Articles

[olinda]

1-In a day,when you don,t come across any problems

You can be sure that you are traveling in a wrong path.

SWAMI VIVEKANANAA)

2-Three sentences for getting success
1-Know more than other
2-Work more than other
3-Expect less than other

WILLIAM SHEAKSPERE

3-If you win you need not explain
But if you lose should not be there to explain.

ADOLPH HITLER

4-Don,t compare yourself with anyone in this world.
If you do so,you are insulting yourself.

ALLEN STRIKE

5-If we cannot love the person whom we see
How can we love God whom we cannot see?

MOTHER TERESA

6-Winning does not always mean being first
Winning means you,r doing better than you,re done before.

BONNIE BLAIR

7-I will not say failed 1000 times,i will say :
That i discovered there are 1000 ways that can cause failure.

THOMAS EDISON

8-Every one thinks of changing the world
But no body thinks of changing himself.

LEO TOLSTOY

9-Believing everybody is dangerous
Believing nobody is very dangerous

ABRAHAM LINKLON

10-If some one feels that they had never made a mistake in their life
Then it means they had never tried a new thing in their life.

EINSTEIN

11-Never break four things in your life
Trust-promise-relation- heart
Beacause when they break they don,t make
noise but pain a lot .

CHARLES

12-If you start judging people you will be have
No time to love them.

MOTHER TERESA

13-Take into account that great love and
Great achievments involve great risk.

DALAY LAMA

[Greight]

In any modern society, the importance of birth control programs has been approved. In fact, for prevailing welfare, it seems obligatory to control the number of births and prohibit numerous children within a single family. Therefore, Iranian government has adopted some policies for controlling birth rate. These policies have led to some good results, e.g. a general welfare. But it is causing a bad effect as well, i.e. an increase in the number of uncivilized people.

The Iranian government has given some facilities, such as free medical services and contraception devices. These facilities are given in all medical centers in the country. The government has also limited some social services for the families that exceed a defined number of children, e.g. state insurance services are given just to the first three children of the family and no more. The government has also worked on the culture of the society; in the first ten years after the revolution, the idea of 'the more the better' had been widely spread, causing a sudden raise of the population. So approximately in the second decade after the revolution, the government started an effort to prevail a new idea, i.e. there is not any difference between a male and female child, two is enough.

As a result of birth rate control programs in the last decade, more young people are getting job day to day, i.e. more people are getting jobs everyday, causing the people become more financially affording. Moreover, the health rate of the society has been increased. Also in the next decade, the crowdedness in the society will decrease. Then you can go through cities more easily than now, and you will be more comfortable after twenty years and more. With all of these the society becomes more lively and joyful.

These policies have also caused a negative effect, i.e. a raise in the number of uncivilized people. These people can be regarded as not educated and in accord with socially acceptable manners.In other words they are not culturally advanced. These kinds of families care less about birth rate control than refined ones. Hence, the number of this kind of people increases. As a result, they have lots of children whom they can't civilize, educate and train properly. Conversely, the educated and civilized people try to have fewer children, thus, making the number of their kind less. This leads to formation of an uncivilized,uncultured and unsophisticated society.
We have seen then, the policies that the government has adopted for birth rate management have caused some good results like a general welfare which has made or will make the society happier, healthier and prosperous. The bad effect of raising the number of uneducated and uncivilized persons is also a sub- effect of these policies. So, it seems that the program should be scaled to make more opportunities for refined families to have even more children, while it restricts uncivilized families in having more than a limited number of children
.
Now tell me what u think about this.

[olinda]

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[olinda]

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[sina1100]

