Stop Ebola? Restrict Travel. Like DUH!!!

Dearest Readers,

The monster is inside the gate.  Ebola.  How did it get inside the United States?  That's easy.  We left the gate wide open.  We have left all the gates wide open.  When you go to bed at night do you lock the front door?  Of course.  You wouldn't think of leaving it open would you?  Of course not.  Well, all the doors and all the windows of the United States of America have been left open while we have been in bed asleep.  While we were sleeping millions and millions of people have illegally come on in!  Now are you awake???

In 1990 my husband Walker and I adopted twin baby girls from the country of Honduras.  That was back when there were still rules.  That was back when our elected officials, both Democrats and Republicans, cared about the health and safety of the citizens of the United States of America.  Back then we actually had to prove that our babies were healthy before we could fly back to the United States.  Tuberculosis was still active in Honduras.  Our babies had to be vaccinated for TB.  I didn't complain.  I was not offended.  It seemed like common sense to me.  I had no desire to bring TB back into my homeland.  Boy have times changed!

Let's take a look back in time to 1918.  That was the last year of World War One.  In Philadelphia, people were coming down with a strange sickness.  It seemed that it was "just influenza".  But, this was no ordinary influenza.  It turned its victims black.  They bled out of their noses, eyes, mouths....  It killed fast.  Very fast.  It killed mostly young, strong, healthy people between twenty and forty years of age.   The dead in Philadelphia piled up like stiff dry cord wood on front porches while mass graves were dug.  The city officials played it down!  Imagine that!  They didn't want people to worry.  The health care officials wanted to get the word out that this was something horrible, something dangerous... they were shushed....

The World War continued.  Health officials warned AGAINST our infected soldiers being sent to Europe.  The politicians ignored them.  The president, Woodrow Wilson, allowed the boys to be sent on over the water.... sick boys.  But, after all it was just influenza....  The influenza was spread by unrestricted travel.  Stupid politicians that knew nothing about health issues allowed the flu to spread by UNRESTRICTED TRAVEL.  They were concerned about winning World War One.  Guess what?  The great influenza killed many more people than the war.  A staggering one hundred million people globally died in one year.  Whole groups of native peoples were completely wiped out all over the world.  An estimated 650,000 Americans died in one year.  President Wilson came down with the influenza.  His wife ran the country while he was sick. She kept his illness secret while she took over his job. Scary stuff.

Now there is another monster inside our gate.  Ebola.  How are we going to stop it?  Stop thinking of yourself as a liberal or conservative. Get over it! Stop thinking of yourself as gay or straight.  Get over it!  Stop thinking of yourself as white, black, Asian, Hispanic etc. GET OVER IT!!!  Ebola is over it.  Ebola doesn't care about any of those things. It will infect you no matter what color you are.  It will infect you no matter how much money you have or haven't got.  It will infect you gay or straight.  It will infect whether you are a Republican or Democrat!!!  You are nothing but a host to feed on to this disease.  So we have to throw all our petty differences aside and all get back to being AMERICANS.

Now how are we going to respond to Tom Friedan, Director of the Centers For Disease Control?  He says that restricting travel between the United States and West Africa, where Ebola is coming from, would most likely "backfire" and put America at more risk of contracting Ebola.  His reasoning is that Ebola needs to be wiped out at the source, in Africa.  Restricting Americans from going to West Africa would restrict getting help to the sick in Africa, which would allow it to spread more rapidly.

I understand his reasoning- to a point.  If there are Americans who want to go help with medical assistance in Africa, they will at some point want to come home, and there is nothing wrong with requiring that those people be quarantined for the recommended twenty one day period (or longer) before they are allowed to come back into the United States.  Visitors from the infected countries, though, are a different matter completely and should not be allowed in at their own pleasure.   That is not asking too much Mr. Friedan!!!  The CDC is not supposed to be worried about hurting anybody's feelings!!!  The CDC is supposed to be protecting the people of the United States of America!!!  People of all colors, politics, sexual orientation, education etc. will die in this country if travel is not restricted. NOBODY needs to be allowed into the United States from West Africa unless they have been held in quarantine for twenty-one days, or more if needed.  

