Natalie Whatley

It’s been an odd week for yours truly, and since my mind is refusing to settle in on any one topic, I’m just going to throw everything in the pot and let it simmer –column stew, if you will. You’re bound to find some meat and potatoes floating around. I’ll let you decide which is which. And, I apologize for serving what’s traditionally a fall/winter meal in the spring.

Columnists live life on the constant look-out for “material’. Some weeks I’m bombarded with subjects, while others provide a snippet here and a snippet there, but nothing even I can pontificate on long enough. So, imagine a big pot, and away we go!

I stopped by the bank this week and made a rare trip inside the lobby as the business I needed to conduct couldn’t be handled in the drive-through. The nightly news often includes reports of bank robberies, but a sign I saw posted on the door caused me to give pause and then enjoy a brief chortle, which is a chuckle and a snort. 

The sign read, I kid you not, “Please remove sunglasses and hats before entering the lobby”.  Being the reasonable, law-abiding citizen that I am, I removed my sun glasses and flashed the biggest smile I could muster. Deduction told me I was starring in that moment’s piece of surveillance footage.  I’m certain would-be robbers would do the same. Why, it would be absurd not to.

Moving along, I made my way to Kroger’s, my home-away-from-home, and for the first time I stopped by the Clorox wipe dispenser and sanitized the cart handle.  There’s some pig flu going around.  With three school-aged children my immune system has become formidable, but this has the potential of putting me down for a few days, so I’ll take some extra precautions. Plus, the wall-to-wall news coverage of people wearing surgical masks is starting to scare me.  It is just a strain of the flu, right? The cynic in me doesn’t know what to think, but the media sure seems bent on making me feel my demise is imminent. 

At the end of one aisle I approached a healthy-looking man who sneezed. He got about a half-cover in before… ACHOO!!  Normally, I’d wait a few seconds, hold my breath, and plow through.  Not this time. I performed an abrupt turn mid-aisle and high-tailed it the other way.  I’ve got four weeks to myself before school lets out; I don’t intend on spending any of it sick.

As if the above hadn’t caused me enough distress “Old Blue”, my trusty momma-mobile, failed to start Wednesday morning.  No big deal other than it was a TAKS testing day. I was trying so hard – got everyone up in a cheerful manner (I should win an Academy Award for that acting), cooked breakfast, and even built cereal-box walls on the kitchen table to avoid any he’s- looking-at-me morning bickering. After all that, everyone was ready for a soothing ride to school . . .

Turns out Jeff can get home pretty fast when he needs to.  I walked one into school prepared to take the brunt of whatever calamity was to befall tardy students trying to enter a campus under lockdown for testing.

I was pleasantly surprised when I met Mr. Yepez at the doors of Gentry just as students were being ushered to their testing locations. I apologized and gave a brief explanation. “It’s OK,” he said as my boy went to get in line.

In closing, that sums up how I feel about this past week. It’ll all be OK, as long as I keep myself at a simmer and avoid letting my pot boil over.

© 2009 Natalie Whatley