Monday, February 3, 2025

MY WINTER JACKET SHOULD HAVE BEEN GIVEN ITS LAST RITES AT LEAST 10 YEARS AGO

 

I own two winter coats. One of them I wear when I’m going to a public place like a mall or a restaurant. The other is a hooded jacket I wear when I walk the dogs or shovel snow. I bought both of them about 20 years ago when Burlington Coat Factory first opened in Concord. 

Needless to say, the walking-the-dogs jacket is a lot less stylish but much warmer than my dressier coat. I also wear it more often, mainly because my total lack of a social life means I have no reason to wear the nicer one. 

And my dogs couldn't care less what I wear...unless I spill gravy on it.

The other day, as I was about to walk the dogs, I put on my warm jacket and then shoved my usual must-haves into the pockets: phone, keys, pepper spray, dog treats, tissues…and one by one, they landed on the floor. I took off the jacket and checked the pockets. When I stuck my hand into the left one, my fingers came out through the bottom hem.    

THE ACTUAL LINING OF MY OLD JACKET

I wasn’t surprised. Little by little I had been noticing the jacket’s shredded lining, holey pockets and the zipper that got stuck more often than it zipped (because it kept getting caught in the aforementioned shredded lining). But I tried to ignore the signs of impending doom. I guess I hoped the jacket somehow would miraculously repair itself…kind of like the way iguanas are able to grow new tails.

Considering the fact I barely can thread a needle, I decided the time had come to buy a new winter jacket – particularly one with pockets that still were attached to it. So I reluctantly went shopping.

I soon discovered that late January really wasn’t the best time to shop for warm clothing. Even though the recent temperatures had been cold enough to give a polar bear goosebumps, the clothing displays in most of the stores already were featuring Bermuda shorts, halter tops and lightweight spring jackets.

Any winter coats I did see were clustered together on “sale” racks and looked as if they had been Christmas returns – probably because, judging from some of the styles, the people who’d received them as gifts had been too embarrassed to be seen wearing them in public.

When I finally did find a jacket that met my criteria – mid-thigh length with a warm lining and hood – it was size XS petite, which meant that even if I could manage to squeeze any of my body parts into it, the sleeves still would come to just below my elbows.

Discouraged, I headed home and convinced myself to try to repair my old jacket. The results were so crooked, bunched up and hideous looking, the only place I’d ever wear that jacket again would be in the woods…after dark.  Even then, the nocturnal wild animals probably would point at it and laugh.

When I later went shopping again for something other than a new jacket, I happened to notice two racks of ladies’ winter coats as I walked through one of the stores. Even though I wasn't optimistic, I checked them out.

There, amongst the too thin, unlined woolen coats and the too bulky quilted ones, I spotted the perfect jacket. It was long, soft, and was lined with an inch-thick layer of black, fleecy material. Even the hood and sleeves were fully lined for extra warmth. I tried on the jacket without even checking the size. To my disbelief, it fit perfectly.

Suddenly I knew how Goldilocks had felt at the Three Bears' house.

I finally looked at the jacket's tag. It was described as “faux” shearling and “faux” suede, and was priced at $129.99. To me, that seemed like a lot of money for so much “faux” stuff. The price also immediately kicked it up a few notches to a “going out to dinner” jacket instead of a “walking the drooling and fur-shedding dogs” one.  Not that it mattered anyway. At that price, I couldn’t even afford the hood.

That’s when I noticed a big “SALE” sign at the far end of the rack. I took off the jacket and rushed over to a clerk for a price check.

The sale price was $48. That still seemed too expensive to me, mainly because I’d paid only $29 for my last jacket. But I liked this one so much, I splurged and bought it. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, $48 seemed like a small price to pay to prevent a frostbitten navel...or worse.

The new jacket turned out to be the warmest and most comfortable one I’ve ever worn. 

There's only one problem with it, however. Whenever I wear it, my dogs go crazy. One sniff and they growl at it, then jump all over me and nearly knock me down.

