look forward to the adrenalin rush of your 50+ vitamins.

You’ve read all the magazines in more than one doctor’s office.

9:00 pm is past your bedtime

You’re looking forward to a nap by 9:00 am.

Your grandchildren want to use you for a report on fossils.

The highlight of your day is your annual checkup

You buy drugstore glasses to help you find your glasses, lose those,

then have to have your thirty something neighbor

drive you back to the drugstore to get another pair.

You are a senior soul if:

6 am is late in the day.

The centerpiece on your dining room is your new blood pressure kit.

You know the ambulance drivers by their first names.

You tape the medicine commercials for later viewing.

When the commercials announce the side effects of the medicine you are on

it throws you into a panic attack, resulting in more medicine.

And finally, you don’t dread birthdays when you consider the alternative!

     Just to let you know, I didn’t borrow these fun facts from a website, internet jokes or any of my friends. They are the product of a warped senior brain…mine!

Note:  This is the time of the year that heralds band concerts and end of school activities for my grandchildren. Three months of the summer I travel in order to see these six wonderful grands before they grow up, up, and away. I will be reducing my story contributions to once per week, unless I have a break in action.   Have a grand day!

My daughter began life with a curiosity second to none. Stephanie is also a great reader of body language.  It’s a minor miracle that we surprised her at all. I drew my grandchildren, Stephen, 15, Joy, 13, and Faith, 10 into my tangled web early on. I consulted my son-in-law’s sister for the right time to entwine Clay into the mix. From that day forward they found it hard to keep a straight face. Read More→

Dateline: Winston-Salem, NC ‘1960ish’:

This really is a true story!  I will have trouble getting through this, because I crack myself up every time I get a picture of this episode in my brain. The names have been changed because I don’t know how to get in touch with these folks and one of their relatives might sue me. Read More→

Our Calvary bunch enjoyed fellowship meals on Sunday nights, hay rides, and campfires in the fall. The summer found some of us at Laurel Ridge Moravian camp above North Wilkesboro, NC. The Calvary Bunch consisted of not only those who were in our same grade but some a few years older and younger.  There was an assortment of personalities but we had more than the Moravian denomination in common.  We rebelled before our boomer generation made headlines resisting authority.

During our high school years, we attended a Sunday School class overseen by a prominent political figure from the North Carolina State Legislature.  His bowler hat, bow tie, pipe, and horn-rimmed glasses added to his intellectual aura.  He knew the Bible like the back of his hand.  Upon entrance to class, we were quizzed verbally and on paper.  The previous week at R.J. Reynolds High School was no walk in the park.  Academia was intense as we were all involved in the foreign language credit of our selection. The Calvary Bunch was scattered throughout Latin, French, German, or Spanish.  Other classroom obstacles to hurdle were: Calculus, Algebra, Chemistry, Biology, Geometry, Economics, and a stellar English Department involved in a passionate romance with Shakespeare.

On Sundays we brought a tired countenance to our third floor table in the Senior High Sunday School room.  Mutinous thoughts began to take shape.  It’s not clear who spoke these thoughts into action first. I have an idea that it could have been our resident class character, a guy we called “Chipper.”  His fun-loving antics were always a source of great entertainment in an otherwise static atmosphere.

Under Chipper’s influence, we as one body, decided to start skipping Sunday School.  In the beginning, we skipped one Sunday a month so as not to arouse undue suspicion.  We left the church one-by-one and met along our route at a small doughnut shop near the Winston Theater.  This was a highly successful ploy for about six months.  The eight of us became so proud of our feat that we began to walk together, to our favorite rebel rendezvous.  It was a sunny, autumn day when the winds of capture found us.Sparked by the nip of fall, we lingered over our doughnuts and sodas. The shop’s doorbell signaled the arrival of one of our older siblings.

“Your jig is up, everybody’s parents are looking for y’all. You better say your prayers.”

We all surmised that grounding us from church social activities would be a sacrilege, but we underestimated parental authority.  After a month of only seeing each other over blue ditto sheets in Sunday School, we were finally allowed to attend a church hayride.  The refreshments were, you guessed it, doughnuts and soda.

Part of the Calvary Bunch: Ann Lewis Coogler, Fred (Chipper) Crouch, Patti Trivette Malspina, Amanda Bullins Crabtree

I love this time of year and the panic that envelops the grocery stores when snow or ice is forecast. Sometimes even the mention of a snow flurry clears the bread shelves. In my growing up years I lived in Winston-Salem and we had some great snowfalls. Read More→

Blacksnake Rd. Easley, SC, 1982—Just remember–I really am not making these stories up. They happened, ‘truth is stranger than fiction.’

There were lots of good parts to being a stay at home mom, but the downside was that money was scarce. Steak wasn’t on the menu when Max(ine) was around. That summer of ’82 we were growing Leonard the Goat. The rest of the provisions would be field peas and cornbread, field peas and cornbread and…..Steve provided for us well throughout his career as Ma Duke’s child, but sometimes the money almost ran out before the month did.  Our 15 acres of land included a Russian boar, goats, steak on the hoof[1], chickens, and a garden. Our land was our grocery store.   Read More→

Note: For those of you who are 40 or younger, and those of you who may not understand some of my Southern colloquialisms, footnotes will be located where footnotes are always located if you took my English class in elementary school, just sayin’.

I do chase a lot of rabbits in these stories. They are necessary for the telling of the story, stay with me here!

Dateline—Hot as a firecracker August, 1980 on Blacksnake Rd. Easley SC—aka Coon’s Creek (the nickname for our 15 acre farm, complete with cow pond and a snaky creek. Read More→

Just a few yuk, yuks to help your day!

I wasn’t the following man’s schoolteacher! We had to have the garage door repaired.  The Sears repairman told us that one of our problems was that we did not have a ‘large’ enough motor on the opener.  I thought for a minute, and said that we had the largest one Sears made at that time, a 1/2 horsepower.  He shook his head and said, “Lady, you need a 1/4 horsepower.”  I responded that 1/2 was larger than 1/4.  He said, “No, it’s not. Four is larger than two.”  We haven’t used Sears repair since.   Read More→

      As I skid downhill past sixty and begin the climb to the next decade, sleep becomes a rare and luxurious event.  My late husband, Bill Coogler, could sleep in a straight chair with a loud television in the background, I must have complete quiet.  In addition to quiet, all conditions must be right.  Bill would cut down large forests of trees with his snoring apparatus nightly. I called it, “The Salem Chainsaw Massacre.”  Earplugs muffle the ongoing machinery somewhat.  The only real cure was to roll my sleeping husband to a side position. Read More→

As a domestic engineer of thirty-two years, I have attempted to open my share of adult proof containers.  I can appreciate the fact that the Tylenol murders caused widespread panic for drug manufacturers everywhere. But now I have a homicidal heart directed toward packing engineers when I want to open a container. Read More→