#askapop

What did we ever do before folks had 27 ways to contact us before the rooster crowed? Really. I remember when my mom would give us a buck at 8 o’clock in the mornin’ and have us walk the mile or so off the hill to the city pool—and threaten to rip off an arm… Read more

Don’t know if y’all have a cat like this, but we’ve got one that’ll love on ya like you’re made of catnip, then two seconds later bite ya like you said somethin’ bout his momma. Soon as he’s drawn blood, he gives you the sweetest eyes and wants you to pick him back up. Really.… Read more

Ya know, one subject I did exceptionally poor in during my educational career was “penmanship.” Anyone that’s seen these paws put anything to paper can agree that me and anything with lead or ink comin’ out the business end don’t seem to get along. Luckily, since college I’ve had computers (a VIC-20 was my first,… Read more

Always and never. Two words that are wicked dangerous in ye’ole vocabulary. Use them with caution. It’s easy to say “I never lie to my kids.”  “I always tell the truth.” To turn a phrase that’s popular nowadays … but do ya though? I’m not talkin’ about the big stuff. I’m talkin’ about the little… Read more

Perusin’ — man, that’s a fun word, ain’t it! — perusin’ my pics the other day I was lookin’ back at some younger versions of the prettiest gal on the planet and the luckiest guy that ever lived. That got me thinkin’ about how we got here. Yeah, rainbows and unicorns and fairy dust and… Read more

Havin’ raised a kid and been on countless youth trips with hundreds of other awesome youth, there’s a phrase that’s come out of my mouth a fair few times: “Ya know… it’s awful hard to soar like an eagle if you choose to hang out with turkeys.” My dad and Pappeye both used to say… Read more

Alrightyroo. Gonna start with a bit of knowledge I picked up along the way. I heard the entirety of human wisdom lives between 4 and 14. At 4 we know every question known to mankind. At 14 we know every answer. Not sure how scientific that is. They both take the patience of Job, and,… Read more

My beloved introduced me to a keen movie (that’s a word us old folk use for neato!) shortly after we began datin’ … The Quiet Man, with John Wayne in it. One of the characters has a sidekick he’d ask to “open my book” … “write a name” … then “strike a line thru it.”… Read more

One of our favorite pizza places when I was in junior high was four or five blocks from school. We’d walk down for lunch when we could. It was called 5 Corners … because, well, five streets met there. It wasn’t the only place in Charley West where that happened. Come to find out, it… Read more

Last night there was a death in the house. No, no, no. To quote Pastor John’s rule for the children’s sermon: nothing that was alive or has ever been alive. Tragic demise none the less. Our meeecro-waveahhhyyy. You’d think they’d build ’em to last more than a quarter of a century, huh. On the surface… Read more

Time. Four letters. Packs a punch. Y’know the minute hand on clocks really didn’t catch on till the railroads were around? ’Cause nobody needed to be that precise. And let’s face it … even in the same town, across the street, if you were within four or five minutes of each other a couple decades… Read more

Have ya ever been at a reunion where folks that don’t see each other every day get to chit-chattin’ about the past? Dad told me about takin’ his dad — my Papa — to a gathering in South Carolina. A bunch of Marines, back together, talkin’ the South Pacific in WWII. He said if you… Read more

Oh boy … I knew the time was comin’. I’d been puttin’ it off for over a year, but as most folks my age get (hey — no comments from the peanut gallery), we just hate admittin’ it. My beloved phone has developed a very unhealthy relationship with its charging apparatus. I’d seen the warning… Read more

Ok … I’m gonna let y’all in on a little secret here … My mom had a superpower … I think it gets inserted into moms and teachers somehow through a flux capacitor from the planet Zerton, because it seems they all end up with it … They have this way of just …. lookin’… Read more

I may be aging myself here a bit (no comments from the peanut gallery!) but when I first started in the professional world, passwords typically weren’t required to log into computers. Heck, most folks didn’t HAVE computers unless they had a specific NEED for one. When passwords became a thing — by then I was… Read more