This year for my Mother’s Day gift, my daughter treated me to a movie. We watched the new Star Trek.

As a teen, I grew up with the original show. My older brother was a science-fiction addict. One of his favorite authors was Robert Heinlein. Since I loved to read, I picked up these books and was introduced to the science-fiction world. So when Star Trek hit the air waves, my brother was hooked and I watched along with him.

Dad, however, would almost always turn the channel. This meant I didn’t watch every show, but I saw enough to know the characters and to develop a keen interest.

“I don’t want to see no attitude!”

That order was given countless times by Mom when I grew up. We kids displayed our attitudes toward being disciplined with either a scowl, pouty lip, or—though, rarely–tears of repentance. But the one in particular that Mom meant was when we sassed back. That kind of attitude usually produced a ready switch in her hand that she swatted against our fannies.

I read that Burger King is now offering Spam for breakfast in Hawaii. I guess the islanders love the stuff. You know the product Spam? It comes vacuum-sealed in a can that you have to peel open. It’s pale pink and when you shake it from the can it lands—kerplunk!—like a giant pencil eraser onto your plate. Except there’s icky, gooey stuff sticking to it. They said that’s gel, but they surely don’t mean jell-o. It’s nowhere as appetizing.

I just stare at it and go, “Bleech!” and then dispose of it.

I don’t believe second person is called for in most writing articles today. But here’s one I wrote for a writing class…

WHIM OF THE WIND

You arrive as the sun yawns over the horizon. You glide slowly, almost hesitantly to the ground, skimming the top of the silent pool, careful to disturb not a ripple. You moan with dismay as you swirl over the victims of last night’s rampage. You didn’t flatten the grasses to lifeless straw; the icy-hearted hailstones murdered them. You didn’t scorch the mighty oak to a charred stump; the crackling lightning sizzled it. You didn’t smash the anthill and flood its tunnels; the pelting rain drowned it.

Yes, Mother’s Day has come and gone. Families gathered to honor their moms with flowers, boxes of chocolate, maybe even cookout’s and homemade ice cream. However each observed the event, it was meant to show appreciation to the woman who not only brought them into the world, but who also diapered their bottoms, kissed away their boo-boo’s and exclaimed with delight over the hard wrought C’s on their report cards.