I have a great Thursday Thirteen in store for you tomorrow. Maybe that will make up for this otherwise anemic week. For tonight, here’s a quickie memory. Not my best story, but over the years, its appeal to me has never faded.<\/p>\n
We grew up next door to an old Southern nurse named Sadie. Sadie was so benign, even my mother couldn’t hate her, and my mother hated all<\/em> of our neighbors. Worst thing my mom could say about Sadie: her floors were filthy. Which was true.<\/p>\n Sadie had a Cocker Spaniel named Baby. Every day, she played fetch with Baby, and she encouraged us kids to throw the ball for Baby, too. We liked Sadie because she didn’t mind if we played keep-away on her front lawn or pretended her overgrown backyard was the Congo. She never lost her temper with us, not once, not even when I ate her hibiscus flowers*.<\/p>\n “Wah Baby, lookah that! Baby’s got two<\/em> balls, don’t you Baby? You got two balls!”<\/p>\n We kept repeating this to each other — Baby’s got two balls!<\/em> — laughing ourselves silly. To this day, I’m sure I could get my brother to crack up just by saying, “Baby’s got two balls!” With the appropriate accent, mind you. And now I’ve passed the story on to my son, who says the same thing at every opportunity. Baby’s got two balls!<\/em><\/p>\n Us Hoffmans, we’re easily amused.<\/p>\n D.<\/p>\n *I had pica — remember?<\/a><\/p>\n PS: I pinched that photo from this website<\/a>. (Evil me . . . but at least I’m giving attribution. That’s a step forward.) Lots of great Spaniel photos, but do yourself a favor: turn off your speakers first.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’m idea-starved this week. Is it possible I’ve so thoroughly ransacked my memory that there’s nothing left inside but recipes? Naw. Ain’t true. But as I’ve mentioned before, all my best stories are off limits. I mean, I have to live with these people. I have a great Thursday Thirteen in store for you tomorrow.… Continue Reading Ever get the feeling your best posts were behind you?<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-memoirist-bs","category-mishpucha-mi-familia","radius"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ballsandwalnuts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ballsandwalnuts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ballsandwalnuts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ballsandwalnuts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ballsandwalnuts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ballsandwalnuts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ballsandwalnuts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ballsandwalnuts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ballsandwalnuts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"http:\/\/ballsandwalnuts.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/05\/good-catch2.jpg\")
One day, while all us kids were playing touch football in the street, Sadie tossed the tennis ball into the bushes and Baby dashed after it. He came back with not one but TWO tennis balls. Okay, now you have to imagine this old lady with a genteel Southern accent. Ready?<\/p>\n