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Pistachio Memories

My favorite food-related memory from childhood is red-tipped fingers. As I was growing up, pistachio nuts were always dyed red. For many decades after this practice stopped, I thought it was because red dye was considered dangerous. I found out just recently that was a complete misunderstanding on my part. According to The Spruce Eats, red pistachios used to be imported from the Middle East and were blanched and discolored. To make them more attractive, they were dyed red. In the 1980s, there was a huge increase in American grown pistachios. There was no longer a need to dye the pistachios red because they no longer had unappetizing stains.
Back in my childhood, red pistachios were a favorite gift for the holidays. I grew up with a bag of them in my stocking every Christmas. And every January, my fingers were red-tipped.
Why did my fingers get so red? The dye didn’t come off that easily. But in order to open the pistachios, I had to use my teeth to pry them apart, then get the nut from the shell with my fingers. The wet shells did cause the dye to come off on my fingers, so after about 10 nuts, my fingertips would be colored red.
Why did I have to use my teeth instead of my fingernails to pry open the shells? Because I bit my nails. Badly. My poor nails were far too short to pry open anything.
As I sat here tonight, eating about 50 pistachios and watching a Hallmark movie, I suddenly was overwhelmed by the memory of those red-tipped, little girl fingers. I might have escaped my childhood without that memory, had it not been for a terrible parenting blunder my father made.
I apparently didn’t bite my nails the first six years of my life. Coincidently, my sixth Christmas was the year I discovered pistachios. But that year, sometime in the early fall, my father was sitting next to me and picked up my hand and said, “I’m so glad you don’t bite your nails like your brothers.”
I had two older brothers and I guess they both bit their nails. I hadn’t noticed, to be truthful. But this was the colossal blunder dad made. You see, I loved my father and I always wanted to please him. But I idolized my brothers.
They bit their nails? Well, then, so did I. That very night, lying in my bed, I started to pick and bite at those fingernails.
Let me digress to say that I was able to quit that horrible habit in my late 20’s, but my nails have never been strong or long. I keep them clipped short to make sure I don’t fall back into that habit.
Fortunately, breaking the nail-biting habit coincided with pistachios being prevalent without dye and with my marriage to a wonderful man, who always puts a bag of pistachios in my Christmas stocking.
So while I sit here contemplating a few more pistachios, and looking at my unbitten nails, I remember that little girl. She wanted so much to be like her brothers, and she loved pistachios. Turns out, not much has really changed in all those years. Just the fingertips.

Thank you, Mr. Engvall!

One of my favorite comedians, Bill Engvall, became famous for his tagline “there’s your sign.” He would use it after something was said that was really obvious to imply that the person making the statement was…well, shall we say, a little dense, and there was a snappy comeback. Here’s one of his examples.
Bill was driving on the interstate when he hit a stoppage. He got out of his truck and walked forward and saw a semi, wedged under an overpass. He was talking with the driver when the state trooper showed up and started walking toward them. Bill said to himself, “Don’t say it, don’t say it,” but sure enough the Trooper said, “Get your truck stuck?” and without missing a beat, the driver answered, “Nope! I was delivering that bridge and ran out of gas!” There’s your sign, Bill would say.
I found a lot of similar stories on the internet. One person related that when friends or acquaintances came to her home, they would notice the litter box and say, “Oh, have you got a cat?” She would quickly respond, “oh, no, that’s for company.”
I’m not sure if that won her more friends or not, but it was funny. There’s your sign.
Another gentleman indicated that he was looking for work and noticed that every job application had a blank for who to be called in case of an emergency. He said he wrote, every time, “an ambulance.”
There’s your sign.
Now, up until recently, I had not had any direct experience with being asked an obvious question (well, okay, sometimes folks will see me coming in dripping wet and ask, “raining?” – but I’ve never had a witty comeback for that). But that all changed a week or so ago.
I was in a shoe store. This store sells only shoes, nothing else. You could count the small rack of socks near the registers, but really, it’s only shoes. A young woman with three tattoos and green hair walked up to me as I entered and asked, “What brings you in today?” I looked at her for a moment and before I had time to think, I blurted out, “I’m interested in buying a refrigerator.”
She didn’t quite know how to respond, had that deer in the headlights look, and I couldn’t help laughing.
There’s your sign. Now let me say for the record that I don’t think her tattoos and/or green hair had anything to contribute. It was just a vivid picture.
By the way, and apropos of nothing, the easiest way to find something lost around the house is to buy a replacement. I have discovered this truth about seven times in the last year. There’s my sign!

