Everyone’s opinion to be respected

There are few things that make me mad — mad and upset. I am human and I get tired and maybe a little cranky when I am used to death! I work hard most days for my advanced age — well, maybe not so advanced, but you know what I’m saying. My help works hard and I am left with mostly easier things to do. I get up early every day, around six or six-thirty, and don’t usually stop and come in until dark.

I suppose being cut off in traffic is frustrating for everyone except the perpetrator of the act. If it is needed by someone to get in a lane, I will always provide space or try to. I don’t like phone calls after dark-thirty any evening. An emergency call is completely different, of course. Some cattle in the ditch or on the highway is, sure enough, an emergency. I am always happy to take care of the runaways and put them where they belong.

The white lies told by someone trying to “big shot” are disgusting to me. We see it often when ball games are over and parents are talking at their local hangout. Drugstore cowboys came in from California wearing fancy duds and told us they were cowboys; that is a white lie. Well, actually, a lie is always wrong.

I went to bed a few minutes before nine and she, my close relative, followed a bit later. She remarked that I seemed to go to bed early this evening and I played like I didn’t hear her. I really was tired and did not want to talk. The phone rang just as she got in bed and she got up to answer it. The call was for her and from a town lady. I gathered the information about the decorations for the baby shower, maybe Mrs. Thomas would make a cake and lots more I refused to listen to. I was ready for her to hang up 20 minutes before she did! I scooted to my off-side and got comfortable as she resumed lying down.

The phone rang! Now it was 15 minutes until 10 and I sat straight up. She bounded up and grabbed the phone and answered the fool thing. The long sighs I had made were enough to tell her I was unhappy. It was a town friend on the phone and the talk was so important that it was made with a phony whisper from the soft chair I insisted on having in the bedroom, with her back turned. It was a chair for pulling off my boots, not a conversation on the phone!

Gossip, I think, couldn’t really understand the words and it went on and on. At 10 o’clock I had enough! I proceeded to get up, put on my pants and began to gather the makings of a soft bed. I got an extra blanket and sheet, a pillow, and very quietly left the room! I traveled into the living room slowly — I have had a stubbed toe or two — and commenced to make the bed.

I can count on one hand the times I have been so mad at that woman, and we have been together a long time. That woman came here as a bride and did not have any idea about this sort of life, making the best of winter snows and summer droughts, planting a garden and canning the produce, helping with the cattle when I got desperate and raising a chicken so we would not starve! The hard times were the years the kids came along and she managed to keep us all well and together.

Everyone has an opinion, good or bad, and it is to be respected. We hope and pray, mostly pray, for our opinion to be one of the good ones. I spread the sheet out and smoothed a wrinkle at the foot and shook out the blanket.

Suddenly my head cleared and I was more wide awake. Honestly, suddenly I could see how childish and stupid I was being. I learn slowly but, finally, I get the gist of the idea. I gathered the blanket and stuff up, opened the door and stepped into the bedroom. Would you believe she never knew I was gone, and the lesson was written in stone!

Get ready for a bright spring day for all of us and Remember the Alamo!