How I Met My Husband
Alice Munro
Notes
1 We heard the plane come over at noon, roaring through the radio news, and we were
2 sure it was going to hit the house, so we all ran out into the yard. We saw it come in
3 over the treetops, all red and silver, the first close--up plane I ever saw. Mrs. Peebles
4 screamed.
5 “Crash landing,” their little boy said. Joey was his name.
6 “It's okay,” said Dr. Peebles. “He knows what he's doing.” Dr. Peebles was only an
7 animal doctor, but had a calming way of talking, like any doctor.
8 This was my first job--working for Dr. and Mrs. Peebles, who had bought an old
9 house out on the Fifth Line, about five miles out of town. It was just when the trend
10 was starting of town people buying up old farms, not to work them but to live on
11 them.
12 We watched the plane land across the road, where the fairgrounds used to be. It did
13 make a good landing field, nice and level for the old race track, and the barns and
14 display sheds torn down now for scrap lumber so there was nothing in the way. Even
15 the old grandstand bays had burned.
16 “All right,” said Mrs. Peebles, snappy as she always was when she got over her
17 nerves. “Let's go back in the house. Let's not stand here gawking like a set of
18 farmers.”
19 She didn't say that to hurt my feelings. It never occurred to her.
20 I was just setting the dessert down when Loretta Bird arrived, out of breath, at the
21 screen door.
22 “I thought it was going to crash into the house and kill youse all!”
23 She lived on the next place and the Peebleses thought she was a country--woman, they
24 didn't know the difference. She and her husband didn't farm, he worked on the roads
25 and had a bad name for drinking. They had seven children and couldn't get credit at
26 the HiWay Grocery. The Peebleses made her welcome, not knowing any better, as I
27 say, and offered her dessert.
28 Dessert was never anything to write home about, at their place. A dish of Jell--O or
29 sliced bananas or fruit out of a tin. “Have a house without a pie, be ashamed until you
30 die,” my mother used to say, but Mrs. Peebles operated differently.
31 Loretta Bird saw me getting the can of peaches.
32 “Oh, never mind,” she said. “I haven't got the right kind of a stomach to trust what
33 comes out of those tins, I can only eat home canning.”
34 I could have slapped her. I bet she never put down fruit in her life.
35 “I know what he's landed here for,” she said.“He's got permission to use the
36 fairgrounds and take people up for rides. It costs a dollar. It's the same fellow who was
37 over at Palmerston last week and was up the lakeshore before that. I wouldn't go up, if
38 you paid me.”
39 “I’d jump at the chance,” Dr. Peebles said. “I'd like to see this neighbor--hood from
40 the air.”
41 Mrs. Peebles said she would just as soon see it from the ground. Joey said he wanted
42 to go and Heather did, too. Joey was nine and Heather was seven.
43 “Would you, Edie?” Heather said.
44 I said I didn't know. I was scared, but I never admitted that, especially in front of
45 children I was taking care of.
46 “People are going to be coming out here in their cars raising dust and trampling your
47 property, if I was you I would complain,” Loretta said. She hooked her legs around
48 the chair rung and I knew we were in for a lengthy visit. After Dr. Peebles went back
49 to his offIce or out on his next call and Mrs. Peebles went for her nap, she would hang
50 around me while I was trying to do the dishes. She would pass remarks about the
51 Peebleses in their own house.
52 “She wouldn't find time to lay down in the middle of the day, if she had seven kids
53 like I got.”
54 She asked me did they fight and did they keep things in the dresser drawer not to have
55 babies with. She said it was a sin if they did. I pretended I didn't know what she was
56 talking about.
57 I was fifteen and away from home for the first time. My parents had made the effort
58 and sent me to high school for a year, but I didn't like it. I was shy of strangers and
59 the work was hard, they didn't make it nice for you or explain the way they do now.
60 At the end of the year the averages were published in the paper, and mine came out at
61 the very bottom, 37 percent. My father said that's enough and I didn't blame him. The
62 last thing I wanted, anyway, was to go on and end up teaching school. It happened the
63 very day the paper came out with my disgrace in it, Dr. Peebles was staying at our
64 place for dinner, having just helped one of the cows have twins, and he said I looked
65 smart to him and his wife was looking for a girl to help. He said she felt tied down,
66 with the two children, out in the country. I guess she would, my mother said, being
67 polite, though I could tell from her face she was wondering what on earth it would be
68 like to have only two children and no barn work, and then to be complaining.
69 When I went home I would describe to them the work I had to do, and it made
70 everybody laugh. Mrs. Peebles had an automatic washer and dryer, the first I ever saw.
71 I have had those in my own home for such a long time now it's hard to remember how
72 much of a miracle it was to me, not having to struggle with the wringer and hang up
73 and haul down. Let alone not having to heat water. Then there was practically no
74 baking. Mrs. Peebles said she couldn't make pie crust, the most amazing thing I ever
75 heard a woman admit. I could, of course, and I could make light biscuits and a white
76 cake and dark cake, but they didn't want it, she said they watched their figures. The
77 only thing I didn't like about working there, in fact, was feeling half hungry a lot of
78 the time. I used to bring back a box of doughnuts made out at home, and hide them
79 under my bed. The children found out, and I didn't mind sharing, but I thought I
80 better bind them to secrecy.
81 The day after the plane landed Mrs. Peebles put both children in the car and drove over
82 to Chesley, to get their hair cut. There was a good woman then at Chesley for doing
83 hair. She got hers done at the same place, Mrs. Peebles did, and that meant they
84 would be gone a good while. She had to pick a day Dr. Peebles wasn't going out into
85 the country, she didn't have her own car. Cars were still in short supply then, after the
86 war.
87 I loved being left in the house alone, to do my work at leisure. The kitchen was all
88 white and bright yellow, with fluorescent lights. That was before they ever thought of
