Hill-Topics
Well another Sept. 19 has come and gone, and unless you're a buccaneer in Mrs. Overstake's fifth-grade class, you've squandered yet another opportunity to celebrate Talk Like a Pirate Day.
Arrgh!
Even without you and me, Talk Like a Pirate Day was celebrated by more than 19 million people on all seven continents. (You can read about it at www.talklikeapirate.com).
Why? I honestly don't know.
But my wife, Claire, and her fifth graders were among those 19 million.
Claire downloaded official Talk Like a Pirate Day posters and put them up outside her classroom door.
Before long, she had her students so excited about Pirate Day that one normally shy boy practically fell from his desk waving his hand. When called on, he pleaded politely, "Can I talk pirate now?" And later, her students were seen walking peg-legged down the hallway to the lunchroom.
Arrgh!
I bring this up nearly a month after the fact because my daughter, Jillian, who turns 19 Saturday, is walk-the-plank crazy about pirates.
Jillian and Claire went to the Kansas City Renaissance Festival on Saturday. They saw Hillsboro High's vocal group, Spirit-N-Celebration perform madrigals in original costumes.
But THE highlight of the day according to Jillian AND Claire, was the Jack Sparrow look-alike, a dead ringer for Johnny Depp, in the movie Pirates of the Caribbean.
How do I know this?
Jillian had Claire take a picture of her and the pirate. I saw the photo. She seems extremely happy.
I don't know why.
I agree with columnist Dave Barry, who once wrote this about Talk Like a Pirate Day:
"Every now and then, some visionary individuals come along with a concept that is so original and so revolutionary that your immediate reaction is: Those individuals should be on medication.' "
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I missed Claire this weekend. She drove back to Fort Scott on Friday to see Jillian with our son, Garrison, and two of his friends.
They left about 4 p.m. and hoped to get to Fort Scott in time to see the 7 o'clock football game.
Claire called at 9:15.
"Well we finally got here," she said. "We hit a deer."
Almost everyone who drives in southeast Kansas has a story about hitting a deer — or at the very least, a near miss.
This time it was a direct hit. At about "Deer-Thirty" Friday evening, Garrison was driving my wife's 1998 Olds eastbound on U.S. 54, just over the line into Wilson County.
The mother deer bounded across the highway in front of the car, but, wouldn't you know it, her doe followed right behind.
No one was hurt. Garrison did a great job of keeping the car in his lane, and wisely chose the deer over the bridge abutment.
But the car suffered considerable damage to the front on the driver's side. We're waiting for the insurance adjuster. We have a $500 deductible and the car is worth about $5000 or so.
My wife really likes the car, especially because it was passed along to her by her favorite grandmother who died not too long ago. So we'll have to see about fixing it or not.
Garrison, who has a knack for telling the painful truth, told the deputy he had just passed another car and was going about 73 mph in a 65. In my opinion, that was a little too fast for Deer Thirty; but the sheriff let it slide.
Annually, about 200 people die in accidents involving either hitting an animal or swerving to avoid one.
An additional 26,647 people were injured in accidents involving encounters with animals, predominantly deer, according to the report on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website.
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I plan to snap a zillion pictures Friday and Saturday at the Class 1-2-3A Girls' State Tennis Tournament at the Hillsboro Sports Complex.
I've become a fan of Hillsboro High's top-notch doubles team of senior Lora Andrews and junior Amanda Faber.
They're one of the top seeds after winning the regional last week for the second year in a row. And they placed fourth at the state tournament last year.
But it wasn't their tennis tenacity that won me over. What gets me is how they get along so well.
I also want to be at the high school gym Saturday for the Trojan Invitational Volleyball Tournament. The Trojans will face tough competition, but the raucous crowd will pull them through.
While there will be tremendous team action, it also will one of the last opportunities for Hillsboro residents to see two of the best volleyball players in the state; senior Trojans JuliAnne Chisholm and Amanda Faber.
Don't miss it.
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I got goosebumps when Paula Perry told me that Army Spc. Molly Holub would receive a Quilt of Valor at 2 p.m. Saturday at American Legion Post #366. It seems like a perfect gift for quilt-happy Hillsboro to give her.
Paula came by to tell me about the presentation and her involvement in the Quilt of Valor Foundation (See story, Pg. 1). Paula is one my heroes.
Since June, she has finished one Quilt of Valor quilt and is working on two more. That's pretty cool.
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By the way, when I told Claire I was bringing Talk Like a Pirate Day up from Davey Jones' Locker, she laughed and said a girl in her class had developed a habit of calling out, "You scurvy dog!" at random.
I'm with the boy who asked Mrs. Overstake why the class couldn't have a Talk Like an Australian Day next time.
G'day mate!
Arrgh!
— GRANT OVERSTAKE