What blows my mind is that in1918 the health officials were screaming for limited travel, and that was before air travel.  Now in 2014, with the example of the great influenza pandemic to use as a BAD example our major health official Tom Friedan says NOT to restrict travel!!! What is wrong with this picture??? With no air travel in existence in 1918, we had a global pandemic that killed 100,000,000 people.  Now what will happen with unrestricted air travel???

Ebola is spread by blood, semen, vomit, feces, saliva, tears and SWEAT.  When you go to the gym tomorrow make sure that sweat soaked towel you pick up and wipe your face with is your own.  I hope it wasn't dropped by someone who just got back from West Africa.  Think about it my fellow Americans.... 

Please forward this blog site
https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=7253354042404414819#editor/target=post;postID=2556270141285380936
on to all your contacts. Call your elected representatives! Call the CDC! Let's all stand together and stop the spread of this disease. 

Love, Suzan

Morty Loves Stella

Walker and I had a lovely Valentine's Day.  We were driving back from St. Petersburg, Florida where we had spent the week on the beach with his sister and her husband.  It was just what the doctor ordered. I've been feeling really really tired lately.  Sitting on the balcony of the condo just watching the water and the people walking on the beach was very therapeutic. People watching has always been one of my favorite spectator sports.

Beach people are so much fun to watch.  The wind was really whipping when out trudged "Morty".  Poor Morty was carrying a cooler, a huge beach umbrella, two short-legged folding chairs and himself. He had a job ahead of him!  Poor Morty struggled for thirty minutes to get that umbrella stood up in that sand.  It kept blowing away and he kept chasing it down the beach until, bless his heart, he gave up.  He decided to lay the opened umbrella on its side.  He secured it with the cooler.  There! He had a wind shield. He set up the two chairs and weighted one down with all kinds of assorted beach stuff.  Then he set up his chair and carefully held on to it while he very gingerly turned his three hundred pounds around and lowered himself down into the chair. He did it!  Yea!  I wanted to holler, "Way to go, Morty!" from the balcony.  Then I saw "Stella" approaching Morty from behind. She wasn't carrying anything... Will she approve of Morty's engineering?  Will she complain that he didn't do it right?  I was so relieved!  Little fat Stella hugged big fat Morty.  He cleared off her chair, she maneuvered into it.  He opened the cooler, took out a beer, poured it into a cup and gave it to her.  She kissed him....  I was about to cry.  This is why all the Yankees retire in Florida, because life is good where the sun is warm...

Are you moldy too?

Dear Gentle Readers,

I think I am going to mold!!!  This wet rainy weather is draining the life out of me, all I want to do is sleep...ZZZ...ZZZ...ZZZ...ZZZ....  Being a writer is a tricky business.  I have a million stories in my head.  Some of them are true and some are made up.  The tricky part is just sitting down and putting them on paper. We all have a million stories in our heads. We all have things we experienced that we want to share. We all have feelings that we want to express.  We are all writers.  The only difference between a "real writer" and everybody else is that a "real writer" just takes the time to put his thoughts down on paper.  I think the reason most people don't do that is because they think writing is supposed to be some kind of high and lofty endeavor. It absolutely should not be high and lofty unless YOU are high and lofty.  Some of the "best" writers of all time are extremely hard to read and hard to understand. So why does that make them "the best"?  Maybe we think, "Boy he must be really deep, way too smart for me! He must be a great writer!"  If I have to read every sentence three or four times to figure out what the writer is trying to say, I toss the book! Writing is about communication.  If the writer is only concerned about sounding scholarly, then it may be that he is not really communicating what he wants the reader to learn.