89 making the appliances all different colors and doing the cupboards like dark old wood
90 and hiding the lighting. I loved light. I loved the double sink. So would anybody
91 new--come from washing dishes in a dishpan with a rag--plugged hole on an oilcloth--
92 covered table by light of a coal--oillamp. I kept everything shining.
93 The bathroom too. I had a bath in there once a week. They wouldn't have minded if I
94 took one oftener, but to me it seemed like asking too much, or maybe risking making
95 it less wonderful. The basin and the tub and the toilet were all pink, and there were
96 glass doors with flamingoes painted on them, to shut off the tub. The light had a rosy
97 cast and the mat sank under your feet like snow, except that it was warm. The mirror
98 was three--way. With the mirror all steamed up and the air like a perfume cloud, from
99 things I was allowed to use, I stood up on the side of the tub and admired myself
100 naked, from three directions. Sometimes I thought about the way we lived out at
101 home and the way we lived here and how one way was so hard to imagine when you
102 were living the other way. But I thought it was still a lot easier, living the way we
103 lived at home, to picture something like this, the painted flamingoes and the warmth
104 and the soft mat, than it was anybody knowing only things like this to picture how it
105 was the other way. And why was that?
106 I was through my jobs in no time, and had the vegetables peeled for supper and sitting
107 in cold water besides. Then I went into Mrs. Peebles' bedroom. I had been in there
108 plenty of times, cleaning, and I always took a good look in her closet, at the clothes
109 she had hanging there. I wouldn't have looked in her drawers, but a closet is open to
110 anybody. That's a lie. I would have looked in drawers, but I would have felt worse
111 doing it and been more scared she could tell.
112 Some clothes in her closet she wore all the time, I was quite familiar with them.
113 Others she never put on, they were pushed to the back. I was disappointed to see no
114 wedding dress. But there was one long dress I could just see the skirt of, and I was
115 hungering to see the rest. Now I took note of where it hung and lifted it out. It was
116 satin, a lovely weight on my arm, light bluish--green in color, almost silvery. It had a
117 fitted, pointed waist and a full skirt and an off--the--shoulder fold hiding the little
118 sleeves.
119 Next thing was easy. I got out of my own things and slipped it on. I was slimmer at
120 fifteen than anybody would believe who knows me now and the fit was beautiful. I
121 didn't, of course, have a strapless bra on, which was what it needed, I just had to slide
122 my straps down my arms under the material. Then I tried pinning up my hair, to get
123 the effect. One thing led to another. I put on rouge and lipstick and eyebrow pencil
124 from her dresser. The heat of the day and the weight of the satin and all the excitement
125 made me thirsty, and I went out to the kitchen, got--up as I was, to get a glass of
126 ginger ale with ice cubes from the refrigerator. The Peebleses drank ginger ale, or fruit
127 drinks, all day, like water, and I was getting so I did too. Also there was no limit on
128 ice cubes, which I was so fond of I would even put them in a glass of milk.
129 I turned from putting the ice tray back and saw a man watching me through the screen.
130 It was the luckiest thing in the world I didn't spill the ginger ale down the front of me
131 then and there.
132 “I never meant to scare you. I knocked but you were getting the ice out, you didn't
133 hear me.”
134 I couldn't see what he looked like, he was dark the way somebody is pressed up
135 against a screen door with the bright daylight behind them. I only knew he wasn't
136 from around here.
137 “I’m from the plane over there. My name is Chris Watters and what I was wondering
138 was if I could use that pump."”
139 There was a pump in the yard. That was the way the people used to get their water.
140 Now I noticed he was carrying a pail.
141 "You’re welcome,” I said. “I can get it from the tap and save you pumping.” I guess I
142 wanted him to know we had piped water, didn't pump ourselves.
143 “I don't mind the exercise.” He didn't move, though, and finally he said, “Were you
144 going to a dance?”
145 Seeing a stranger there had made me entirely forget how I was dressed.
146 “Or is that the way ladies around here generally get dressed up in the afternoon?”
147 I didn't know how to joke back then. I was too embarrassed.
148 “You live here? Are you the lady of the house?”
149 “I’m the hired girl.”
150 Some people change when they find that out, their whole way of looking at you and
151 speaking to you changes, but his didn't.
152 “Well, I just wanted to tell you you look very nice. I was so surprised when I looked
153 in the door and saw you. Just because you looked so nice and beautiful.”
154 I wasn't even old enough then to realize how out of the common it is, for a man to say
155 something like that to a woman, or somebody he is treating like a woman. For a man
156 to say a word like beautiful. I wasn't old enough to realize or to say anything back, or
157 in fact to do anything but wish he would go away. Not that I didn't like him, but just
158 that it upset me so, having him look at me, and me trying to think of something to
159 say.
160 He must have understood. He said good--bye, and. thanked me, and went and started
161 filling his pail from the pump. I stood behind the Venetian blinds in the dining room,
162 watching him. When he had gone, I went into the bedroom and took the dress off and
163 put it back in the same place. I dressed in my own clothes and took my hair down and
164 washed my face, wiping it on Kleenex, which I threw in the wastebasket.
166 The Peebleses asked me what kind of man he was. Young, middle--aged, short, tall? I
167 couldn't say.
168 “Good--looking?” Dr. Peebles teased me.
169 I couldn't think a thing but that he would be coming to get his water again, he would
170 be talking to Dr. or Mrs. Peebles, making friends with them, and he would mention
171 seeing me that first afternoon, dressed up. Why not mention it? He would think it was
172 funny. And no idea of the trouble it would get me into.
173 After supper the Peebleses drove into town to go to a movie. She wanted to go
174 somewhere with her hair fresh done. I sat in my bright kitchen wondering what to do,
175 knowing I would never sleep. Mrs. Peebles might not fire me, when she found out,