Puzzled, I checked the jacket’s materials listed on the inner label. I thought maybe it actually contained real shearling instead of the “faux” variety – or maybe even some recycled animal fur, and that was what was aggravating them.

Well, unless there is an animal called “100-percent polyester,” the jacket seems fine.

So now I have a nice new jacket to keep me warm when I walk the dogs. The only problem is I’m afraid to wear it anywhere near them. If I do, I have the feeling it might end up shredded and with the pockets ripped off, just like my old jacket. Only this time it won’t be from natural causes.

If my dogs' behavior continues, I might have no choice other than to buy a different winter jacket.

I figure July, when the stores start to display their Christmas items, will be a good month to go shopping for it.

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Sally Breslin is an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science-fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net.








 



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Tuesday, January 28, 2025

MORE STRANGE EXPERIENCES SHOPPING AT WALMART, INCLUDING THE ATTACK OF THE KILLER MARGARINE

 


Last week, I wrote about some of my “interesting” experiences while shopping at Walmart. This week, I will tell you about two more, both of which happened last year, only three months apart. But before I do, I thought I would give you the link to a previous post on here from three years ago when I wrote about one of my most embarrassing moments ever…which just happened to also be at Walmart…just in case you haven’t read it yet and might be interested!

 https://sallybreslin.blogspot.com/2022/07/this-had-to-be-queen-mother-of-all-my.html

 

Last May, on an unusually hot and humid day for that early in the year, I had just spent over an hour shopping in Walmart. With my cart heaping, I finally headed to the checkout. I was only one aisle away when alarms that sounded similar to air-raid sirens started to blast.

I wasn’t alarmed (pun intended) because I’d heard warning signals blasting in stores before, usually when someone accidentally opened an emergency-exit door.  So I continued my trek toward the registers…until an employee stopped me.

“That’s the fire alarm!” she said. “Please exit the store immediately!”

I had just spent an hour picking out, among other things, perfectly ripened vegetables and perfectly cut meats, along with a dozen eggs I’d carefully inspected to make certain had no cracks or chicken poop on them. So there was no way I was going to leave the store without every one of those items.

I didn’t smell any smoke or see any flames, so I figured I still had time. “I’m all done shopping,” I said to the sales associate. “It will take me only a minute to pay for this stuff, and then I’ll be out of here.”

“No, leave your cart right where it is,” she said, her tone stern, “and get outside now!”

“Should I take my cart with me?” I asked, hoping I hadn’t wasted all of my time and energy only to have to head home empty-handed. Besides that, I reasoned, if the food was just going to perish in the flames anyway, then why couldn’t I take it?

She gave me a look that told me she thought I was pretty much…well, an idiot.

“Only shoplifters leave the store with a cart full of items they haven’t paid for!” she said.

I suppose she had a point.

So, reluctantly I left my cart and exited the store, along with many other shoppers, all of whom also had abandoned their carts in the middle of the aisles. The store looked as if a spaceship had swooped down and beamed up all of the shoppers, leaving only their carts helter-skelter everywhere.

Outside, the heat was oppressive. There was only one shady area – a long strip of dirt  with a couple of trees growing in it – surrounded by asphalt. Within seconds, the employees made a beeline for that area and then gathered like a herd of cattle underneath those trees, while we customers were left to stand out in the blazing sun. I would have gone back to my car to sit and wait, but my car’s ancient air-conditioner doesn’t blow cool air unless the car is actually moving. And I wasn’t about to head home without my groceries unless I saw actual flames and smoke pouring out of the store.  

The fire department arrived and firefighters rushed into the building. Many of the customers who’d been standing outside gave up at that point and left. The fact they were soaked with perspiration and looked on the verge of passing out, might have had something to do with it.

But I still wasn’t ready to totally abandon my cart, which was sitting somewhere near the Maybelline cosmetics…and probably breeding a colony of salmonella bacteria by then. The thought did cross my mind that if the store really was on fire, then the meat I’d so carefully selected, with just the right amount of marbling in it, probably would end up being a little too well-done to suit my taste anyway.

