When I awakened this morning not as a fleeting puff of radioactive gas but as Your Humble Narrator, I knew it was gonna be a good day.
Jesus H., etc. The Middle East has been figuring in my nightmares since, well, forever.
When I was a smaller, humbler narrator my parents taught me to read phonetically, aloud, using whatever printed material was handy. Stumbling through a report in Time magazine one day I encountered the incomprehensible “Egypt,” and after rolling it around in the gem polisher of my mind for a spell I decided it must be pronounced “Iggy-pit.”
My parents roared. I never heard the end of it. They told it to their pals over martinis. They told it to my pals, who had to endure it stone-cold sober and punished me for it afterward. They told it to my dates, who otherwise might have become actual girlfriends, which may help explain why it took so long for me to find someone to marry.
I’ve been deeply suspicious about home-schooling ever since. Later, I would come to question faith-based titles to real estate.
Mad Blog Media 
Well, at least the dog didn’t give you any shit, figuratively speaking. What was its name?
There are no “holy” lands. And, I feel a real need for a digital detox.
That’s my sister Peggy and the family dog Sandy joining Your Humble Narrator for Bible studies back in 1960, in Ottawa. Sandy was a mixed breed, Chihuahua and toy fox terrier, and lived to be something like 21. She was part of the family before we kids appeared on the scene and hung on until the old man’s final post at Ent AFB in Bibleburg. She was the only one of us to pass away in the family house.
How could I forget that name? Duh
Our little guy was Bootsie. White feet on a mix terrier and who knows.
“In the beginning was the word…” and the word was…
My first thought was that you and Herself had adopted a dog. That’s how my mind works . Love the photo and the story.
Hey, Libby … glad you liked it. The post just beamed in from … somewhere, which is how my mind works. When it works at all.
True story, too. I have much to thank my parents for, not least their insistence that we learn stuff. They saw to it that we had books and library cards, helped us with homework, played challenging board and card games with us, drilled us with flashcards, the works. Banked money to put us through college, too, so there was no debt hanging over our heads as we started to cut our own trails in the world.
They both got shorted on education and were determined that we’d have the opportunities they were denied. Peggy worked hard and got the grades; I worked on the things that interested me and exploited weaknesses in the system to (mostly) avoid sanctions. We both turned out OK, I think.
Yep, I think some of the much more intelligent, educated, well read, and better looking folks than I, that stop on in to this saloon every once in a while would say your folks did pretty well.
Your Egypt phonics brain twister got me to thinking about when that country (the English name) first passed through my brain where I may have processed it. I believe it was a place and a country name that I absorbed quickly because like your Father, mine was a WWII vet, and North Africa and the days of Rommel and Montgomery quickly became part of my history education.
“Sandy was the only one to pass away in the family house”. Damn that’s sad to think about. But she got to enjoy the hole enchilada for a long time.