Thanks to a local elementary school teacher for sharing the following. She asked her students to share in writing what they had done during their Christmas vacation. One student told his vacation was with Grandma and Grandpa at a mobile home park in Arizona. This is what he wrote.
“We always spend Christmas with Grandma and Grandpa. They used to live here in a big red brick house, but Grandpa got retarded and they moved to Arizona. They live in a place with a lot of retarded people. They live in tin huts. They ride big, three-wheel bikes.
They go to a big building they call the wrecked hall. But if it was a wrecked hall, it is fixed now.
They play games there and do exercises, but they don’t do them very good. There is a swimming pool and they go into it and just stand there in the water with their hats on. I guess they don’t know how to swim.
My grandma used to bake cookies and stuff. But I guess she forgot how. Nobody cooks; they all go to fast-food restaurants. They don’t pay as much because of the way they look. Retarded people pay less. As you come into the park, there is a dollhouse with a man sitting in it. He watches all day and they can’t get out without him seeing them. They wear badges with their names on them. I guess they don’t know who they are.
My grandma says Grandpa worked hard all his life and earned retardment. I wish they would move back home, but I guess the guy in the doll house won’t let them go too far.”
Short Shorts:
A. Jan. 15 was National Hat Day. Genie managed to wear four of her many hats that day.
B. Chinese New Year was Saturday, Jan. 25. It is the year of the rat.
C. Did you know a man left a Bible on the moon’s surface?
D. One out of three people 65 and older in the U.S.A. will fall in 2020. SO far, I’m not one. Are you?
E. Minnesota is a Dakota word that describes the reflection of the sky onto water, thus Minnesota is known as the Land of Sky Blue Waters.” There is an exhibit titled “Our Home: Native Minnesota,” at the Minnesota History Center that opened Dec. 7, 2019. Dakota and Ojibwe people can call Minnesota home.
F. How long did it take for you to break your New Year’s Resolution? Most are broken within the first month. I broke mine the first time I was in line to pay at the local grocery store. Somehow a chocolate candy bar was in my purchases.
G. “They killed the gold goose,” is my way of looking at the cancellation of the 41st annual eelpout festival at Walker, Minnesota, this Feb. 2020. The weekend activities brought in between one and two million dollars spent in a Northern Minnesota town of just under 1,000 people. Genie and I will be two of the 10-12 thousand who used to attend. One of the main reasons for cancelling was the cost of cleanup – who is to pay for it?? The net result is no cost for cleanup and no one-two million dollars of income to Walker, Minnesota. Uffda!!