But I still clung to the hope everything would be okay.

After about 20 minutes, the firefighters finally exited the store and announced “all clear.”

It turned out to be just a false alarm.

I was prepared to trample anyone in my way as I dashed back into the store to track down my cart. To my relief, it still was sitting exactly I’d left it. A lot of other carts also were still sitting where they had been abandoned …but not everyone returned to claim them.

I could just imagine what “fun” the employees had trying to put all of the items in those carts back where they belonged…except, that is, for any ice cream.

I think it pretty much needed to be administered its last rites by then.


The second incident happened three months later, in August. I like to bake everything from scratch, so I use a lot of lactose-free margarine. Well, when I arrived at the butter and margarine cooler, the whole section on the left side of it looked as if it had just fought in the Great Battle of the Butter...and lost. Either that, or it had been attacked by a marauding gang of margarine and butter addicts. The packages were open and caved in, and sticks of margarine, several with no wrappers on them, were lying everywhere.

Needless to say, I decided to go to another store to buy my margarine.

The next week, when I returned to Walmart to shop for groceries, I couldn’t believe my eyes. The margarine looked even worse! I picked up one of the packages and it was so limp and soggy, it actually fell apart in my hand. There was no way, I thought, employees in that department couldn’t have noticed such an obvious ongoing problem. If they did, then they apparently just didn’t care about it.

It reminded me of that old 1970s TV comedy, Chico and the Man, where whenever the main character was asked by his boss to do something extra, he would refuse and say, “That’s not my job!”

So once again, I left Walmart with no margarine and was forced to buy it elsewhere – for 65 cents more per package.

That same night, I received the usual e-mail from Walmart, which they send every time I shop there, asking me to fill out their questionnaire about my shopping experience. If I did, they said I would qualify for one of their many gift-card awards, valued anywhere from $100 to $1,000.

Usually I just delete those questionnaires, but I was so aggravated about the margarine situation by then, I filled it out…and vented. I knew it probably wouldn’t even be read by an actual human, but it still was good therapy to at least get it off my chest.

The next day, to my surprise, an actual human from Walmart did call me and left a voice mail, apologizing about the margarine and the “mess” and thanking me for bringing it to their attention. He said they discovered a problem with condensation in that cooler and were remedying the problem. In the meantime, he said he hoped I would continue to shop at Walmart, and if I wanted fresh margarine, it temporarily would be located in a bunker across from the faulty cooler.

I wasn’t familiar with the term “bunker” in a supermarket, so I immediately imagined military personnel guarding the margarine in an underground shelter.

When I did return to the store, sure enough, crisp, sturdy packages of my favorite margarine were neatly stacked in the cooler. Relieved, I bought three packages. When the cashier rang them up, I said, “It’s so good to see decent margarine again. It was really bad for a while there."

She said, “I know. After a customer reported it, they found all kinds of gross mold in and behind that cooler due to a problem with the condenser, and they had to replace the whole thing.”

I found that bit of information very interesting, especially since at that time, the Boar’s Head deli-meat recall had been all over the news because of an outbreak of Listeria, which sickened at least 60 people and killed 10. The cause of the outbreak was determined to be unsanitary product-preparation areas…but also condensation, mold and excess moisture in the cooler.

My first thought was the soggy margarine in the moldy cooler easily could have escalated into something just as serious. My second thought was that under the circumstances, I think the store should have thanked me much more appropriately for possibly saving the lives of millions of their customers (okay, maybe more like about 15 or 20).

So, Walmart, I’m still waiting for that $1,000 gift card…


                                                                  #   #   #

Sally Breslin is an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science-fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net.