176 but it would give her a different feeling about me altogether. This was the first place I
177 ever worked but I already had picked up things about the way people feel when you are
178 working for them. They like to think you aren't curious. Not just that you aren't
179 dishonest, that isn't enough. They like to feel you don't notice things, that you don't
180 think or wonder about anything but what they liked to eat and how they liked things
181 ironed, and so on. I don't mean they weren't kind to me, because they were. They had
182 me eat my meals with them (to tell the truth I expected to, I didn't know there were
183 families who don't) and sometimes they took me along in the car. But all the same.
184 I went up and checked on the children being asleep and then I went out. I had to do it.
185 I crossed the road and went in the old fairgrounds gate. The plane looked unnatural
186 sitting there, and shining with the moon. Off at the far side of the fairgrounds where
187 the bush was taking over, I saw his tent.
188 He was sitting outside it smoking a cigarette. He saw me coming.
189 “Hello, were you looking for a plane ride? I don't start taking people up till
190 tomorrow.”Then he looked again and said, “Oh, it's you. I didn't know you without
191 your long dress on.”
192 My heart was knocking away, my tongue was dried up. I had to say something. But I
193 couldn't. My throat was closed and I was like a deaf--and--dumb.
194 “Did you want a ride? Sit down. Have a cigarette.”
195 I couldn't even shake my head to say no, so he gave me one.
196 “Put it in your mouth or I can't light it. It's a good thing I'm used to shy ladies.”
197 I did. It wasn't the first time I had smoked a cigarette, actually. My girl--friend out
198 home, Muriel Lowe, used to steal them from her brother.
199 “Look at your hand shaking. Did you just want to have a chat, or what?”
200 In one burst I said, “I wisht you wouldn't say anything about that dress.”
201 “What dress? Oh, the long dress.”
202 “It's Mrs. Peebles'.”
203 “Whose? Oh, the lady you work for? She wasn't home so you got dressed up in her
204 dress, eh? You got dressed up and played queen. I don't blame you. You're not
205 smoking the cigarette right. Don't just puff. Draw it in. Did anybody ever show you
206 how to inhale? Are you scared I'll tell on you? Is that it?”
207 I was so ashamed at having to ask him to connive this way I couldn't nod. I just
208 looked at him and he saw yes.
209 “Well I won't. I won't in the slightest way mention it or embarrass you. I give you my
210 word of honor.”
211 Then he changed the subject, to help me out, seeing I couldn't even thank him.
212 “What do you think of this sign?”
213 It was a board sign lying practically at my feet.
214 SEE THE WORLD FROM THE SKY. ADULTS $1.00, CHILDREN 50¢.
215 QUALIFIED PILOT.
216 “My old sign was getting pretty beat up, I thought I'd make a new one. That's what
217 I've been doing with my time today.”
218 The lettering wasn't all that handsome, I thought. I could have done a better one in
219 half an hour.
220 “I'm not an expert at sign making.”
221 “It's very good,” I said.
222 “I don't need it for publicity, word of mouth is usually enough. I turned away two
223 carloads tonight. I felt like taking it easy. I didn't tell them ladies were dropping in to
224 visit me.”
225 Now I remembered the children and I was scared again, in case; one of them had
226 waked up and called me and I wasn't there.
227 “Do you have to go so soon?”
228 I remembered some manners. “Thank you for the cigarette.”
229 “Don't forget. You have my word of honor.”
230 I tore off across the fairgrounds, scared I'd see the car heading home from town. My
231 sense of time was mixed up, I didn't know how long I'd been out of the house. But it
232 was all right, it wasn't late, the children were asleep. I got in my bed myself and lay
233 thinking what a lucky end to the day, after all, and among things to be grateful for I
234 could be' grateful Loretta Bird hadn't been the one who caught me.
235 The yard and borders didn't get trampled, it wasn't as bad as that. All the same it
236 seemed very public, around the house. The sign was on the fair--grounds gate. People
237 came mostly after supper but a good many in the afternoon, too. The Bird children all
238 came without fifty cents between them and hung on the gate. We got used to the
239 excitement of the plane coming in and taking off, it wasn't excitement anymore. I
240 never went over, after that one time, but would see him when he came to get his
241 water. I would be out on the steps doing sitting--down work, like preparing
242 vegetables, if I could.
243 “Why don't you come over? I'll take you up in my plane.”
244 “I'm saving my money,” I said, because I couldn't think of anything else.
245 “For what? For getting married?”
246 I shook my head.
247 “I'll take you up for free if you come sometime when it's slack. I thought you would
248 come, and have another cigarette.”
249 I made a face to hush him, because you never could tell when the children would be
250 sneaking around the porch, or Mrs. Peebles herself listening in the house. Sometimes
251 she came out and had a conversation with him. He told her things he hadn't bothered
252 to tell me. But then I hadn't thought to ask. He told her he had been in the war, that
253 was where he learned to fly a plane, and how he couldn't settle down to ordinary life,
254 this was what he liked. She said she couldn't imagine anybody liking such a thing.
255 Though sometimes, she said, she was almost bored enough to try anything herself,
256 she wasn't brought up to living in the country. It's all my husband's idea, she said.
257 This was news to me.
258 “Maybe you ought to give flying lessons,” she said.
259 “Would you take them?”
260 She just laughed.
262 Sunday was a busy flying day in spite of it being preached against from two pulpits.
263 We were all sitting out watching. Joey and Heather were over on the fence with the
264 Bird kids. Their father had said they could go, after their mother saying all week they
265 couldn't.
266 A car came down the road past the parked cars and pulled up right in the drive. It was
267 Loretta Bird who got out, all importance, and on the driver's side another woman got
268 out, more sedately. She was wearing sunglasses.
269 “This is a lady looking for the man that flies the plane,” Loretta Bird said. “I heard her
270 inquire in the hotel coffee shop where I was having a Coke and I brought her out.”
