Sometimes I have to hear a story a couple three times before it sticks. This is particularly true of the subtle ones.
Anne Lunt reminded me that she’d told me the following story some years ago—but I’d almost forgotten it. Until she told it again last month. Mrs. Skillins, wife of Bert Skillins, was a dyed-in-the-wool yankee. Frugal in every way, of course. Every Saturday morning for decades Sarah came to the house to pick up the laundry, and returned the clothes cleaned and pressed on a Monday. This went on when the children were growing, when they went off to war or off to college, and eventually off to marry with children of their own.
At last, Sarah confronted Mrs. Skillins—“I’ve been taking care of your laundry,” she said, “for 38 years, and you never once said ‘Thank you’ or ‘You’re doing a good job.’ ”
Mrs. Skillins was taken aback: “I go on hirin’ you, don’t I?”
This next story takes a minute to sink in. Well, it took me a minute. Peggy, who sat in the front row at my program at Presidential Oaks, very attentive, introduced herself afterwards and said she was quite deaf—and had been for a while. She ran a general store in a small town. One evening a young man approached her with a question. She thought he said, “Do you have any condos?”
“No,” she retorted, “they’re not allowed in this town!”
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