Your writing should sound like you.  You should not try to sound like William Faulkner because you are not William Faulkner.  Just write like you think.  Write like you talk. Don't try to be some one on paper that you are not in real life. If you do try to "put on airs" in your writing you will come off  sounding foolish.  Just be yourself.  People love you just the way you are.  And they will love your writing if you just sound like yourself.

It is a New Year.  And because it is raining and gray and dreary outside, I feel lazy. Nope.  I am not in the creative mood, so I am going to share some of my favorite quotes with you.  All of these people wrote in such a way that we connect immediately with what they are trying to say. So enjoy these my friend, and then go write something that sounds like YOU and nobody else!

"Everyday of our lives we make deposits in the memory banks of our children." Charles Swindoll

"Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless" Mother Teresa

"The greatest motivational act that one person can do for another is to listen." Roy Moody

"Make failure your teacher, not your undertaker."  Zig Ziglar

"You must do the thing you think you cannot do."  Eleanor Roosevelt

"I never saw a pessimistic general win a battle."  Dwight D. Eisenhower

"Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lessons afterward."   Vernon Law

"The reward of a thing well done is to have done it." Ralph Waldo Emerson

"If we did all the things we were capable of doing, we would literally astonish ourselves."  Thomas Edison

"Kindness is the noblest of weapons to conquer with."  Unknown

"There is no such thing in anybody's life as an unimportant day."  Alexander Woolcott

"The best things in life aren't things."  Art Buchwald

"The quality of a person's life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence." Vincent T. Lombardi

"The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it."  William James

"The secret to getting ahead is getting started."  Unknown

"No one knows what he can do until he tries."  Publilius Syrus

"One hundred per cent of the shots you don't take don't go in."  Wayne Gretsky

"Life is like riding a bicycle.  To keep your balance you must keep moving."  Albert Einstein

And so you see this is great writing. Short. Simple. It packs a punch that could change your life. And on that note I am going to get up and keep moving as Mr. Einstein suggested. Happy New Year to all of you writers. It is time to just pull those thoughts out of your head and put them down on paper!!!

Love and Kisses to all and to all a good write....
Suzan with a "Z"

Hide Me Quick! A Christmas Story...

Some men have it.  Some men don't.  Sex appeal.  Have you ever noticed that when you go to a Christmas party there is always one fellow that the women are just naturally drawn to?  He might be fat.  He might be bald.  But, he's got it!  He is surrounded by laughing, giggling women that keep bringing him drinks and letting him nibble off their plates.  He never has to stand in line to get his food,  Miss Tight Sweater is bringing it to him. 

Has he got a billion dollars in his bank account?  Well.... he might...  but, it might just be that he knows what women love to hear.  Somebody once said that men love with their eyes, but women love with their ears.  And what is it that women love to hear?  "Wow!  I love that dress!  You look good enough to make a bulldog break his chain!"  Yep.  As much as I hate to admit it, it works for me!

Some men can say that to a woman and she is putty in his hands.  Other men can say the same thing and end up with the woman thinking, "He is disgusting!!!! "  It all depends on whether or not the man just naturally has "it".  And my daddy had "it".  He had a way of making the most homely wall flower feel attractive, and, like I said, women love with their ears....  Well, when I was a little girl seven years old, my daddy made the mistake of telling one particularly homely lady that she put Marilyn Monroe in the shade.  Bad mistake.  Nowadays, I guess you can't say somebody is fat and ugly, you have to say they are weight and beauty "challenged".  I go along with whoever said, "Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes slam to the bone!" 

 But, getting back to my story.  It was Christmas Eve 1963.  I was the youngest of six children.  My two oldest sisters were married and moved away.  That particular Christmas Eve found Mama, Daddy my three teenaged siblings and me all at home. Mama told me to go on to bed because everybody knows that you have to be asleep for Santa Claus to come.  So I hugged everybody good night and went on to bed.  Of course I wasn't about to go to sleep.  I was straining my ears to see if I could hear any reindeer hooves on the roof.  I didn't hear any reindeer, but what I did hear  was my brother John say, "Daddy, there's a lady out in the front yard hollering your name!"  I could hear my mother say, "Roy!  That's Mrs. Green!  I think she must be drunk!"