Sunglass Follies

Many years ago, we took a family vacation with my husband’s parents, his two siblings, their children, and our son. It was a wonderful trip – one which we each enjoyed for many reasons.
One of the days, the four adult women went shopping at local mall. Typical for the region, it was a warm spring day and we all wore loose clothing, sunscreen, and sunglasses. We walked around the mall, laughing and shopping and at one point, encountered a jewelry-cleaning kiosk. The nice young woman cleaned my rings and then cleaned my mother and sister-in-law’s rings. Since they sparkled so nicely, I bought a jar of the wonderful pink cleaning fluid. (Let me digress to say that nearly 20 years later, a half jar of the product is still in my cupboard. Somewhere.)
We purchased a pretzel or some other treat and made our way back to the sunny parking lot. I was sitting in the back seat with my mother-in-law and we were all chatting away as we rode back to the condominium. Suddenly, mom sat up straight and said with concern, “That lady turned my ring pink!”
She held out her hand with her diamond wedding rings and waved it frantically. Now nearly teary-eyed, she kept saying, “That awful liquid is making my ring turn pink.”
Truthfully, I didn’t notice any pink tinge or color to her ring. They looked fine to me, though a little dull, considering they’d just been cleaned.
My sister-in-law was about to turn the car around and head back to the mall, when the last adult in the car started to laugh. She said, “Mom. Take off your sunglasses.”
Mom did remove her sunglasses, as did I. Then it was evident that the ring was absolutely fine. And clean!
Flash forward twenty years, and it seems I may have turned into my mother-in-law. On one of the amazing, warm and sunny days we have had in February, my husband and I were driving home on a country road. We were passing beautiful farms with fields, rolled hay, cows, and ponds. One pond after another were on this particular road.
I noticed the first pond was exceedingly blue. It was cobalt blue colored and stunning. I commented to my husband on this and he said, “It’s likely a reflection of the sky.”
When we passed the second pond, I said, “No, the sky is blue, but not this blue. It’s so bright!”
The third and fourth ponds were just the same. I finally decided that they must be adding some chemical to the water to make it so blue. But why would anyone do that? I asked my husband.
He glanced over to check out the fifth pond that was on my side of the road and began to chuckle. “Take off your sunglasses,” he said.
I dutifully removed them to see that the pond was clear and blue – reflecting the sky – but just a normal blue.
So I’ve become my mother-in-law. Makes me wonder if I shouldn’t find that jewelry-cleaning solution and clean my rings.

Is Television Making Me Dumber?

There’s a good chance that television is making us dumber. That’s just my opinion, of course. It’s possible, I supposed, that we just are dumb, and television writers are just playing to their audience. I’m just not sure. Whatever the cause, the presentation is stupid to the point of offensive at times.
For example, this morning I was watching a news show when the weather portion began. Now, it’s January in the Midwest. Anyone who has lived in this area even a year knows that January (and February) are the months when we typically see cold weather. Snow, sleet, ice, frigid temperatures. Yep, that’s typical. The news would be the occasional times we get 50 degrees and sunny in those months (which has also happened).
This week, we are getting pretty standard winter weather for us. It’s cold. The wind chill is even colder. We need to stay inside, dress warmly, and prepare for power outages. That’s typical. Get a coat.
Watching this weatherman (sorry, meteorologist), you would have thought we’d never seen this before! He pronounced the cold weather like he was announcing the birth of his first child. And he ended with “this misery is just going to continue.” Misery? Misery? That seemed a bit extreme. It’s just winter weather, for heaven’s sake.
Maybe he goes to Texas or Florida in the summer to tell them, in a shocked and incredulous tone, that it’s going to be hot and humid there.
Then, right after the scary weather report, an advertisement appeared for life insurance. The patter actually said, “If you’re watching this, there’s a good chance your alive. If you’re not, you probably don’t care about this.” I guessed the writers of that commercial thought that was clever. It was not. It was insipid.
Don’t even get me started on the commercials for insurance. Repeating the same word over and over (and over) with some weird animal doesn’t exactly make me want to trust that the insurance people know their heads from a hole in the ground.
The Medicare commercials are even worse. Those of us who have actually called a Medicare help line know the truth. We aren’t fooled by your actors telling us how “easy” it is. Medicare is possibly the most confusing, confounding process I’ve experienced. These helpful places seem to have a knack for hiring people who are barely able to read from a script, have disdain for older folks, and possess no compassionate qualities for their customers. We are simply tasks to be checked off a to-do list. “Easy,” my foot.
It’s always been annoying to me that pundits on television have to “re-cap” what was said at a press conference, debate, election, or speech. I am apparently so dumb that when I listen to a politician talk, I need some television analyst to repeat it to me and explain it. “Gas prices are leveling off,” the governor said. So later, some talking head patiently informed me what that meant.
Apparently, gas prices will neither rise nor lower dramatically in the near future. Thank goodness. I thought perhaps we were getting new signage that was parallel to the ground.

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