I Find Out About You-Tube

Well, Good Morning, glories!

I was going to call this one "The Internet is of the Devil, Part Three," but then a little something happened to throw a monkey wrench in that plan: I figured out that this thing called cyberspace isn't just a cesspool of temptation. I figured out how you can use the blog thing to raise the dead!

More on that in a minute!

I've got to tell you I'm proud of this fact: I haven't even been doing this internet thing a week, and I already know how to do the YouTube! Calm down, now, Trixie. Don't get the big head over it!

Now, I did have some help. Here's how it all got started: Delores next door came over for our Eight O'Clock Cup of Eight O'Clock Coffee, and we started in on the usual gossip, which keeps us going just as sure as Lipitor keeps the blood flowing.

Just so you won't think too bad about us, it's not usually real viscious gossip that we do. Not usually. Whenever we slip into that, I always remind Delores of what Ollie Pearl used to tell me: "Trixie," she used to say, "Don't speak unkindly about somebody, because when you are pointing a finger at somebody, you've got three fingers pointing back at yourself."

I remember the first time I ever heard her say that was when I was just a knee-high girl staying with her at Laurel Terrace in Saluda--that was back during the Great Depression--and I'd figured out already that Frank, who lived there, and who would end up my first husband, was the devil. (Frank's mama owned the inn and I stayed there some Christmases with my Aunt Ollie Pearl because I was an orphan--long story for another day, but you can read all about it in that book called The Days Between the Years.)


After Ollie Pearl said that to me about one finger pointing to somebody made three fingers pointing back at yourself, I got to thinking and wandered into the kitchen and asked the cook Naomi about it and she said that yes, she'd heard that, too, and she reckoned there was something to it, but knowing that hadn't kept her tongue from wagging too much over the years. (She let out a big whoop! when she said it.)

I remember sitting on that stool she always kept for me by the big butcher block for when I helped her with the baking, when Frank, who was older than me--a teenager then--walked across the yard on the way to the shed where he was always tinkering on the old car. I pointed my finger at Frank and went, "Pow! Pow! Pow!" making out like I had a gun, you know, and noticed, sure enough, three fingers pointed right back at me. I guess it didn't take a genius to figure that out, but I'd never noticed it before.

Well, Frank's mama, Edna Templeton--who'd become my old mother-in-law some years later--heard me and saw me pretending to shoot at her precious Frankie. She came after me, ran me off my stool and down the hall and smacked at my bottom, hollering that I was the reason she had to take so much Anacin, which had made a hole in her stomach. So there's a little history for you.

Well, anyway, back to the present day: This morning, Delores and I were just on the tail-end of speculating whether or not it was true what was being said about that new preacher over at the church, when her grandson pulled up in her driveway next door. I'm talking about Delores's grandson, the one whose shoulder I was looking over just the other day when he was over at her house trying to show her how to do the blog thing. (For the past few days he'd been dropping by her house in the mornings before he went to his job at Sam's Club, trying to teach Delores to do what soon-to-be-ex-President George W. Bush called "do the Google," which lead to his (her grandson, Bush) trying to show her how to do a blog.)

If you read what I wrote about that the other day, you'll remember she wasn't paying much attention because her little dog, Tippy, was dancing with her leg, but I sure was (paying attention, not dancing with her leg) and I took it all in and came home and wrestled with the computer and cussed the Google people until I learned how to do it. And I'll go ahead and admit right here that it wasn't until Delores decided she wanted to learn to Google and blog that I got the itch to give it a try. More on why that is a little later, but you can guess there's a little bit of the green-eyed monster in there somewhere.

Well, Delores's grandson's name is Annis. I've thought again and again how sad it was that his parents named him Annis which sounds to my ears, for all the world, like Anus, though I never breathed a work to that to Delores. She's surely thought the same herself, but it's one thing to think it and another to have your friend to say it. Delores didn't like that name--she admitted that much--and told her son to name him John or David or Matthew or something, but you can't tell young people a thing.

Now, I haven't said this to Delores, but I think his being burdened with that name is how come he walks stoop-shouldered, hair plastered to his head like stewed spinach, face like he's been doing chin-ups on the curb, and doesn't have a girlfriend, at least not one he's willing to show.

I've also wondered if that's why he lets his britches sag below the divide in his behind, but Delores says that's just the way young men are dressing these days, and from what I've seen on Main Street, I'll have to say that's a fact. And Delores said when she told her son to say something to Annis about the way he looked, her son told Delores, "Mama, you can't tell young people a thing." So you see how history repeats.

Okay. So Delores and I were having our coffee when Annis pulled up in Delores's driveway next door, and she jumped up to leave. Well, I laid my arm on Delores's and told her to just stay, and to ask him to come over here, for a change. I had a couple of reasons for doing that, neither one of them especially holy. One was because I didn't want Delores to get ahead of me on doing the Google and the blog thing, which she surely would if she kept getting regular lessons from Annis, and the other reason was I thought if I could break the ice with Annis, get him comfortable with me, I might one day convince him to hike his britches up above that divide in his behind because I was sick and tired of looking at it every time he walked up the driveway next door.

So, Delores took the bait, in part because she wasn't in the mood to Google, she said, she was so worked up over what was going on with the preacher. So, up jumped Delores from where we were both sitting at my kitchen table. She'd ripped the kercheif off her head when she'd come over, but she tied it back around her head before she stuck it outside the door, for fear that poking her sweaty noggin out in the cold, damp air would aggravate her neuralgia, which I agreed it might. "Annis!" she called out, "Annis!" And I cringed just like I do everytime she said that poor boy's name which sounds like what I've already said.

And over walked Annis. But I see I've gone on too long here. I'll be back with the rest of the story. Just hold on to your hats, as Uncle Jarvis used to say.