 About that time Daddy came busting into my bedroom with a terrified look on his face.  "Suzy!  Hide me quick!"  I didn't know what was going on, but I could hear Mama and my brothers and sister laughing.  I held up my bed covers and Daddy dove under down to the foot of my bed. About that time Mrs. Green, who was not only fat and ugly, but drunk as Cootie Brown, came busting into my bedroom with Mama and all the gang right behind her. Mrs. Green flipped on the light switch and hollered, "Where is that handsome devil?  I want my Merry Christmas kiss!!!"  I held the covers tight up under my chin, but it was a dead give away.  That big lump down at the end of my bed was Daddy!

"There you are!"  Mrs. Green squealed with delight as she yanked the covers back and discovered Daddy squashed up in a ball as small as he could make himself.  I, at that point, was jumping up and down on the bed and saying, "There he is! You found him!"  And at that Mrs. Green grabbed Daddy up and gave him a big old smackaroo right on the mouth. Well, there is no use even trying to describe what poor Daddy looked like. His arms were hanging limply by his side and he just squinched his eyes closed tight like he was about to be given a dose of castor oil. After she had laid one on him, Mrs. Green turned and said to my mother, "Your husband thinks I look better than Marilyn Monroe! He told me so!"  My mother just laughed and said, "I believe you."  Then Mrs. Green sashayed out the front door.

 Of course that was one Christmas Eve that I'll never forget. And did that cure Daddy from being a terrible flirt?  Heck no!  When he was eighty-eight years old I got a call from the assisted living facility where he was living.  The director said Daddy had chased a young nurse into the kitchen and she had jumped up on the counter to get away from him.  He was driving in a scooter chair!  Oh well, I guess she just looked good enough to make a bulldog break his chain!


This Christmas give her what she wants the most.  Take her in your arms. Kiss her. And tell her she is beautiful......

She whupped a healing on her!

  Dear Gentle Reader,

I'm sharing with you another bit of my book, "Dear Girlfriend- A Handheld Walk Through Breast Cancer".  

When you have finished reading, PLEASE leave me a comment.  Just look for "Comment" or "No Comment" at the end, click on it then sign on as Anonymous if you want, then leave me some feedback.  I really need it and thank you so much for it!!!

She whupped a healing on her!

Dear Girlfriend.

As I've said before, my mother lives in an assisted living home. I usually drive to Columbus twice a week to see her. Well, before I went into the hospital, I told the director of the home and a couple of Mama's favorite caregivers that I had cancer and was about to go in the for surgery. I remember telling this one particular caregiver, I'll call Sally, that I was going into the hospital and I might not be able to see Mama for a few days. She hugged me and said that she would pray for me.

Now I have a sister, Cea, that is twelve years older than I am. We look very much alike except that Cea is older. So I had my surgery and staph infection and immediately went back to visit Mama, but I just didn't run into Sally for two or three weeks. She must have been working on the night shift. So in the meanwhile my sister, Cea, came from Virginia to visit Mama. Sally ran into Cea in the hall of the home and thought Cea was me. She got a horrified look on her face as much to say, “I can sure tell you've been sick! You've aged ten years in the past few weeks!” Then she took Cea in her arms and she said, “Oh I need to pray for you! Dear Lord bless this woman and make her well! Heal her Lord! Heal her!Hold her up through her times of suffering! Bless her sweet Lord! Bless this poor woman!”

Cea knew that Sally thought she was me, but she didn't want to interrupt such fine praying and she didn't want to embarrass Sally. So Cea just let Sally whup a healing on her and she thanked Sally very much. Then Cea called me on the phone and told me what happened. We just cracked up. I said, “Why didn't you tell her you were not me?” Cea said, “Are you kidding? I need all the prayers I can get!” So a couple of more weeks went by and I ran into Sally at the assisted living home. When she saw me I said, “Sally, thank you so much for your prayers. I feel good.” Sally was grinning from ear to ear and said, “I can tell you feel better. You are sure looking better than the last time I saw you!”