271 “I'm sorry to bother you,” the lady said. “I'm Alice Kelling, Mr. Watters' fiancée.”
272 This Alice Kelling had on a pair of brown and white checked slacks and a yellow top.
273 Her bust looked to me rather low and bumpy. She had a worried face. Her hair had had
274 a permanent, but had grown out, and she wore a yellow band to keep it off her face.
275 Nothing in the least pretty or even young--looking about her. But you could tell from
276 how she talked she was from the city, or educated, or both.
277 Dr. Peebles stood up and introduced himself and his wife and me and asked her to be
278 seated.
279 “He's up in the air right now, but you're welcome to sit and wait. He gets his water
280 here and he hasn't been yet. He'll probably take his break about five.”
281 “That is him, then?” said Alice Kelling, wrinkling and straining at the sky.
282 “He's not in the habit of running out on you, taking a different name?” Dr. Peebles
283 laughed. He was the one, not his wife, to offer iced tea. Then she sent me into the
284 kitchen to fix it. She smiled. She was wearing sunglasses too.
285 “He never mentioned his fiancée,” she said.
286 I loved fixing iced tea with lots of ice and slices of lemon in tall glasses. I ought to
287 have mentioned before, Dr. Peebles was an abstainer, at least around the house, or I
288 wouldn't have been allowed to take the place. I had to fix a glass for Loretta Bird too,
289 though it galled me, and when 1 went out she had settled in my lawn chair, leaving
290 me the steps.
291 “I knew you was a nurse when I first heard you in that coffee shop.”
292 “How would you know a thing like that?”
293 “I get my hunches about people. Was that how you met him, nursing?”
294 “Chris? Well yes. Yes, it was.”
295 “Oh, were you overseas?” said Mrs. Peebles.
296 “No, it was before he went overseas. I nursed him when he was stationed at Centralia
297 and had a ruptured appendix. We got engaged and then he went overseas. My, this is
298 refreshing, after a long drive.”
299 “He'll be glad to see you,” Dr. Peebles said. “It's a rackety kind of life, isn't it, not
300 staying one place long enough to really make friends.”
301 “Youse've had a long engagement,” Loretta Bird said.
302 Alice Kelling passed that over. “I was going to get a room at the hotel, but when I
303 was offered directions 1 came on out. Do you think I could phone them?”
304 “No need,” Dr. Peebles said. “You're five miles away from him if you stay at the
305 hotel. Here, you're right across the road. Stay with us. We've got rooms on rooms,
306 look at this big house.”
307 Asking people to stay, just like that, is certainly a country thing, and maybe seemed
308 natural to him now, but not to Mrs. Peebles, from the way she said, oh yes, we have
309 plenty of room. Or to Alice Kelling, who kept protesting, but let herself be worn
310 down. I got the feeling it was a temptation to her, to be that close. 1 was trying for a
311 look at her ring. Her nails were painted red, her fingers were freckled and wrinkled. It
312 was a tiny stone. Muriel Lowe's cousin had one twice as big.
313 Chris came to get his water, late in the afternoon just as Dr. Peebles had predicted. He
314 must have recognized the car from a way off. He came smiling.
315 “Here I am chasing after you to see what you're up to,” called Alice Kelling. She got
316 up and went to meet him and they kissed, just touched, in front of us.
317 “You're going to spend a lot on gas that way,” Chris said.
318 Dr. Peebles invited Chris to stay for supper, since he had already put up the sign that
319 said: NO MORE RIDES TILL 7 P.M. Mrs. Peebles wanted it served in the yard, in
320 spite of the bugs. One thing strange to anybody from the country is this eating
321 outside. I had made a potato salad earlier and she had made a jellied salad, that was
322 one thing she could do, so it was just a matter of getting those out, and some sliced
323 meat and cucumbers and fresh leaf lettuce. Loretta Bird hung around for some time
324 saying, “Oh, well, I guess I better get home to those yappers,” and,“It's so nice just
325 sitting here, I sure hate to get up,” but nobody invited her, I was relieved to see, and
326 finally she had to go.
327 That night after rides were finished Alice Kelling and Chris went off somewhere in her
328 car. I lay awake till they got back. When I saw the car lights sweep my ceiling I got
329 up to look down on them through the slats of my blind. I don't know what I thought I
330 was going to see. Muriel Lowe and I used to sleep on her front veranda and watch her
331 sister and her sister's boy friend saying good night. Afterward we couldn't get to sleep,
332 for longing for somebody to kiss us and rub against us and we would talk about
333 suppose you were out in a boat with a boy and he wouldn't bring you in to shore
334 unless you did it, or what if somebody got you trapped in a barn, you would have to,
335 wouldn't you, it wouldn't be your fault. Muriel said her two girl cousins used to try
336 with a toilet paper roll that one of them was a boy. We wouldn't do anything like that;
337 just lay and wondered.
338 All that happened was that Chris got out of the car on one side and she got out on the
339 other and they walked off separately--him toward the fair--grounds and her toward the
340 house. I got back in bed and imagined about me coming home with him, not like
341 that.
342 Next morning Alice Kelling got up late and I fixed a grapefruit for her the way I had
343 learned and Mrs. Peebles sat down with her to visit and have another cup of coffee.
344 Mrs. Peebles seemed pleased enough now, having company. Alice Kelling said she
345 guessed she better get used to putting in a day just watching Chris take off and come
346 down, and Mrs. Peebles said she didn't know if she should suggest it because Alice
347 Kelling was the one with the car, but the lake was only twenty--five miles away and
348 what a good day for a picnic.
349 Alice Kelling took her up on the idea and by eleven o'clock they were in the car, with
350 Joey and Heather and a sandwich lunch I had made. The only thing was that Chris
351 hadn't come down, and she wanted to tell him where they were going.
352 “Edie'll go over and tell him,” Mrs. Peebles said. “There's no problem.”
353 Alice Kelling wrinkled her face and agreed.
354 “Be sure and tell him we'll be back by five!”
355 I didn't see that he would be concerned about knowing this right away, and I thought
356 of him eating whatever he ate over there, alone, cooking on his camp stove, so I got to
