A couple of Fridays back, Matt Hook left me a voicemail asking if I would like to go to the zoo with him and his four kids. Leigh was gone for the weekend and Matt may have been looking for some relief. Either that, or he looked around the house and said, “Zoo here….zoo in Royal Oak?”….and dialed my phone. Unfortunately, I missed Matt’s voicemail, given that I haven’t been to the zoo in years and I do enjoy Matt’s kids. Besides, it’s fun to relive your childhood through children….even somebody else’s children.

Let me launch right into this with a story that is so perfect….so fitting….so right….it would be a crying shame if it turned out not to be true. It concerns a young man who went off to college. Upon reaching the dormitory, he began to unpack his suitcases. Apparently, his mother had done his packing for him. In the process of putting clothing into drawers, he discovered two long narrow pieces of cloth among the shirts, socks and underwear. They were neatly folded and ironed. At first he didn’t know what they were. But when he looked at the design, he recognized the pattern as being one that he had seen before. At last it came to him. These were the strings of his mother’s favorite apron.

Back in my novel-reading days….to which I will probably not return until I glide (or somebody pushes me) into retirement….I kept company with an author named John O’Hara, who wrote about the “social set” living in the mythical town of Gibbsville, Pennsylvania. Critics have suggested that O’Hara’s signature novel was one of his earliest. Oddly enough, it begins with a 14-line quote from W. Somerset Maugham.

Three kids are in the schoolyard, bragging about their fathers. The first one says: “My dad scribbles a few words on a piece of paper….calls it a poem….and they give him fifty dollars.” The second kid says: “That’s nothing. My dad scribbles a few words on a piece of paper….calls it a prescription….and they give him a hundred dollars.” Leading the third kid to say: “I’ve got you both beat. My dad scribbles a few words on a piece of paper….calls it a sermon….and it takes eight people to collect all the money.”