He was jumping around like a monkey!

Dear Gentle Readers,

Today's post is one of the funny chapters from my book, "Dear Girlfriend- A Handheld Walk Through Breast Cancer".  This shows that even though I had cancer, I was still Suzan. Cancer could not steal my funny memories....

Dear Girlfriend,

When we first met in January of 1974, we were seniors in high school. When my mama and daddy met in 1938, they were in high school. That was the day of big band music. Every weekend my parents would go to a big pavilion in Columbus called The Idle Hour, where they would jitterbug the night away. Even though their relationship was rocky from day one, when he held her in his arms on a dance floor they had chemistry. They won dance contest after dance contest.

The whole time I was growing up all of my brothers and sisters loved to dance. We had a stereo in the living room. My sisters who were ten to fourteen years older than I, would turn on Chubby Checker and dance. When I was only five years old my sister took a home movie of me doing the peppermint twist. It was not unusual for one of my teenage sisters and her boyfriend to be slow dancing in the living room while I watched.

My mother always danced while she stirred gravy. Her hand holding the spoon would be going around while her shoulders and hips swayed to the music. I remember once in the 1960's after she and daddy had separated , she was just stirring that gravy while singing along with the radio to I Can't Get No Satisfaction. So when Walker asked me to go to the prom in 1974, I expected him to dance. I was all dressed up in a red ironclad polyester formal . He had rented a tux with a ruffled shirt and had pulled his shoulder length hair back and tied it in a ponytail with a black velvet ribbon. We were styling!But when we got to the dance I was so disappointed that my handsome prince would not dance.

We married in 1976 when disco was all the rage. In the late seventies, John Travolta was busy ruining his back in “Saturday Night Fever.” Wasn't he a hottie?! Walker and I at that time were living in Athens, Georgia, and going to the University of Georgia. To say we were living on a shoe string would be too generous. Let's say we were living on some scraggly little fuzz that hangs off a shoe string after its been in the tennis shoe about ten years. We were so broke Walker actually handmade our wedding invitations and delivered them on a bicycle to save the money for postage stamps. So, for us to actually go out to a disco was a big deal. Waitresses hated us because we would buy one beer and nurse it all night.

But, it was my birthday so we decided to go out. We went to a disco in downtown Athens that had a cover charge. After paying the cover we really only had money left for one drink. Now you have to remember that this was 1976. At that time in Athens, Georgia, black kids and white kids went to class together, but partied at different locations. Thank God we are past those days. So we paid our cover and when we got inside we realized that we were the only white people in the place. That didn't bother us and none of the black kids seemed to notice we were there, so we sat down and ordered our beers. When the waitress brought them Walker hollered in my ear over the loud music, “Drink it slow!” I longingly watched the other kids dance as he crumpled up little pieces of his napkin and put them in his ears. Everywhere there was sparkly light reflecting out of a large mirrored ball that hung over the dance floor. Walker and I just sat and sipped our beers and watched all those fellows in platform shoes get down.

There was a big long box about four feet high and twelve feet long out in the middle of the dance floor. It was covered in bright green shag carpet and had steps that you could walk up to be elevated so everyone could focus on the really good dancers up on this platform.“Wow!!! They can really dance!!! Look at their clothes!!!” I yelled in Walker's ear. “I'd rather die than get up on that thing!!!” he yelled back. “I'm going to the bathroom!!!” I hollered back and he nodded.