357 work and mixed up a crumb cake and baked it, in between the other work I had to do;
358 then, when it was a bit cooled, wrapped it in a tea towel. I didn't do anything to
359 myself but take off my apron and comb my hair. 1 would like to have put some
360 makeup on, but I was too afraid it would remind him of the way he first saw me, and
361 that. would humiliate me all over again.
363 He had come and put another sign on the gate: NO RIDES THIS P.M.APOLOGIES. I
364 worried that he wasn't feeling well. No sign of him outside and the tent flap was
365 down. I knocked on the pole.
366 “Come in,” he said, in a voice that would just as soon have said Stay out.
367 I lifted the flap.
368 “Oh, it's you. I'm sorry. I didn't know it was you.”
369 He had been just sitting on the side of the bed, smoking. Why not at least sit and
370 smoke in the fresh air?
371 “I brought a cake and hope you're not sick,” I said.
372 “Why would I be sick? Oh--that sign. That's all right. I'm just tired of talking to
373 people. I don't mean you. Have a seat.“ He pinned back the tent flap. “Get some fresh
374 air in here.”
375 I sat on the edge of the bed, there was no place else. It was one of those fold up cots,
376 really: I remembered and gave him his fiancée's message.
377 He ate some of the cake. “Good.”
378 “Put the rest away for when you're hungry later.’
379 “I'll tell you a secret. I won't be around here much longer.’
380 “Are you getting married?”
381 “Ha ha. What time did you say they'd be back?”
382 “Five o'clock.”
383 “Well, by that time this place will have seen the last of me. A plane can get further
384 than a car.” He unwrapped the cake and ate another piece of it, absentmindedly.
385 “Now you'll be thirsty.”
386 “There's some water in the pail.“
387 “It won't be very cold. I could bring some fresh. I could bring some ice from the
388 refrigerator.”
389 “No,“ he said. “I don't want you to go. I want a nice long time of saying good--bye to
390 you.”
391 He put the cake away carefully and sat beside me and started those little kisses, so
392 soft, I can't ever let myself think about them, such kindness in his face and lovely
393 kisses, all over my eyelids and neck and ears, all over, then me kissing back as well as
394 I could (l had only kissed a boy on a dare before, and kissed my own arms for
395 practice) and we lay back on the cot and pressed together, just gently, and he did some
396 other things, not bad things or not in a bad way. It was lovely in the tent, that smell
397 of grass and hot tent cloth with the sun beating down on it, and he said, “I wouldn't
398 do you any harm for the world.” Once, when he had rolled on top of me and we were
399 sort of rocking together on the cot, he said softly, “Oh, no,” and freed himself and
400 jumped up and got the water pail. He splashed some of it on his neck and face, and
401 the little bit left, on me lying there.
402 “That's to cool us off, miss.”
403 When we said good--bye I wasn't at all sad, because he held my face and said, “I'm
404 going to write you a letter. I'll tell you where I am and maybe you can come and see
405 me. Would you like that? Okay then. You wait.” I was really glad I think to get away
406 from him, it was like he was piling presents on me I couldn't get the pleasure of till I
407 considered them alone.
409 No consternation at first about the plane being gone. They thought he had taken
410 somebody up, and I didn't enlighten them. Dr. Peebles had phoned he had to go to the
411 country, so there was just us having supper, and then Loretta Bird thrusting her head
412 in the door and saying,“I see he's took off.”
413 “What?” said Alice Kelling, and pushed back her chair.
414 “The kids come and told me this afternoon he was taking down his tent. Did he think
415 he'd run through all the business there was around here? He didn't take off without
416 letting you know, did he?”
417 “He'll send me word,” Alice Kelling said. “He'll probably phone tonight. He's terribly
418 restless, since the war.”
419 “Edie, he didn't mention to you, did he?” Mrs. Peebles said. “When you took over the
420 message?”
421 “Yes,” I said. So far so true.
422 “Well why didn't you say?” All of them were looking at me. “Did he say where he
423 was going?”
424 “He said he might try Bayfield;” I said. What made me tell such a lie? I didn't intend
425 it.
426 “Bayfield, how far is that?” said Alice Kelling.
427 Mrs. Peebles said, “Thirty, thirty--five miles.”
428 “That's not far. Oh, well, that's really not far at all. It's on the lake, isn't it?” You'd
429 think I'd be ashamed of myself, setting her on the wrong track. I did it to give him
430 more time, whatever time he needed. I lied for him, and also, I have to admit,for me.
431 Women should stick together and not do things like that. I see that now, but didn't
432 then. I never thought of myself as being in any way like her, or coming to the same
433 troubles, ever.
434 She hadn't taken her eyes off me. I thought she suspected my lie. “When did he
435 mention this to you?”
436 “Earlier.”
437 “When you were over at the plane?”
438 “Yes.”
439 “You must've stayed and.had a chat.” She smiled at me, not a nice smile. “You
440 must've stayed and had a little visit with him.”
441 “I took a cake,” I said, thinking that telling some truth would spare me telling the
442 rest.
443 “We didn't have a cake,” said Mrs. Peebles rather sharply.
444 “I baked one.”
445 Alice Kelling said, “That was very friendly of you.”
446 “Did you get permission,” said Loretta Bird. “You never know what these girls'll do
447 next,” she said. “It's not they mean harm so much, as they're ignorant.“
448 “The cake is neither here nor there,” Mrs. Peebles broke in. “Edie, I wasn't aware you
449 knew Chris that well.”
450 I didn't know what to say.
451 “I'm not surprised,” Alice Kelling said in a high voice.“I knew by the look of her as
452 soon as I saw her. We've get them at the hospital all the time.“ She looked hard at me
453 with her stretched smile. “Having their babies. We have to put them in a special ward
454 because of their diseases. Little country tramps. Fourteen and fifteen years old. You
455 should see the babies they have, too.”
456 “There was a bad woman here in town had a baby that pus was running out of its
457 eyes,” Loretta Bird put in.
458 “Wait a minute,” said Mrs. Peebles. “What is this talk? Edie. What about you and Mr.
459 Watters? Were you intimate with him?“
460 “Yes,“ I said. I was thinking of us lying on the cot and kissing, wasn't that intimate?
