Always Trust In The Beauty Shop

You know, I'm a big fan of "The Andy Griffith Show." And one of the main reasons, well, one of the main reasons is because it's funny. It's just funny, and people say funny things in a way that real people would say them in conversation.

But the other main reason I was thinking of is that the show is set in a small town in the south. Just like I'm set in a small town in the south. And no show ever has captured more about small-town living like Andy.

There's a great episode that happens very early on called "Those Gossipin' Women." It's about how the much-maligned gossipin' women of Mayberry play a little prank on the men and catch them their share of gossip too, thank you very much.

The episode begins with Barney cutting his finger while cleaning his gun. It draws blood, so he puts some mercurochrome on it. and a little bandage. Within five minutes of this being passed around the women of Mayberry, Barney is dead, and the undertaker comes to ask Andy where to pick up Barney's body.

Yesterday, we heard that the band director of TaytieMac's high school band was in the hospital. We didn't know what was going on, that's all we heard. Last night, my sister got the scoop from TM: Mr Director got something in his eye, a doctor couldn't remove it, and so he had to go to the emergency room.

This morning my mom walked into my office and said, "Did you hear about Mr Director? He's had a stroke."

And we at TheCompanyIWorkFor fell about the room laughing.

We'd heard that this news had come directly from the beauty shop, and therefore must be true.

"Oh, my Lord. It's Mayberry," we said, wiping our eyes.

About noon, Mr Director's mother came into our office. She told us that Mr Director had apparently had a stroke. Or a mini-stroke, at some time in the past. The symptom was the eye problem, he was having trouble focusing.

Mr Director is the same age as TM's dad; in fact, they graduated together. He's a little, skinny guy. A healthy guy. He's not stroke material.

He's still in the hospital, and will probably miss the big State Band Competition on Saturday (where I'll be instead of Oktoberfest). And I'm worried. About him, about myself, about everybody in my age range.

Anyway, I guess those gossipin' women sometimes know their stuff. I'm sure Barney Fife didn't actually die, though.

Betland's Olympic Update:
* Thinking about my shoe-fiasco last night, I remembered the last pair of shoes I bought on the QVC Bigass Shoe Sale For Charity. It was about five years ago. A pair of boots by Bass. I liked them because they were green, and something I'd never normally buy for myself. When they came, I liked them, but they were too green, too loud, and too not me. I was, for want of a better word, afraid to wear them, for some reason. So I put them away. I decided I had to go find them and unearth them and wear them, just for a change. So I found them during my lunch hour - they still had the paper in the toes. Oddly enough, though, they're not all that green and they're not all that loud. So I took the paper out of those toes and wore them the second half of the work day.
* I hope everyone's gone to CNN to view Fidel Castro breaking his kneecap. There's something in that fall that makes me want to crack a joke about the Domino Theory.