One Hundred

On November 8, 2009, I wrote and published my first ever blog. I titled it Can You Hear God Singing? It described my favorite Bible verse, Zephaniah 3:17. That verse ends with the words He rejoices over you with singing. More than a decade later it is still my favorite scripture. Today is my 100th pilgrimage into that elusive land of blogging.

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I remember my days just before retirement when I spent lots of time supervising student teachers. Every school year had its 100th day. It was important. Sometimes the school would celebrate that day with special reading activities. Seems in my memory that Dr. Seuss' birthday was often the theme of that occasion. Teachers would wear the Cat in the Hat hat or dress in pairs as Thing 1 and Thing 2. It was all great fun. For the rest of my hundredth blog, I will board my time machine and return to an era half a century ago. We call those days B.C., Before Children.

The year was 1970. I was in college in  Arkansas. Every year Harding College had an intramural speech arts tournament. It was a competition between clubs. My club, TNT (touch no tobacco, taint nothing toit, or trust-noble ideas-and tact) entered in a big way. I was part of a four member team who diligently prepared for the reader's theatre event. This was a dramatic presentation with scripts and stands. There were no costumes, lighting, music, or choreography. Everything was dependent upon facial expression, eye contact, and tone of voice. We had to be perfect. I was the Mayzie bird. The other characters on stage with me were Horton, the elephant; a narrator; and a person reading all the small people parts.

The production began with my high pitched, nasally, squeaking tone, "Hmmmmmmmm!"

Narrator:  "Sighed Mayzie, a lazy bird hatching an egg."

Mayzie:  "I'm tired and I'm bored and I've kinks in my legs from sitting, just sitting here day after day. It's work, how I hate it! I'd much rather play! I'd take a vacation, fly off for a rest; if I could find someone to stay on my nest. If I could find someone, I'd fly away, free."

Narrator:  "Then Horton the elephant passed by her tree."

And that, as you may remember, was the beginning of the end for poor Horton. His favorite line with his deep, drawling, slow-witted, bass tones was, "I meant what I said and I said what I meant. An elephant's faithful one hundred percent."

All the hard work perfecting and nearly memorizing each part paid off. We won! I still remember it as though it were yesterday. It's good to reminiscence back to those thrilling days of yesteryear. "High O, Silver, Away!" Hang in there, Horton!

P.S. Hope this quarantine doesn't last 100 days!