I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: sports

  • which anniversary is this? better ask Pretty


    fun with friends at DeBordieu, 2007

    So Pretty and I are having dinner with our friends Nekki and Francie after the South Carolina women’s basketball game last night, and the conversation turned to our anniversary which is this Saturday, February 9th. I had invited them to go to dinner with us on our anniversary but that wasn’t working out so we opted to eat after the game.

    Nekki asked what everyone always asks about anniversaries – how many years are you celebrating?

    Nineteen, I answered quickly because I am the numbers person in our family who keeps up with birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, graduations, etc. Every family has a designated scorekeeper, and in our family I am known as the go-to person for important dates. Pretty is generally unreliable in these areas.

    Oh, Nekki said, nineteen years is really great. Pretty and I both nodded, although I noticed Pretty displayed a hint of eyes rolling at my answer. Then she said, no, it’s not nineteen, it’s eighteen to which I responded no I specifically remember the year was 2001 when we got together so anyone could plainly see our anniversary was definitely for nineteen years. Case closed, I added for emphasis.

    For those of you who can do “high math,” I will let you do the numbers or you don’t really need to bother because February 09, 2019 is our 18th. anniversary, and don’t you forget it. Please enjoy a few highlights of the past “on the road to nineteen” with us.

    family civil rights tour – Alabama, 2018

      SC women’s national championship, Dallas – 2017

    Number One Son Drew’s rehearsal dinner – 2015

    South Carolina Pride – 2016

    signing copies of Committed to Home at Francis Marion – 2018

    OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

    the hideout, Wyoming, 2009

    in the beginning, Cancun, February 09, 2001

    family vacation – Gettysburg, 2012

    Valentine’s Day Poinsett Bridge with family – 2015

    Texas, 2013

    Happy Anniversary, Pretty – how do I love thee? I can’t begin to count the ways…or the years evidently…but my love will always belong to you. Thank you for every day. Case closed.

    Stay tuned.

  • new book Four Ticket Ride dedicated to blogging friends Ann, Annie, Luanne, Rachel, and Susanne…and of course, to Pretty


    How did I come up with the title for my latest book Four Ticket Ride?

    Spoiler Alert: Preface

    My friend Esther Isom told me this story one day as I rested in her salon chair for a pedicure which was always a guarantee for entertainment in addition to spa treatment on my feet. She swore the story was true.

    Esther sat one morning in a doctor’s waiting area that was empty except for her and a petite elderly lady who had been in the room when she arrived. They waited and waited together without speaking, occasionally smiling at each other, but Esther decided to break the awkward silence by asking the older woman how she was doing that day.

    “Honey, life’s a four ticket ride,” the older woman said with a smile – a reference to the State Fair’s being in town that week.

    For the uninitiated in State Fair amusement rides, the more dangerous the ride the more tickets required to jump aboard. The four ticket rides were among the most adventurous with a mixture of highs and lows at dizzying speeds designed to take the thrill seeker’s breath away.

    The following stories are my version of a few of life’s four ticket rides as seen through the eyes of a woman past 70 who bought and paid for enough tickets to ride all the rides in life…and some of them more than once.

    Enjoy these rides with me. Buckle up, sit back, and hold on.

    ####

    My new book is short since most of us now expect major ideas to be conveyed through tweets which have reduced our attention spans to the length of a Geico commercial – readable in an hour in a single setting or a month of daily individual chapter doses like my 30 Days to Success Journal mentioned in chapter 1.

    Here’s an overview of the major topics of flash nonfiction in Four Ticket Ride:

    (1) I Have this Great Idea for a Book

    (2) Life with Pretty

    (3) The Magic of Sports

    (4) What’s Happening with Us?