461 And I would never deny it.
462 They were all one minute quiet, even Loretta Bird.
463 “Well,“ said Mrs. Peebles.“I am surprised. I think I need a cigarette. This is the first
464 of any such tendencies I've seen in her,“ she said, speaking to Alice Kelling, but Alice
465 Kelling was looking at me.
466 “Loose little bitch.” Tears ran down her face. “Loose little bitch, aren't you? I knew as
467 soon as I saw you. Men despise girls like you. He just made use of you and went off,
468 you know that, don't you? Girls like you' are just nothing, they're just public
469 conveniences, just filthy little rags!”
470 “Oh, now,” said Mrs. Peebles.
471 “Filthy,” Alice Kelling sobbed.”Filthy little rags!”
472 “Don't get yourself upset,” Loretta Bird said. She was swollen up with pleasure at
473 being in on this scene.“Men are all the same.“
474 “Edie, I'm very surprised,” Mrs. Pebbles said. “I thought your parents were so strict.
475 You don't want to have a baby, do you?”
476 I’m still ashamed of what happened next. I lost control, just like a six--year--old, I
477 started howling. “You don't get a baby from just doing that!”
478 “You see. Some of them are that ignorant,” Loretta Bird said.
479 But Mrs. Peebles jumped up and caught my arms and shook me. “Calm down. Don't
480 get hysterical. Calm down. Stop crying. Listen to me. Listen I'm wondering, if you
481 know what being intimate means. Now tell me. What did you think it meant?”
482 “Kissing,” I howled.
483 She let go. “Oh, Edie. Stop it. Don't be silly. It's all right. It's all a
484 misunderstanding. Being intimate means a lot more than that. Oh, I wondered.”
485 “She's trying to cover up, now,“ said Alice Kelling. “Yes. She's not so stupid. She
486 sees she got herself in trouble.“
487 “I believe her,” Mrs. Peebles said. “This is an awful scene.”
488 “Well there is one way to find out,” said Alice Kelling, getting up. “After all, I am a
489 nurse.”
490 Mrs. Peebles drew a breath and said, “No. No. Go to your room, Edie. And stop that
491 noise. This is too disgusting.”
492 I heard the car start in a little while. I tried to stop crying, pulling back each wave as it
493 started over me. Finally I succeeded, and lay heaving on the bed.
494 Mrs. Peebles came and stood in the doorway.
495 “She's gone,” she said. “That Bird woman too. Of course, you know you should never
496 have gone near that man and that is the cause of all this trouble. I have a headache. As
497 soon as you can, go and wash your face in cold water and get at the dishes and we will
498 not say any more about this.”
500 Nor we didn't. I didn't figure out till years later the extent of what I had been saved
501 from. Mrs. Peebles was not very friendly to me afterward, but she was fair. Not very
502 friendly is the wrong way of describing what she was. She had never been very
503 friendly. It was just that now she had to see me all the time and it got on her nerves, a
504 little.
505 As for me, I put it all out of my mind like a bad dream and concentrated on waiting
506 for my letter. The mail came every day except Sunday, between one--thirty and two in
507 the afternoon, a good time for me because Mrs. Peebles was always having her nap. I
508 would get the kitchen all cleaned and then go up to the mailbox and sit in the grass,
509 waiting. I was perfectly happy, waiting. I forgot all about Alice Kelling and her
510 misery and awful talk and Mrs. Peebles and her chilliness and the embarrassment of
511 whether she told Dr. Peebles and the face of Loretta Bird, getting her fill of other
512 people's troubles. I was always smiling when the mailman got there, and continued
513 smiling even after he gave me the mail and I saw today wasn't the day. The mailman
514 was a Carmichael. I knew by his face because there are a lot of Carmichaels living out
515 by us and so many of them have a sort of sticking--out top lip. So I asked his
516 name(he was a young man, shy, but good--humored, anybody could ask him
517 anything) and then I said,”I knew by your face!” He was pleased by that and always
518 glad to see me and got a little less shy.”You've got the smile I've been waiting for all
519 day!” he used to holler out the car window.
520 It never crossed my mind for a long time a letter might not come. I believed in it
521 coming just like I believed the sun would rise in the morning. I just put off my hope
522 from day to day, and there was the goldenrod out around the mailbox and the children
523 gone back to school, and the leaves turning, and I was wearing a sweater when I went
524 to wait. One day walking back with the hydro bill stuck in my hand, that was all,
525 looking across at the fairgrounds with the full--blown milkweed and dark teasels, so
526 much like fall, it just struck me: No letter was ever going to come. It was an
527 impossible idea to get used to. No, not impossible. If I thought about Chris's face
528 when he said he was going to write me, it was impossible, but if I forgot that and
529 thought about the actual tin mailbox, empty, it was plain and true. I kept on going to
530 meet the mail, but my heart was heavy now like a lump of lead. I only smiled because
531 I thought of the mailman counting on it, and he didn't have an easy life, with the
532 winter driving ahead.
533 Till it came to me one day there were women doing this with their lives, all over.
534 There were women just waiting and waiting by mailboxes for one letter or another. I
535 imagined me making this journey day after day and year after year, and my hair
536 starting to get gray, and I thought, I was never made to go on like that. So I stopped
537 meeting the mail. If there were women all through life waiting, and women busy and
538 not waiting, I knew which I had to be. Even though there might be things the second
539 kind of women have to pass up and never know about, it still is better.
540 I was surprised when the mailman phoned the Peebleses' place in the evening and
541 asked for me. He said he missed me. He asked if I would like to go to Goderich,
542 where some well--known movie was on, I forget now what. So I said yes, and I went
543 out with him for two years and he asked me to marry him, and we were engaged a year
544 more while I got my things together, and then we did marry. He always tells the
545 children the story of how I went after him by sitting by the mailbox every day, and
546 naturally I laugh and let him, because I like for people to think what pleases them and
547 makes them happy.