 


 

 

 


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Monday, January 20, 2025

I'VE HAD A LOT OF STRANGE EXPERIENCES SHOPPING AT WALMART OVER THE PAST 20-PLUS YEARS

 

The other night, as I was lying in bed and feeling frustrated because I was more wide-awake than sleepy, I started to count the number of unusual or strange things that either have happened to me or I have witnessed while shopping at Walmart during the past 20-plus years.

I think I made it to number 73 before I finally dozed off.

The next morning, I couldn’t remember half of the incidents on that list, but I thought I would share some of the highlights from the ones I do remember, mainly to emphasize the old adage, “truth is stranger than fiction” (especially at Walmart!).

These are in no particular order, just randomly listed as they popped into my head.

1.    My friend and I were shopping in the store one afternoon when we suddenly heard what sounded like a loud explosion. We, and most of the other customers, all froze in place, fearing the worst. But the employees continued to carry on with their work, totally unfazed. Another explosion followed, even louder than the first, sending several customers scurrying for the exit.

We finally approached one of the clerks, who calmly was arranging a display of storage containers, and asked him what was going on.

He shrugged and said, “Oh, we got in a shipment of these big balls that were over-inflated and now they keep exploding."

I couldn’t help but think about the poor customer who might have bought one of those balls before the store realized there was a problem, and then having it explode in the car during the drive home. That definitely would have been a “made for video” moment!


 2.    The pandemic also caused two memorable incidents that still stand out in my mind. The first was when my TV decided to breathe its last breath at the worst possible time. I mean, there wasn’t a whole lot else to during the pandemic other than watch TV. So I put on my mask, grabbed my gallon of hand sanitizer and headed to Walmart to buy a new TV.

Social distancing was being strictly enforced at that time – the aisles in the store all had arrows indicating in which direction shoppers had to move through them, one-way only, and the checkout lanes had marks on the floor where you had to stand to ensure there was plenty of germ-free space between the person in front of you and the one behind you.

I was pleased to find a 50-inch TV on sale, well within my price range, so I purchased it. The clerk loaded it onto a big flatbed cart, then started to walk away, leaving me standing there.

“Aren’t you going to take it out to my car for me?” I asked him.

He shook his head. “Sorry. I’m social distancing. You’re on your own.”

I think I must have bumped into every shelf and display rack in the store as I struggled to drag that darned TV out to my car, because the TV department in every Walmart is always located at the very rear of the store, about 100 miles from the front entrance.

When I reached my car, I opened the hatchback and then attempted to hoist the pool-table sized box into it. I failed…miserably…and continued to fail over and over again because I just couldn’t stretch my arms wide enough to grasp both sides of the box.

Several people gathered to watch me and cheer me on, but no one offered to help me. To them, I probably was the Covid equivalent of Typhoid Mary, especially since the vaccine hadn’t yet been approved. So they also kept their distance.

Finally, after about 10 attempts, I managed to heave the front end of the box up into the back of the car and then shove the rest of it inside. After I slammed the hatchback door shut and caught my breath, I debated whether to drive straight home or to the nearest chiropractor.

My onlookers, however, cheered and applauded my victory. The dagger-filled glare I shot at them was enough to scare off a rampaging grizzly. I might even have released a growl or two in the process.


And speaking of rampaging grizzlies, also during the pandemic, there was a clerk in Walmart who was about as friendly as a piranha.

I was shopping in the bottled-water aisle, and in front of each brand of water was a sign that said, “Limit only one per customer.” Mistakenly, I thought the signs meant only one of each brand, so I put three different gallons into my cart.

Within seconds, the aforementioned clerk swooped in out of nowhere and yanked the bottles out of my cart. “Only ONE per customer!” She snapped at me. “I’m SO fed up with all of this sh*t!”

Let’s just say I doubted she would win the “employee of the month” award anytime soon, especially when I later overheard her shouting something about a “fat ass” at a customer in the toilet-paper aisle.  

 

3.    In the seasonal department in one Walmart, I once asked a clerk who was busy organizing a shelf, where the potting soil was. He ignored me. I asked him again. He still ignored me. I was standing to his right at the time, and he never even so much as turned his head.