Now you know what the ladies room in a bar is like. All the girls have got a little buzz on and they all laugh and talk to each other even if they are total strangers. I told that to Walker once and he said, “Nobody talks in the men's room. We just do our doings and get out of there.” But as I stood in line waiting for a stall to come open, a group of six rather rotund girls came in behind me. They were all laughing and talking and having a good time. One of them said, “How come y'all aren't dancing? Don't you like the music?” I said, “Oh,we love the music, but I can't get my husband to dance . He never dances with me.” One of the girls that had a pretty major buzz, put her arm around my shoulder like we were long time friends. She started rocking her head from side to side and said ,“Girlfriend,we can sure fix that!” The other five girls all started laughing and giving each other the high five. “Honey, you just wait for us at the table, but don't you let on to your husband!”

So I just went back and sat down and sipped my drink. In a minute I saw the six girls headed straight for our table. They were laughing and giggling when the one I had talked to in the bathroom put her hand on Walker's shoulder and said, “Come dance with us!” Walker looked like he was about to faint as they all six pulled him up out of his chair and literally dragged him up the steps of the green shag carpeted platform. He turned and looked at me with the look of a condemned man being drug up the steps of a scaffold. I, of coarse, was enjoying every minute of this.

The six girls formed two lines and proceeded to bump Walker back and forth between them with their hips as the disco music blared out of the huge speakers so loudly that Walker stuck his fingers in his ears. He was as stiff as an old man with arthritis! He looked so pitiful until they all started pushing him back and forth amongst them while they were putting the bump and grind down on him. The D.J. started playing Disco Inferno by The Trammps. I was just cracking up! The music was blaring out so loudly that you could see the speakers vibrating. About that time I saw Walker was clapping his hands and jumping around like a monkey! He was bumping and jumping and winding and grinding while all six of those rather healthy looking girls worked him over real good. They had somehow flipped his switch! When the song was over he actually looked disappointed as they took him by the hand and brought him back to our table. We were all laughing so hard we could hardly breathe. Then the ringleader of the girls put her hands on her hips, rocked her head from side to side, pushed Walker towards me and said, “Honey, we fixed him good!”

I owe an awful lot to those six girls because after that night Walker became a dancing fool. One time in the 1980's we went to a New Year's Eve party at the Columbus Country Club. I looked around and there was Walker doing the funky chicken with my brother-in-law. When Walker went back to work at the Georgia Forestry Commission on Monday, a man who had seen him dancing at the club told all the men that Walker supervised, “Boys, I hate to break it to you, but I saw your boss down at the Columbus Country Club dancing like a chicken with another man!” All the fellas said, “Boss man! Tell us it ain't so!”

I remember the last big New Year's Eve party we hosted . Walker was wearing what was supposed to be a toga but it came off looking more like Ebenezer Scrooge's nightgown. He had a wreath on his head made of gold laurel leaves. My nephew Todd and I were sitting together on the staircase as Walker was trying to jitterbug with my niece, Susan. He was pretty lit up and every time he twirled her around, he did it so fast and hard I was afraid he was going to throw her out the window. I said to Todd, “Now that is something I will remember the rest of my life.” Todd just looked at me, shook his head and said, “That's too scary to think about!” See, I keep telling you these little flashbacks from my life so that you will believe me that cancer can't steal your memories. It can't steal your stories.

Girlfriend advice: Keep on dancing! Drag your husband into the living room, put on your favorite music and dance. When you are all alone at home and the fear of the future starts to overwhelm you, turn up your music as loud as you can and dance and dance until you drop. It will make you feel so much better. If you can hardly put one foot in front of the other from radiation or chemotherapy, when you feel your worst, start as slowly as you need to but do it! You won't believe how much better you will feel.

When we got back to the cottage long after midnight on that New Year's Eve of 2009, I felt so happy. I had such high hopes for 2010. I built a fire in my little fireplace and snuggled up in a soft blanket with my hot chocolate and I thought about how my life was going to be so much better than at had been in 2009. Thank God we can't see too far down the road....