    (5) Wouldn’t Take Anything for my Journey Now

    Finally, this book is dedicated to a group of women I have never met in person but who have become loyal supporters of my writing over many moons in cyberspace and always appear on my blog roll. Ann, the Wayside Artist in Pennsylvania; Annie of Animal Couriers in France; Luanne of The Family Kalamazoo and Writer Site in Arizona; Rachel of The Cricket Pages in New York; and Susanne of Wuthering Bites in Canada. Writing is a solitary business and blogging is no exception; but these women take time to read, comment on my efforts and offer genuine encouragement in the process. I am deeply grateful to each of them for their own inspirational work and their support of mine.

    And of course, every book I write is dedicated to Pretty. Without her love and support every day of my life, there would be nothing left to say. The End.

    Stay tuned.

     

  • the emperor’s new shutdown

    the emperor’s new shutdown


    A vain emperor who cares about nothing except wearing and displaying clothes hires two weavers who promise him they will make him the best suit of clothes. The weavers are con-men who convince the emperor they are using a fine fabric invisible to anyone who is either unfit for his position or “hopelessly stupid”. The con lies in that the weavers are actually only pretending to manufacture the clothes. Thus, no one, not even the emperor nor his ministers can see the alleged “clothes”, but they all pretend that they can for fear of appearing unfit for their positions. Finally, the weavers report that the suit is finished and they mime dressing the emperor who then marches in procession before his subjects. The townsfolk uncomfortably go along with the pretense, not wanting to appear unfit for their positions or stupid. Finally, a child in the crowd blurts out that the emperor is wearing nothing at all and the cry is then taken up by others. The emperor realizes the assertion is true but continues the procession. (Wikipedia’s plot summary of The Emperor’s New Clothes by Hans Christian Andersen in his Fairy Tales Told for Children published in 1837)

    Hm. Let’s substitute President Trump for the emperor, border crisis for clothes, White House staff and Cabinet members for ministers, the American people for the townsfolk, and a refugee child for the child in the crowd.

    A vain Emperor Trump who cares about nothing except building a border wall because that was a campaign promise he made (along with the promise that Mexico was supposed to pay for the wall) hires Fox News to help manufacture a national emergency on the southwestern border of the United States. Fox News (along with a merry band of radio talk show hosts including Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham) promises the Emperor that the network will make the biggest, baddest national immigration emergency ever created to show off the need for a border wall. They convince the Emperor that the border crisis will be invisible to anyone unfit for his position, or the “hopelessly stupid.”

    The con lies in that there is no national emergency at the border and the wall is not the best option for border security at all. No one, not even the Emperor or his Cabinet members, can really see the national emergency but they all pretend they can for fear of looking stupid or unfit for their positions. Finally, the Emperor goes on national TV to  deliver a major address to the American people about the national emergency at the border, the desperate need for the wall and not to worry about the 800,000 federal employees who will have no paychecks until the wall is included in the budget – that is the US budget, not the Mexican budget. The Republicans “uncomfortably go along with the pretense, not wanting to appear unfit for their positions or stupid.”

    Finally, a refugee child illegally detained at the border cries out from her miserable camp conditions, please help me – I am hungry, cold, and afraid. Where is my family?

    Indeed, where are the families of the 800,000 federal employees who are also feeling hungry, cold and afraid as the longest shutdown in American history rolls on into the second weekend in January, 2019 and a vain Emperor Trump holds a nation hostage for a campaign promise he never really made.

    Stay tuned.

     

  • this girl had it going on…was she calling to Get Out the Vote?


    was she making calls to Get Out the Vote?

    Actually, not really – this girl (me) was probably calling her office from a pay phone outside the tennis courts at the Family Circle Tennis Tournament in Hilton Head, South Carolina in the late 1980s. She was carrying seat cushions for bleacher seats, wearing enormous glasses and a wonderful hat that she lost somewhere along the way during the next quarter century.

    This girl would have voted in every election, though, and would want all  her friends across the country to do the same in the mid-term elections on Tuesday, November 6, 2018.

    Be woke! Go Vote!

    Stay tuned.

     

     

  • BREAKING NEWS – REVISED WORLD CUP SCORE!


    RUSSIA – ONE

    USA – ZERO