Somewhat offended, I stepped away and was about to walk off, when I noticed on the back of his blue vest it said he was hearing-impaired! That explained a lot. So I tapped him on the back. He finally turned to look at me.

I assumed he could read lips or perhaps even hear just well enough to make out what I was saying, so I asked him about potting soil once again.

“WHAT?” he shouted, loud enough to attract the attention of several nearby customers.

I repeated my request in a louder voice.

“WHAT’S WAS THAT?” he asked.

Again, I repeated it as loudly as I possibly could…without rupturing something.

“OH! POTTING SOIL! FOLLOW ME!”

By then, customers were staring at us, probably wondering what I had done to make him shout at me about potting soil.

He actually was a really nice guy and was very helpful, but I was grateful I hadn’t asked him for something more personal, like a feminine-hygiene product or “Bombs Away!” laxative.


4.    And one time I encountered a clerk in sporting goods who actually was too helpful when I asked where the reflective tape was.

He asked me what I planned to do with it, which surprised me because I thought it really was none of his concern. But then I figured he’d probably asked so he could determine something like the width or color I needed. I explained I sometimes took walks after dark and didn’t want to get hit by a car, so I was going to put the tape on my jacket or my sneakers.

He couldn’t have looked more appalled if I’d told him I’d planned to abduct someone and use the tape to silence my victim.

What followed was a lecture from him about walking alone after dark, followed by a lesson in self-defense. He demonstrated moves he said I should use in case a car ever pulled up while I was out walking and someone tried to grab me. These moves included such pain-inducers as my leg or knee to his groin, the heel of my hand to his nose, and a closed-fist uppercut beneath his chin. There also was either a punch or a kick to the gut, but I can't remember which one offhand.

Actually, it was all quite interesting.

When my “lesson” was over, the clerk told me to show him what I had learned…by pretending he was an attacker. He instructed me to go through the motions and act out the moves he’d just demonstrated.

I hesitated, thinking I might risk getting arrested because it would look as if I were assaulting an employee. But then I figured if I wanted to make certain I’d learned the moves correctly, I probably should give them a try. So I went through the motions. But I think my knee might have come a bit too close to his groin area…unless he was just adding appropriate groans and painful reactions to give me a more realistic experience?

Later, when I finally arrived at the checkout to pay for my items and the reflective tape, I mentioned to the cashier how the clerk in sporting goods had given me an unexpected  lesson in self-defense.

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, God, Rambo's at it again?  You’ll have to excuse him. He just got out of the military and he’s having trouble adjusting to civilian life.”

But I honestly didn’t mind. In fact, I was kind of hoping he’d teach me lesson number two the next time I went shopping.


5.    If there is one thing at Walmart in Concord that really upsets customers, it’s the fact there usually are only two registers open, no matter how busy the store is. I can’t count the number of times I’ve wound up standing amongst the racks of women’s clothing while waiting to check out, the line was so long…as I watched my frozen foods transform into puddles in my cart.

A few years ago during the Christmas rush, after standing for what seemed like hours in the slowest-moving line in the history of all department stores, I wrote about the experience in my newspaper column.

I said, “I stood in the checkout line at Walmart for so long last week, a guy and a girl behind me in line met, fell in love, got married and had a baby before I reached the register.”

A few days later, I received an e-mail from the store’s manager who wrote, “I just read your column about waiting in line and I’m not at all pleased. You exaggerated!”

Ya think?


Anyway, this is only a small portion of my list, but it’s getting late, so I will continue this some other time – and include the most recent of my unique Walmart experiences – “The Attack of the Killer Margarine.”

(Maybe I should have used some of those self-defense moves on it!)


#   #   #


Sally Breslin is an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science-fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net.








