TheBanyanTree: more Stories again

[Julie Anna Teague]

> 	I'm beginning to feel like I should stop.  I need some feedback.

I thought musicians hated feedback.  BWAH HA HA.  I crack myself up 
with these stupid jokes all day long.  Don't you wish you lived closer 
and we could have coffee and I could drop these hilarious bon mots on 
you left and right?  I was just checking my mail again, on the hopes 
that something good would pop up, and there you were, needing feedback. 
  And just when I needed a diversion from work I do not feel like doing 
today.  Now I can look steadily at my screen, as if in deep thought, 
while reading a story instead, and be highly entertained.

So, yes, I'm still reading your stories and laughing, crying, or 
pondering, or just enjoying the absurdity of life and the randomness of 
memory in general.  And I've been mentally dredging up all kinds of 
stories of my own, too.  Funny, sad, or completely absurd memories show 
up unasked.  I'm excellent at dredging things up.  I can tell you the 
horridly embarrassing thing I did in fifth grade that haunts me.  Like 
it was yesterday.  Or call to mind whole conversations in which, if 
only I could go back 14 years, I would know, now, exactly what to say.  
I have lost too many hours of my life to replaying 
perfect-yet-forever-unspoken rejoinders.  Hours I could really use 
back.  You should see the gray hairs which Tareva my hair lady covers 
up with the creative use of color, may God bless and keep her until I'm 
ready to go really gray.

Anyway, this is going somewhere, believe it or not.  I was talking to 
my son Andy and dredging up old stories.  In particular on this day, 
the college boyfriend, always good for a few laughs from the teen son.  
I'm a regular poster child for What-Not-To-Do-at-16, and he finds great 
humor in that.  Andy reminded me that the guy is now old and bald and 
an evangelistic preacher in Mississippi.   (We found him on the web 
once, complete with picture, and I nearly had a heart attack.) I said, 
well, yes, but back then he was a ROCK STAR.  As soon as those last two 
words left my mouth, and I caught the gleam in Andy's 16 year old eye, 
I wished I'd left them unuttered.  Or at least toned them down to 
simply "Rock Musician".  What can I say, I was into my story in a big 
way.  He latched onto this story with gusto and began running around 
the house saying, "He was a THTAR.  Gee, I wish I was a THTAR.  I've 
never known a THTAR.  I wish I had a THTAR for a friend," and on and on 
in this stupid, comical, something like Goofy-the-dog voice.  For days 
he would add this to every sentence.  "Golly gee, if I were only a 
THTAR."

So the lesson here is to keep sharing, because you never know what 
memories you might provoke in some poor unsuspecting mother, who might 
then utter ridiculous claims about being Really Something back in the 
day, creating evil, giddy glee in her children.

And now, feedback dispensed, I have a story to read.

Julie