Tag: Southern

Curse this Dreaded Black Thumb

.Reading time 3 minutes.

Spring seems to have found us here in Georgia this weekend. While it is a simple fact that God smiles on The South sooner than the northern regions, I hold no illusions that spring is here for good. But yesterday found me in shorts cleaning up the yard. We live on a couple of wooded acres and green is beginning to peek through the gloomy brown – in my neighbor’s yard. I however was cursed with a dreaded black thumb. I follow some photography blogs displaying the most beautiful flowers from tropical locations, so I thought I would give you my best effort.

imageThese are my gardenias. Are implies a current state of being, so I suppose I should say these were my gardenias. I don’t know what happened to them, they just shriveled up and turned brown like everything else I put in the ground. Our once vibrant hydrangeas look more like flaking twigs than actual plants. My grass – brown in every season unless you include moss and weeds. Every time I go to the orange store, I tell my friend Lou the dilemma and he recommends a plant that can’t be killed. I used to take them back with their return policy, but I’ve become embarrassed to do so anymore.

You know how God builds a perfect union from two dissimilar parts? One member of the marriage might be outgoing and the other shy, or one might be cognitive while the other is emotional. Then they join together like pieces of a puzzle and complete each other perfectly (sorry for the cheesy Jerry Maguire reference, but while I’m at it, enjoy…)

In a cruel twist of fate for botanists everywhere, my lovely bride has a matching black thumb. Potted plants seem to be a popular thank you gift here and she’s received a number of them over the years. All we have left is a bunch of pots filled with what I call soil of death. She kills indoor plants while I slay the jungle outside. Nothing is safe in our homestead. Thank you, God that we have a supermarket and don’t rely on subsistence farming. We’d all starve for sure.

So while my friends up north are mired in snow, we are seeing the sun in our little slice of heaven. Maybe it likes us because we don’t need it for photosynthesis. I don’t know, I just like wearing shorts again.

A Wayward Egg

.Reading time 5 minutes.

“Mr. Creech, I suppose you know why you are sitting on the other side of my desk…again,” said Principal Conley gravely.

Virgil opened his eyes wide with feigned surprise and answered as innocently as he could, “No, sir.”

“It seems that an egg was thrown in a certain restroom – the boys’ restroom. This fact was brought to my attention by Harvey Heckles moments ago. As we speak, the egg is running down the porcelain tiles, creating a large mess that Mrs. Pritchett will be forced to clean up, unless I can find the guilty party.”

egg

“That’s awful, sir,” Virgil uttered, while managing a curse of the Heckles under his breath. “But why did you call for me?”

The principal felt it best to pause and let the absurdity of the question settle. He gave the doe-eyed trouble maker his best intimidating stare while rising to his feet. “Mr. Creech…did you or did you not bring one dozen eggs to school this morning to participate in a science experiment?”

“Why, yes sir,” the boy replied. “But me and Henry used ‘em all up.”

“You used them all?” countered the principal as he began to pace.

Without a flinch, Virgil answered, “All of ‘em.”

“I have it on good authority from Ms. Singer, that you only required eleven eggs for your experiment.”

“Yup, we used all eleven,” Virgil said with a merry feeling that this was working out quite well.

“Mr. Creech,” asked the principal sternly. “Do you know how many there are in one dozen?”

“You just said eleven.”

“No, I most certainly did not.”

“Not to be difficult, but you said we used eleven.”

“Correct…”

“So there must be eleven in a dozen on account of that’s how many I brought,” interrupted Virgil. “If that’s all you need me for, can I get back to class now? We’s got math lessons comin’ up. We just started division and I…”

“There are twelve in a dozen, Virgil Creech! Twelve!” screamed the man as he lowered himself and rested his hands on his knees to get a good look into the boy’s eyes. “So, tell me – what happened to that last egg?”

“Like I told ya before, we used the whole dozen.”

“What did you do with the remainder?”

“Usually I put it beside the answer. Only I get those wrong mostly because I’m not too good at division,” Virgil explained. “Ms. Singer says…”

“The remainder of the eggs, boy!” yelled the principal. “The scraps! The shells! The remnants!”

“Oh! I’m sorry, Principal Conley,” replied Virgil coolly. “I put the shells and stuff on top of the garbage can because I was afraid they would get to smellin’ if I dumped them inside and Mrs. Pritchett didn’t get to the trash ‘til tomorrow.”

“Aren’t you kind,” mocked the principal. “If you put them on top of the can, who do you suppose threw them against the wall?”

“I’m not telling you how to do your job,” began the boy. “But if I were you, I’d check out them Heckles twins. They’re an awful lot of trouble, especially that Horace.”

“Get out!” demanded the principal, pointing to the door. “Get out, now!”

“You want me to tell one of the Heckles to come down here? Like I said…”

The principal’s head fell into his hands in utter frustration.  “Just Go!” he begged the boy.

Virgil promptly obeyed, letting go of a mischievous grin only after the door closed behind him.

♦

This story is a work of fiction.

The events described herein may or may not have happened to a particular blogger who may or may not have taken eggs to school for a sixth grade science experiment. Should this have been a real event, it is unlikely that the perpetrator had Virgil’s wherewithal to escape punishment, if any of this actually happened.

image credit: Jorge Barrios