Dancing

“Almost nobody dances sober, unless they happen to be insane.” 
― H.P. Lovecraft

Question

Is that a real poncho or is that a Sears poncho?

Frank Zappa

Face Value

I'm a guy believes just what he hears.

The Drifters (I Count the Tears)

Thanks, George

“It is never too late to be what you might have been.” ― George Eliot

Logic

Emily was in second grade. She and I were in the car on the way to school. She was uncharacteristically quiet that morning, not her usual effervescent self. After a long silence she said, "Papa, is it true that one day the sun is going to blow up?"

"Well, the sun is a star. And stars do blow up when they get to the end of their lives. So, yes, but that'll be millions and millions of years from now. We'll be long gone by then."

"But what if we were here when it blew up? Would we die?"

"Well ... um, yes, we would."

Emily pondered for a moment then said, "What if we stayed in the house?"

===

Julia, Edward and Emily were playing in the front yard. At one point Emily walked up close to Julia and peered at her lip. "Your lip is bleeding," Emily said. Without missing a beat Julia said, "No, it's not."

Edward came up and confirmed Emily's observation. "Yeah, Julia, your lip is bleeding." Again her reply came instantaneously, "No, it's not."

Several times they tried to convince her that her lip was bleeding and each time she quickly denied it. Finally she would hear no more of it. "Stop saying that. I know my lip isn't bleeding 'cause if my lip was bleeding I would be crying."

There are things ...

There are things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

FGL

To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves.

Federico Garcia Lorca

Near Fisk, Missouri, 1964

How many monotonous miles had my father driven that night? A long slash from Texas across Arkansas. Texarkana, Little Rock, Searcy, Walnut Ridge, Poplar Bluff. The rest of us - my mother and eight kids - were asleep. Lucky us. I wonder what it was like for him. Did he believe his eyes were playing tricks when that pair of headlights drifted across the center line?

It was a two-lane bridge. There was no place to swerve even if there had been time. Nine times out of ten it would have ended with our van upside down in the St. Francis River. But this was the tenth time. Lucky us.

Safely on the shoulder on the far side of the bridge we piled out, wondering what had happened. Soon there were red and blue lights. The other driver wandered, befuddled, his wrecked car still blocking the bridge.

If it were today, we would all be checked out at the hospital to make sure we were  okay. Maybe some time the next morning we would be on the road again. But that was a different time. My father had a side of beef on ice in the back of the van and by morning that ice would be melting. The van could still roll, so roll it did to Sikeston, up to St. Louis and across Illinois.

By the time he pulled up to our house in Terre Haute he couldn't turn his neck. To change the direction of his gaze he had to turn his whole body. But his wife and his children were home and they were safe. He spent the next week in the hospital.