So, where to begin.  I'm saving the Some Guy Named Bob story for tomorrow.


I came home from golfing a few Thursdays ago and plunked my ample behind into my chair. I flipped open my laptop to the homepage for the Hooterville Daily Dish, our hometown paper, to check up on the latest.

The headline that caught my eye first, was about a 25-year-old man who was arrested for attempting to sell drugs at a local high school, in fact, my old high school.  Closer reading revealed that the criminal in question, er, alleged criminal in question, was none other than my nephew, Waldo S. Sneed.

The dreams of Sneeds everywhere and me in particular, do not include seeing our somewhat obscure last name plastered in the paper in association with serious criminal activity. 

The article went on to say that Waldo led police on a protracted foot chase before his apprehension.  He was found to be armed, albeit with a BB gun.

Not to speak ill of the dead, but my late brother was a minor criminal and major scammer.  He always thought that the rules applied to everyone else and that he was ten times smarter than average.  He found a life partner, his wife Alma, who shared his sense of entitlement.  The spawn of these two, Waldo and his sister Wanda, never stood a chance.

No youthful transgression was great enough that it couldn't be laid at the foot of someone else.  The kids failed in school, it was the school's fault.  Failed at another and another and another?  It was the fault of the system.  When they dropped out of high school, it was because they were too smart for school anyway.

Drugs?  Heck, all kids do drugs.  Doing drugs with the kids?  Better than having them do them on the street.

My favorite story about young Waldo was when he was ticketed for doing 70 mph in a 40 mph zone, with his mother riding shotgun.  Oh, and he didn't have his license yet, just a learners permit.  It turned out to be the cop's fault.  Who would have guessed?

I once had a yearlong teaching gig at the middle school Waldo and Wanda had attended a few years earlier.  It was 9 months of, "Are you by any chance related to...?". 

So, despite my brother being dead six years now, his legacy lives on.   The gift that keeps on giving.







 







Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky