This story may explain alot to some people who know
me and make those who don't,wonder. Back many,many years ago
when I was about four or five years old, my brothers and cousins would
play terrible tricks on me. They were always picking on me.
Since I was the cutest grandchild this was to be expected. Angelic
face and curly hair, that was me!
When we were away from parents and my grandmother they
would gather in a circle around me and hold hands so that I could not escape.
They told me that they were going to breathe all the air out of the world
and that I was going to die. The amazing thing about this is that
I knew they could do it. They would all start taking a very
deep breath and I would start to scream and try to break lose. Just
at the very last moment when I thought that I was about to breathe my last
breath and die, I would escape, running and screaming straight to
Grandmother. Grandma! Grandma! They're going to breathe all
the air out of the world and I'm going to die.
This had only happened a few hundred times before,
so Grandma was well prepared. As she had done so many times before,
out of nowhere she produced a size ten tennis shoe. It was always
within arms reach. Like magic, it would appear. This size ten
tennis shoe had one purpose and one purpose only. To beat grandkids
with!! Wham! Everyone got a whack with the shoe. You would
think this would be enough to stop them from tormenting me but it wasn't.
They must have gotten great pleasure from watching me gasp for air.
Still to this day, I don't like for people to gather in a circle around
me.
Here, many years later I look back and think about those
days of Grandma and her tennis shoe. I never saw her wear tennis
shoes and no one in our family wore size ten. Grandma was a dear
sweet lady and we all loved her very much but I know that one day she walked
into a shoe store and bought a pair of size ten tennis shoes, just to beat
the grandkids with.
Carl