 


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Monday, January 13, 2025

I'LL JUST KEEP BOUNCING ALONG

 

I've been noticing lately, especially on the really cold days, that whenever I drive my car, it feels bouncy. The faster I go, the bouncier it gets...kind of like a cross between riding a bull and driving over a field of bowling balls. I'm theorizing that maybe something happens to the pressure in the tires when the temperature drops below freezing, so they turn into blocks of rubberized ice.

The reason why I'm not rushing off to see my mechanic, however, is because a couple of years ago, again during the cold weather, a similar thing happened. But along with the bouncing, whenever I stepped on the brakes, the car jerked. So before I ended up with a combination of whiplash and motion sickness, I decided to get the car checked out.

Unfortunately, that meant I had to clean it out first, which was a major project. That's because on any given day, there usually is enough dog fur in my car to easily stuff a mattress. Add to that a gazillion nose prints and splotches of dried-up dog drool all over the windows, and it's like being sentenced to several hours of hard labor.

There's also always the aromatic scent of unbathed dogs permeating my car's upholstery, which usually requires spraying it with enough air freshener to single handedly destroy the ozone layer.

Anyway, I managed to get my car looking and smelling fairly decent back then, but the floors still were covered with dirt, gravel and fur. Tired, I didn’t feel like dragging my vacuum cleaner all the way out to the garage, so I left the floors the way they were. I figured I always could save the dirt and gravel for later, and sprinkle it on the ice in my driveway.

When I brought the car to the repair shop, a mechanic immediately started to fire questions at me about my car's alleged bouncing.

“Is it more of a vibration or a bounce?” he asked.

“Definitely a bounce,” I said.

“Do your brakes pulsate when you step on them?”

I wasn’t even certain what pulsating brakes would feel like. “No, it’s more of a jerk than a pulse.”

“Does your car pull to either the left or the right?”

“Not that I’ve noticed.”

“Have you hit any pot holes or frost heaves lately?”

“Yes, about 10,000 of each.”

“I’ll take the car for a test drive,” he said.

I nearly laughed when he first carefully laid a paper mat on the floor of my car to keep it clean. He’d have been better off wrapping it around his feet to protect them from getting covered with dirt and gravel and enough fur to make him look as if he were wearing fuzzy slippers.

Five minutes later, he returned from the test drive. “It feels fine to me,” he said, shrugging.

I stared at him as if he’d just been beamed down from another galaxy. “You honestly didn’t feel any bouncing or jerking?” 

He shook his head. “The car pulled to the right just a little, but that was about it.”

“And the brakes?”

“They didn’t pulsate...or jerk...at all.”

I began to think the only explanation was I had developed some sort of rare neurological disorder.

“But I’ll check your brakes and tires, just to be safe,” he added.

Both turned out to be fine. When I told him I couldn't believe he hadn't found anything wrong with the car, he decided to rotate the tires and do an alignment...which I suspected was solely out of desperation to shut me up and get rid of me.

To be honest, I thought my car felt even bouncier during the drive home. But seeing everything had checked out just fine, I decided to ignore the bouncing and learn to live with it.

And that's exactly what I'm going to do again this time, especially since my car was inspected only a little over two months ago.

However, I'm thinking that maybe I should buy a new bra that doesn’t have stretch straps...

#   #   #


Sally Breslin is an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science-fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net.








 
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Monday, January 6, 2025

I WON'T BEND OVER FOR A PENNY!

 

 Am I the only one who frequently receives those "remember when?" e-mails – you know, the ones that are meant to make you feel older than Methuselah? Depending on my mood, they either can evoke fond memories, painful memories, make me laugh, or make me feel as if I should be out shopping for a headstone.

I received such an e-mail just the other day, and it swiftly transported me back to the 1960s.

For example, one question asked if I remembered televisions that took five minutes to warm up and didn't have remote controls. I remember them well, especially the night the Beatles first performed on the Ed Sullivan Show. I stood there screeching, "Hurry up!" at the TV while pounding on the top of it to make it warm up faster.  I would have been in heaven if the TVs back then had come with the remotes we have nowadays, where you can freeze the picture or watch the same scene over and over again.