[olinda]

A store that sells husbands has just opened in New York City, where a woman may go to choose a husband.

Among the instructions at the entrance is a description of how the store operates. You may visit the store ONLY ONCE

There are six floors and the attributes of the men increase as the shopper ascends the flights

[ برای مشاهده لینک ، با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ] [ برای مشاهده لینک ، با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]

[ برای مشاهده لینک ، با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]

[olinda]

Sometimes we need to use computer keys in our lives.
Like when things go wrong or we get upset at someone,
we need to use the DELETE key to rid ourselves of that.
We need to SHIFT our thinking and SPACE ourselves,
INSERT some love, think of an ALTERNATE route.
BACKSPACE and ENTER into God's presence
so that we can go HOME in the END ~

from my old mail box

__________________

[Greight]

What are tongue-twisters ?

A tongue-twister is a sequence of words, typically of an alliterative kind, that are difficult to pronounce quickly and correctly

Ok , we put them here

[Greight]

She sells sea shells by the seashore.
The shells she sells are surely seashells.
So if she sells shells on the seashore,
I'm sure she sells seashore shells.

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
How many pecks of pickled peppers did Peter Piper pick?
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
Where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked

[Greight]

There are things around us to which we don't pay any attebtion
Let's ponder about some of them here
That will be FUN