A VALENTINE FROM THEORY CORNER

INT. GRANDPA UNCLE EDDIE"S HOUSE: 

GRANDSON: "Tell us again how you met Grandma."

GRANDPA: "Aw, I must have told you that story five times at least. Don't you want to hear something else?"

GRANDKIDS (ALL): "No! No! We wanna' hear about Grandma. Pleasepleasepleaseplease!"

GRANDPA: "Ooookay. Okay. Weeell, it was at a little park by the sea..."

GRANDDAD: "I wasn't looking where I was going and we just bumped into each other. I tried to apologize but I found I couldn't speak. My lips refused to move. Infront of me was the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen and all I could do was look. 

She must have felt something for me too because for the longest time we just stared and stared at each other's eyes, our faces slowly inching closer and closer."

GRANDAD: "Then, when we could stand it no longer, we threw open our arms and clung to each other, clung as if our lives depended on it!"

GRANDPA: "I guess we weren't paying attention to what was going on around us. The biggest thunderstorm you ever saw was starting overhead."

GRANDPA: "The rain came down in torrents."

GRANDSON: "(GASP!) Did you get wet?"

GRANDPA: "Oh, yeah...soaked to the gills...but we didn't care."

GRANDPA: "Holding Grandma was like..."

GRANDPA: "...it was like...diving into a burning volcano."

GRANDPA: 'It was a kind of insanity."

GRANDPA: "Well, I'll never be able to find the right words."

GRANDPA: "Anyway the storm got worse and worse."

GRANDPA: "By the time we realized what had happened it was too late."

GRANDPA: "We were swept out to sea, a mile from the shore."

GRANDCHILDREN: "Woooooww!!!!"

GRANDPA: "But that wasn't all. We soon discovered that we weren't alone."

GRANDPA: "From out of nowhere a big old shark came up and swallowed your grandma!"

GRANDDAUGHTER: "Did you karate chop him?"

GRANDPA: "Huh?...karate chop? Er, oh yeah, sure...but it didn't do any good. It was a tough situation. With her sitting there in all those digestive juices, I knew Grandma had only minutes to live."

GRANDPA: "Fortunately I always carried a spear and flippers."

GRANDMA: "Kids, it's time to go to bed. Grandpa can finish the story in the morning."

KIDS (ALL): "Awwwwwwwwww!!!"

GOOD GIRL/BAD GIRL

In this post Theory Corner considers the question of nature versus nurture. Are we shaped by genetics or by culture and experience? I don't know the answer but I can relate a story I heard that might be helpful.

It begins with twins born in a peaceful little cottage, nestled in the hills. 

Both girls were cute as a button and nice to a fault. They attended Church regularly and did well in school.

On weekends they cooked brownies together. Everything went fine until one day....

...puberty struck.

Gladiola hardly noticed. She just drank a glass of milk and went on with her life.

Mildred, on the other hand, developed a disdain for milk and discovered that she preferred other drinks. Her parents didn't know what to do.

Under the influence of raging hormones Mildred became less and less interested in brownies.

One day she up and ran off to New York. She just packed up and left, without so much as a note left behind.

She never made it, though. The car she was in crashed and she was taken in by hillbillies.

Fortunately for her, the man who found her was the King of the Hillbillies. He treated her like mountain royalty but unfortunately he was fatally kicked by a mule and Mildred found herself on her own.

Without a way to make a living Mildred drifted from relationship to relationship.

Finally she made it to New York but she had no money and no friends there. Life was hard.

Years passed. One day her Dad was browsing the lurid paperback stand in his local pharmacy and he found a book about, of all things, his daughter. That's when the family finally learned what happened to her.  Later a friend of hers mailed them Mildred's pasties. That's all they had to remember her by.

So that's the story. Gladiola continued to drink milk and prospered. I guess I haven't resolved the nature vs. nurture question. Maybe no one ever will. If there's a lesson to be learned here it might be about the generative power of milk...life giving, eternally delicious...milk.

 **********

BTW: Thanks to the anonymous person who who grafted the two women together on the title card.

ADVENTURE STORY

"Hey, I was rummaging in some old boxes in the garage and 

dug up an adventure book I thought I'd lost . You want to hear a few paragraphs?  I gotta warn you...it's not for the feint of heart.

"Yikes! A spider! I'll just shake it out."

"Okay, here goes: 'On a night when the moon is at the full and the taboo of the rice feast is forgotten, a live hamadryad..."

"...um, that's a poisonous snake, I think..."

 "...a live hamadryad is thrown into a kettle of boiling blood, blood which is drained from the body of a young Dryad girl. Into the mixture are thrown the teeth of nine crocodiles and the skull of a female orangutan."

"The potion is stirred with a golden parang...slowly...and the scum spooned off and allowed to dry. It is ground to a powder then and blended with the thorn of the Klubi, the swamp plant..."

"Whew! This is pretty intense stuff!"

"See! I warned you! You didn't believe me, didja?"

"Maybe we'll skip ahead to another chapter. Something a little milder, something like...THIS."

Yikes! It's about snakes!

Good Lord! I HATE snakes!!!!!

"That background, that misty darkness, was an undulating blanket of horror. Out there, wriggling, crawling, crossed and interwoven like the design of some colossal tapestry, was a compact mass of snakes....they were watching him with a thousand pairs of eyes, and they were advancing slowly nearer."

"Then it happened. Before he could flail his arms forward, before he could throw his weight to the side, his legs buckled under him and he fell to the floor.

He screamed then shot a frantic glance over his shoulder."

"Like a man in an hypnotic trance he felt himself powerless to move. What he saw was the snakes.  With a slow and inexorable movement the snake mass crossed the intervening distance, and, cold and clinging, began to slide its coils over his body."

"That's it!!! I can't take any more!!!!!!!!!"

Holy Cow! 'Another spider! I gotta clean that garage!"