I also remember the TV at my friend Janet's house. It had an indoor antenna called “rabbit ears” sitting on top of it, which her father had wrapped in foil because he said it made the reception better.  If you ask me, the picture on the screen, in glorious black and white, still always looked fuzzy. The only thing the rabbit ears did was make the TV look like some kind of square-headed space alien.

Another question on the list asked if I remembered when I would reach into a muddy gutter just to pick up a penny. Sure, but that was when a penny would buy a big chunk of Bazooka Joe bubble gum wrapped in a comic strip, a piece of Mary Jane taffy or a fireball. The other day, as I was coming out of a local pharmacy, I spotted two pennies lying next to each other in the parking lot. I walked right past them. At my age, the smallest thing that would entice me to bend down that far would be a dollar bill.

"Do you remember when your mother wore nylon stockings that came in two separate pieces?" the next question asked.

Never mind my mother, I remember wearing them myself!  In fact, I spent most of my high-school years squirming from the discomfort of the metal hooks (that held up the nylons) digging into the backs of my legs as I sat through what seemed like endless hours of classes. To this day, I think I still have the outlines of those hooks embedded in my thighs.

I wasn't thrilled with my first pair of pantyhose either. When I put them on, they were nice and snug and clung in all the right places. But by the end of the day, the crotch was hanging down to my knees and the stockings had so many wrinkles in them, I looked as if my legs were made of elephant skin. I never could figure out if I was supposed to wear my underwear over the pantyhose or underneath...or not wear any at all. Luckily, one of the manufacturers finally came up with the idea of attaching actual panties to the pantyhose and solving that dilemma.

The next question on the list asked if I remembered when nobody owned a purebred dog.

Well, I think some of the dogs in my neighborhood might have been purebreds, but none of us really knew what one looked like anyway, so they all were just mutts to us. And the only "papers" associated with dogs back then were the ones we spread all over the floor for housebreaking purposes.

"Do you remember when you could buy a double Popsicle for five cents?" the questions continued.

I immediately thought of Stuart's Market, a tiny corner store in the back alley behind our old house in West Manchester. In the summer, my friends and I would head over there every day for a Popsicle.

My favorite flavors were root beer and blue raspberry. The owner of the store actually had a metal strip nailed along the edge of the counter for the sole purpose of neatly breaking Popsicles in half. After we'd hand our nickels to him, he'd always ask, "Want your Popsicle cut in half?"  We'd nod and he would take the Popsicle, line up the middle of it with the edge of the metal strip, then slam his hand down on the Popsicle and voila!...two perfect halves. I don't remember him ever ruining one of our precious Popsicles. The man truly was a magician.

The next question asked if I remembered when gas-station attendants not only pumped gas but also washed windshields and handed out free trading stamps or gifts.

I definitely remember those days, mainly because not a day passes when I don’t wish the full-serve gas stations weren’t on the verge of total extinction.  I’m ashamed to admit I currently drive over 15 miles each way to one of the very rare full-serve stations left in the state because I absolutely loathe pumping my own gas. It makes no sense to me that back when gas was only 30 cents per gallon, we were treated like royalty. And now that it costs 10 times that much, we are expected to do everything ourselves?  So to me, it’s worth driving the extra miles just to be able to remain comfortably seated in my car, get my windshield washed and also say, “Can you check the oil, please?” even if my car doesn’t need either one. It’s the principle of the thing.

And last but not least, the list asked if I remembered playing with my friends after school and being told to be sure to head back home when the streetlights popped on.

Definitely. And I grew up in Manchester, where there were plenty of streetlights, so there was no excuse for my being late for supper.

Now, however, I live way out in the country. But I actually had a regulation streetlight installed halfway down my driveway. The minute the sun goes down, it pops on without fail.

Thank goodness, because at my age, I probably would get lost trying to find my way back from my mailbox without it.


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Sally Breslin is an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science-fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net.








 
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