Miley's booty- Part 2

Dear Gentle Readers,

So what was I to do? The answer came to me immediately. Get her out of this house! I just stood there holding the coffee pot while Michelle held Bébé up to her face, covered her with smoochy kisses and said “Oui! Oui! You are such a sweet Bébé!” Walker was sitting there staring at her and I imagine he was thinking, “I sure wish I was that Bébé!

I just put down the coffee pot, took Bébé from her arms and gave her the old “southern simpleton” look. That is a look of sheer and total innocence. It is a look of sweetness and blankness. It is the look that says “I haven't got a clue what you are up to” but honey, let me tell you, behind that look of idiocy on my face I was planning my battle tactics!

She knew she was feeling a breeze under that T-shirt! That (not so) little fanny flash at my husband was no accident! She just hadn't planned for me to see it, too. Ah ha! I knew she thought I didn't see what had happened. I said, “Michelle, Macon is lovely, but how would you like to see Washington D.C.?”

“Oh oui! I'd love to see Washington, but I have no way to get there.”

“I'll drive you.”

Walker said, “That's a thirteen hour drive............are you sure?”

I gave him a not-so-simpleton look, a look that said “If you don't shut up this very second you are going to have a pot of hot coffee up your nose.”

He shut up.

In the next six minutes I arranged to drive Michelle and Bébé to my sister's house in Manassas, Virginia, right outside of Washington, D.C. My sister is the most hospitable southern bell you will ever meet. At that time she had a husband and three young teenage sons. I just told her I was bringing a sweet young French girl to visit and would they take her around in Washington? She readily agreed. I left out the part about which town she came from in France (the one where girls where no pants!).

It was a long but immensely rewarding thirteen hour drive to Virginia. Along the way, I started wondering if I should have just dumped her in Atlanta, but no........that was too close to my husband!

When we arrived in Virginia, my sister, her husband and three sons were so excited to meet Michelle. The next day the boys took her on the Metro to Washington. When they got back the whole gang was sitting around the kitchen table. My sister asked Michelle, “What did you think of Washington?”

“It was beautiful! Oui!”

“Well, what do you think of Americans in general, I mean?”

“Oh! They are all fat and so unattractive.”

All of us at the table just looked at each other, flabbergasted by her response. And of course, each of us was thinking “of course she didn't mean me!”

Then my sister said, “You mean you have not seen one attractive person in America?”

“Oui, they are all either fat or ugly. I saw women, many women, in Washington that had stomachs shaped like the capital dome.” We all sucked in our guts.

After supper my sister pulled me aside and said, “Do you know anybody else that might let her visit them?”

“I have some friends in New York City...............” We high-fived each other. I called my New York friends and they arranged all her travel plans for a wonderful guided tour of the city. “Goodbye, please!”

Years later one of my nephews told Walker “You remember that French girl that came with Aunt Suzan to our house in Manassas?”

“How could I forget her?”

“That was the best present I ever got from Aunt Suzan. I was in middle school at the time. I remember Michelle didn't close the bathroom door all the way. She was standing at the sink, brushing her teeth, with no shirt on! I was laying in the bed in my room with a clear view down the hall, just watching her. It was the first truly enjoyable physics lesson I ever had. She was a vigorous brusher and when she would charge right with the toothbrush, the lovelies would swing hard to the left. Then she'd give an equal thrust to the left teeth and here they'd come, flying back to the right. She evidently believed in long, thorough brushes and it was enough to make me dizzy! I know there are those out there who might think it left me scarred for life, but actually, it made me quite hopeful for the future!”

And to tell you the truth, Michelle must have really impressed my nephew because he ended up marrying a girl that looks very, very much like her.

And me? After I packed Michelle off to New York City I put Bébé Laurel in the car seat, looked in the rear view mirror and said with the “southern simpleton” on my face, “Who me? I would never be inhospitable to a visitor!”

And the Bébé and I drove oui, oui, oui, all the way home.

Oh, and Miley Cyrus, let me give you a bit of advice that every good southern mother gives her daughter: You start being sexy when you stop trying to be!

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