by Andy Wood on April 9, 2009
Rag. Now there’s an every-day word.
Unsophisticated, earthy, almost guttural – rags are blue-collar, made-for-dirt, hidden-from-company kind of stuff.
We all have them, but some people go to considerable lengths to deny it.
“It’s not a wash rag, dear. It’s a wash cloth.”
“Oh. Yew not from around heah, are ya’?”
That t-shirt or those shorts you’re wearing? Rags in the making.
I grew up with wash rags, shop rags, shoeshine rags, snot rags (my dad’s term), and dust rags. “Dust cloths” were the property of Yankees and people from other parts of town. [click to continue…]
by Andy Wood on September 11, 2008
Soon we’ll be electing a new president, and get all those changes we’ve been hoping for. Gas prices are coming down. Congress will soon have – I mean, give us – some more of our money to spend. The economy is going up, or down, depending on who you listen to. The Iraq war is getting better, and troops are coming home. The Dallas Cowboys (plus Jessica) are America’s Team again. I guess there’s nothing left to worry about, right?
Wrong.
Not long ago I was in a public restroom that still had one of those pull-down linen hand towels. Somebody left the front panel off, and there for all to see were these emboldened words:
FAILURE TO LOAD PROPERLY COULD RESULT IN INJURY OR DEATH!
I dried my hands on my jeans. I mean, you never know! I could just see my tombstone now:
“Here the body of Andy lies,
He pulled on a towel, and found a surprise.
He lived life well, and we’ll never forget -
Now his soul’s with God, but his hands are still wet.”
I was eating at a world-famous restaurant that will go unnamed. As I walked beneath its arches (oops!) and ordered a burger, I grabbed a few napkins. There in beautiful print were these words: [click to continue…]
by Andy Wood on April 21, 2008
I guess it was the first face-off between parent and teacher in Carrie’s life. She was a little freaked in first grade about some impending disaster reported as fact in her science class – global warming, the death of the ozone layer, or something. We were riding in the car, and she asked me what I thought (in first-grade language, of course) about the certain impending doom of planet.
I found myself speaking from the depths of my soul – using words I’d never put together in the same sentence before.
“Carrie,” I said, “never, never, never believe anyone who would make you afraid of the future.”
I came by that honestly. I remember asking my dad at about the same age, “Did you know that the Russians have enough bombs to destroy every American?” He replied, “Yes, and we have enough bombs to blow up every Russian.” That more or less ended the Cold War for me. (By the way, you just haven’t lived until you’ve heard “Shout to the Lord” sung in Russian. Those American Idol contestants got nothin’ on our brothers and sisters in the former Soviet Union.)
This all came back to me last week. I was shopping with my wife at Walmart and passed a display of some sort of DVD series or books or something. The basic idea was, “spend your money on this to learn about how we’re all going to hell in a handbasket.” I passed.
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