Hill-Topics
In the interest of good journalism, we interrupt this edition of Hill-Topics with these headlines, which allegedly were printed in real newspapers:
Two Sisters Reunited After 18 Years at Checkout Counter
New Study of Obesity Looks for Larger Test Group
Man Struck By Lightning Faces Battery Charge
* * * * *
Three cheers for the Hillsboro Elementary third, fourth, and fifth graders! All of them met the challenge issued by Trojan football players and "Tackled Text Structure" as part of their reading challenge program. The students were rewarded Friday with a pretend football practice, led by the senior players. There were lots of things to do, such as run and kick the football, go out for passes, but the favorite was running full-tilt into the big, yellow tackling dummy.
The girls seemed to be having as much fun as the boys in all this. And nobody was having more fun than the senior football players themselves.
* * * * *
We received no phone calls last week from our daughter, Bethany, while she and her husband, Joe Dixon, were on their honeymoon.
We took it as a good sign.
The couple returned to their normal routines this week up in Lincoln, and we hope their honeymoon lasts forever. We called Bethany on Monday to see if she got home all right, and in a voice from the past, her cell phone voice mail said, "Hi, this is Bethany Overstake
Speaking of phone messages: We came across a list of some great answering machine greetings and felt compelled to share them with you:
Hi! John's answering machine is broken. This is his refrigerator. Please speak very slowly and I'll stick your message to myself with one of these magnets.
Hello. This is Sue. I'm home right now but cannot find the phone. Please leave a message and I will call you back as soon as I find it.
Greetings, you have reached the Sixth Sense Detective Agency. We know who you are and what you want, so at the sound of the tone, please hang up.
Please leave a message as soon as possible and I'll get back to you at the sound of the tone.
* * * * *
I wish they would've sent a football star to my classroom when I was an impressionable boy in the fourth grade. It might have motivated me to learn my multiplication tables. But, sadly, that didn't happen.
And, somehow, I was allowed to pass to the fifth, sixth, seventh grade (and beyond) without memorizing all of them. The higher sixes still aren't a cinch for me; sevens and eights are toughest of all. (Back then I would've laughed hysterically if you told me one day I'd marry a math teacher, which I did. Obviously someone upstairs was watching out for me.)
I do remember with vivid clarity the moment when I discovered the relationship between making the grade in the classroom and making it to the playing field. It happened when I showed my report card to my seventh grade basketball coach. I had failed the previous nine weeks of math.
He said, "You can't play basketball this season, son. Not with an F on your grade card."
You've never seen a sorrier boy in your life. The situation got even worse when the boy down the block, who couldn't tie his shoes let alone play basketball, actually made the team. Sitting in the bleachers with the pep club girls (which doesn't sound so bad in retrospect) watching Klutzy Kevin was the worst thing that had happened in my life.
Suffice to say that I never flunked another class (except one nine weeks of English in my rebellious junior year of high school, when I flatly refused to study King Arthur and the Holy Grail. But that's another story).
* * * * *
It was great to get outdoors in the spring-like weather this past week. This past Friday might've been the most glorious day on record, I think. I took my camera and drove around town, looking to take pictures people enjoying themselves out of doors, and some of the photos are in this issue.
One of the real treasures in our community is the Hillsboro golf course. It's beautiful and extremely well maintained.
There aren't too many towns our size with a course this nice, I'm sure. It was great to see the Hillsboro High School boys' golf team out there, practicing under the watchful eye of coach Scott O'Hare, who taught many of the same players how to play the game as the director of the city's junior golf program.
Look for lots of low scores from the Trojan golfers this year.
* * * * *
I came across a few puzzling thoughts while surfing the Internet this past week and felt obliged to puzzle you with them, too. Here are random questions, submitted by anonymous contributors who obviously have too much free time on their hands:
— "If practice makes perfect and nobody's perfect, why practice?"
— "What would a chair look like, if your knees bent the other way?"
— "Why do our noses run and our feet smell?"
— "What does 'it' mean in the sentence, 'What time is it?'"
— "What happens if you get scared to death, twice?"
— "If the No. 2 pencil is the most popular, why is it still No. 2?"
And, finally,
"Why do they call it 'common sense' when it's so rare?"
— GRANT OVERSTAKE
