But that's not what I started out to tell you.
Elizabeth came in once so downcast, I had to ask what was the matter. Well, said Elizabeth, you know that amber is our national jewel. And last Saturday night, she'd had a party to celebrate her husband's new American citizenship. (I'd done the same thing when Norm, born in Canada, "got his papers".) And during their party, someone went into Elizabeth's bedroom, opened her top drawer and stole her collection of amber.
A few years later, Norm and I are on a bus tour of North Africa, and in a marketplace we see a really nice amber necklace. It's priced ridiculously cheap, and our tour guide immediately bargains it down even further. Can it be real? And finally -- for something like $3 -- it's worth the chance. We could take it home for Elizabeth. Back at the hotel, we rub it to see if it will pick up bits of paper -- no way, no magnetism, no amber. What we had was excellent plastic.
It looked a lot like this. |
So here's what I started out to tell you.
Elizabeth dies. Norm and I go to visiting hours at the Funeral Home. The coffin is open, there she lies in a dark silk dress and guess what? I whisper to Norm "That's the necklace we bought in Morocco."
Her husband hears, and he hastens to reassure us:
"Oh, we don't bury it! We just trying to decide should go to the daughter or the daughter-in-law?"
SHE NEVER TOLD.
So we didn't either.
A fine demonstration by all parties of the definition of politeness offered by Virginia Cary Hudson (author of O Ye Jigs and Juleps!) as the one she was taught at school: "Politeness is to do and say/The kindest things in the kindest way."
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