Just now at my window

Lucky John

Too many bugs, too little punctuation

Here's a question just came in to the column, and I have to share it with somebody so you're it.  You tell me -- what do I answer?

I am in need of help I'm living in a house with bedbugs I lived there for 6 months no Furinture then purchased furniture then threw out three garbage bags of food because of mice still paying rent I'm on a 1 year lease don't want an eviction on my record contacted health Dept net office and housing council no help drained dry stressed out have four children not sleeping because of this unfortunate lived at another address house got vandalized frames of Windows were broken no help can u referred me what I should do no rent controlled property's in new York not sure where to turn dealt with bed bugs before only good thing landlord let me break the lease not the case now

 Sounds as if she has already tried her local Health Department, which is what I would have advised...I'm stumped. 

Twins Books

     The first series of Twins books I read belonged to my cousin Betty.  I know I was six, because in 1932, deep in the Depression, we were homeless and "doubled up" with my father's relatives in Buffalo.
     Here's everything I remember about the Bobbsey Twins:   Bert and Nan were eight years old; Flossie and Freddie were half past four.  They lived in Lakeville.  And some girl in the book became seriously sick because she disregarded her mother's warning and jumped rope 100 times.  I was just learning to jump rope (counting of course) and I had a nightmare.
     I wouldn't turn six until the end of February, but someone had talked me into first grade.  That must have been a crowded house, come to think of it.  Betty had a twin (!), my folks had a new baby, and they probably wanted to get me out from underfoot. Number 74 was a forward-looking demonstration school for the Normal School, the two-year teachers' college.
     Our pleasant young teacher posted a clipping -- the first words I learned to read -- the masthead
                          Buffalo Evening News
 in gothic type.
     The next year we moved to the slums of Lynn, Massachusetts, and doubled up with my mother's relatives -- four adults, two children, a toddler and a baby, in a four-room "cold-water flat" above a little grocery store.  The icebox, I remember, was outside in the stair landing.
     So I started second grade, and I have only one memory of that school in Lynn -- the day the principal took me out to the room next door.  She handed me an open book, stood me in front of those third-graders and said "Read it out loud."  Hard to believe anyone would do that, but she did.
 I still remember that first sentence:  "One summer morning, very early, Vrouw Vedder opened the door of her little Dutch kitchen and stepped out."  I had trouble six words in, with "Vrouw".  Must have got it, though, because then and there I was "skipped"  -- ended up six years old in the third grade.  Evidently if you could read, you didn't belong in second grade.  Not in that school, anyhow.
     And what I set out to tell you is that, reading through my top shelf now, I discovered I OWN THE BOOK.  The Dutch Twins, by Lucy Fitch Perkins!  The original 1911 edition!  A pencilled booksellers' note on the flyleaf says I paid $15 for it, evidently in the 1990s.   
     So does anyone else remember that other Twins series, which turned up several times later as I kept changing schools?  Here's what sticks in my memory -- the Scotch Twins (yes, now I think it should have been Scottish but it wasn't) met the Young Laird out on the hills.  The Japanese twin told her brother "that pot is always rice -- what's cooking in the other one?"  And the Irish Twins had an uncle who had emigrated and was a policeman in Boston.

                I don't remember a thing about the Cave Twins.

Here's What It's Like

Took a package to the post office -- not as simple as it sounds of course.  Driving is still okay, in fact it's a delightful just-as-mobile-as-anyone-else behind the wheel -- and feeling no pain!  But then it's shuffle around the car to get that rollator out, stow the package in it, totter inside and -- I had picked the wrong time -- stand in line.  Nowhere to sit: "We used to have some stools but they made us get rid of them, people might fall and sue."
So decided I'd better stock up on stamps too.  I settled on a couple of cards of Songbirds in Snow, paid the clerk, tottered back out, started to take the songbirds out of the rollator bag -- and the bag was empty. 
No stamps in my shirt pocket.  No stamps in my pants pockets.  I don't carry a purse.  No stamps anywhere.
All that tottering hurts, of course, but back in to the post office, ignoring the line, right up to the counter, where no songbirds in sight.  The clerk was really concerned, came out from behind the counter, searched all the way back to the entrance, went out to examine the sidewalk.  Came back in and insisted on taking my name and phone number in case they showed up.
So this morning I had dim sum in a Chinese restaurant with friends.  Good conversation, good nibbles, reached for my wallet and you guessed it.
Okay, things like that happen to you too.  I know.  But perhaps not all day long, every day?  Just you wait.