Tales of Old

I've been feeling real good lately.  Energetic.  Confident.  Accomplishing.  Young.  Much younger than my 56 and a half years.

 Last night Jackie and I went out to dinner with our forever young 93-year-old Aunt Rose.

 When we returned to her  independent living facility, her group of friends were gathered in the lobby talking as they do every night.   They knew us and greeted us with smiles and hugs, and we reminisced about my Mom, who had lived there, and was loved and missed by the gang, and then we gave updates on our children.

As we boasted of their accomplishments, a dear lady in the group named Loretta turned to one of the new friends in the group and said, "You should see the artwork his daughter does. She is SO talented!"

I was confused for a moment thinking that my daughter Karen doesn't display her artwork, then realized what this lady was thinking. "That's my sister Lisa!" I dejectedly answered.

"Your sister!  She looks so young!  Her work is beautiful!"

I agreed and made sure she knew that Lisa is PAST 50, and indeed looks young, and is indeed talented!

This week marked the first of the standardized tests given to our students for the school year.  I was in charge of administering the assessment to three boys from several classrooms, and I needed to keep them under my wing until their classes were finished the testing.

  The first minutes after mine were finished were spent unwinding, chatting and looking at an enormous sea creature collection in the classroom.  Then they wanted to draw.  I saw no harm in letting them express themselves on paper for a few minutes.  One youngster was bragging about how good he was at drawing portraits and asked one of his friends if he could draw him.  He could and he did.   His classmate asked, "Why don't you draw Mr. Bonanno now?!"

"Naa...I can't.  Old people are too hard to draw." I didn't even ask what he meant by that, and those were long final minutes.

That is all......