“You better throw it baaack or my daddy’s gonna be maaad, you better throw it baaack or my daddy’s gonna be maaad.”

I would sing this song to my cousin till I finally had him in tears.

Now I know I have told this story before, but I have to use it as a lead to the end of my article. I need to include several names to protect the truly guilty.

My cousin Wayne had caught a fairly nice catfish from our new pond and I was somewhat jealous. Even though I had caught my fair share of catfish from our pond, I had been cautioned by my Dad to not catch too many of them since the pond had been established for just a short time.

I finally needled and pestered poor Wayne to the point I put him in tears and he threw the fish back while crying. Sorry Wayne it took me more than 40 years to apologize!

Wayne is a couple of years older than I am and he and I used to have annual summer stay-overs. He lived in the city and I lived in the country. I didn’t think any of this was planned, but I always thought it was odd that his mom’s maiden name was Parker and they lived on Parker Road in Houston.

I enjoyed my stay with him for several reasons. First of all I felt it was odd to have a neighbor so close to your own house you could hear them talking when they walked outside.

Since Wayne is older than me, he was also real lucky because he got to go places on the street I never used to be able to go. If my memory serves me correctly we were able to actually go just a few blocks down the street to a grocery store named Clayton’s and buy candy. There was also some kind of pit a few blocks from his home, behind a school building and we could go skip rocks across the water.

His mom ran a beauty shop on the side of their home. As a cotton top, blonde headed little boy I always wished I could have black hair. I can still remember the time Aunt Merle put a black rinse in my hair hoping to grant me my wish only to have my hair turn gray.

One summer while visiting, I can remember my family arrived to pick me up. All of the city utilities such as sewer and water were directed to the front of the house in the city ditch. The front yard was plush with green St. Augustine grass and the grass had matted itself over the front ditch which gave an appearance of solid ground

My sister Gail (Gall Bladder to me) was always a buzz of activity. She was a small petite little thing and always jumping and hopping around. I can still remember her and our cousin Debbie dancing around in the front yard as we were loading in our car in front of Wayne’s house, when suddenly we heard this loud plop. As we gazed into the ditch, Gail had fell feet first like a Popsicle into this sewer ditch. Her little curly, blond head from her waist up was standing upright in this ditch. Her pretty little pink dress had gently spread itself out in a perfect circumference on the surface of the grass and all we saw was the top half of her body sticking out of the grass.

Of course when we all realized she was ok we had a good laugh at her expense and as she was pulled from the ditch, I can still see her little black patent leather shoes, pink socks and boney skinny legs covered in this black smelly goo!

Now I had to include all the above people just so this next person wouldn’t get mad at me acting like I was trying to point her out all alone in the newspaper, but I heard a story. I will never tell who told me, but since I wasn’t there I may have gotten part of the story messed up…in fact, I know I have embellished part of this.

I heard a rumor that some lady was walking around in Tomball Sports Medicine Center a few months ago flashing her underwear. She first started flashing her drawers in McDonalds while she was having coffee with her morning breakfast friends. They all saw that her drawers were split from one end to the other, but they didn’t say anything to her cause they thought she was trying to be young and hip and was starting a new style of clothing for mature women. They just let her walk around flashing her backside and never mentioned it to her. It was only when her own son, my cousin Wayne, stopped her and told her she was over exposed. I could give you her name, but I thought it be best if I didn’t. She might be kin to me.

I also wanted to give a special shout out to my Aunt Mearl. Welcome Home.

Clifford

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