once upon a time...

once upon a time a very, very long time ago, this little girl was dropped off to attend a week of bible school at the trinity lutheran church. now her family did not attend this church, but bible school was thought to be for anyone. plus her parents thought, hey, free babysitting and a week of peace without the kid!

so her mother dropped her off outside the side door of the trinity lutheran church, and despite her being quite small and never having been there before, just sent the child in without accompanying her. the child has a very clear memory of the crunch of the wheels of the stationwagon driving away on that little gravel road beside the church and how daunting that unknown door seemed. said child wandered in and some people talked to her, inevitably asking her her name. feeling a bit shy and out of place and perhaps even abandoned out in the woods as well as having a healthy imagination, she informed them that she was called snow white.

she was pretty steadfast about the snow white thing and it took those people 'til mid-week to figure out who she really was. i guess someone finally spotted her mother, who didn't appear to be accompanied by seven dwarves, picking her up.

and they all lived happily ever after, but she still really hates going in alone to a new place full of people who already know each other. and roger eastman teased her about it for years afterwards, as he apparently found it such an amusing story. she got so she hated to run into him.

once upon a time...

a very long time ago, i was a page in the SD legislature. one fine day, in the midst of doing page-like things (running errands, picking up papers, running mrs. kosher's notes on how to vote down to mr. kosher), i found myself in the elevator. with governor janklow. he smiled and looked at my name tag. "nachtigal," he said, "charles mix county," there's a ralph nachtigal down there. i said, "i know, he's my dad." the smile faded from governor janklow's face and he said, "oh." conversation over. after what seemed like an eternity, the elevator doors opened and i got out.

balderdash

for years and years every holiday, we played balderdash, a board game in which you make up definitions for real (but little-known) words and you try to write it so plausibly that everyone picks your answer and you advance on the board. you can also advance by picking the correct answer from among all of the definitions read. there was always a lot of laughter in the game and some people became known for the type of answers they wrote...i was always accused of anything russian-related and uncle jim was famous for ancient farm implements.

when you comment on some blogger blogs, there is a verification word that you have to type in (hint, hint, you would KNOW this if you were COMMENTING, people). of late, they must have changed the algorithm that generates these words because they are much more word-like than they used to be. so much so, that i've been writing them down for a few weeks now, waiting for inspiration to strike and to write a bunch of funny definitions. here's what i came up with this morning:

cringo: i was going to say that it's what you do when you see a WTF Wednesday posting like this one, but upon further reflection, i think it's a curly-haired white person in mexico.

rhorifer:  a filter which clears away boring conversations like "do any of you ever use the highest temperature wash on your washing machine?" at dinner parties. i'm looking into a portable version of one of these.

domit: a small home constructed in the garden to attract hedgehogs.

menwisms:  the all-too-seldom clever utterance or observation by the male of the species. as in husband's statement last week while watching news of california wildfires on CNN that it so typical of americans to participate in global warming in such an extreme way.

brapigic:  that itchy feeling you get when you've just taken off an ill-fitting bra.

mismar:  to accidentally get caught in the waves and get the bottom of your pant legs all wet.

kajushin:   spontaneous squatting.

quinort:  an orangey-colored moss found at the foot of evergreens in the forest.  can be brewed into a healthy (if somewhat bitter) tea.

those who have played balderdash at our house will recognize "spontaneous squatting," as one of the all-time funniest balderdash answers ever written. and to be honest, i don't even remember who wrote it, i just remember laughing myself silly.

and now, to help get YOU writing, two assignments:

1.  what games do you remember playing?
2.  write definitions for some of these blogger verification words (bear in mind, they are not real words, they just LOOK like real words, more or less):  relfulsi, diderest, coses, subbeacc, fazedyma, amemat, fulmor, stion, dialomp, hamerfut, hinisha, frilsha, chollnes, hialigge, rensitr

i look forward to seeing what you all come up with. yes, ALL of you. especially you there. :-)

on vets

veterans day was this week.  when i was a kid, veterans were a bunch of old guys in long-outgrown uniforms, reminiscing about the old days. today, they are young people, fathers and mothers, who spend harrowing months away from their families in a desert.

as a kid, i marveled that vets had their own day. i did wonder why so many of those old guys dressed up and celebrated a day that was, in my view, only for uncle red, him being the only vet i knew. it took me years to realize it meant veteran and not veterinarian.

snow days

i remember one particular snow day when i was in the 4th grade. i wasn't supposed to go to school because we were going up to pierre to visit dad in the legislature. it was snowing like mad and mom decided not to make the drive. however, school was NOT dismissed and although i was going to be at least 2 hours late for school and no one was expecting me, mom made me go. and she made me walk, it being too dangerous to drive (but apparently fine for a 4th grader to walk the whole way across town).

i remember trudging through the snow from our house on the west side of town, dragging my feet, dreading getting there so late. by the time i got there, i had myself pretty upset and worried about being several hours late. i think i was pretty much in tears by the time arrived. i remember that mrs. petersen said my being late was no problem, they hadn't been expecting me anyway, thinking i was going to pierre.

i wonder why school wasn't let out with all that snow that day? they always said that if mr. walker could see his black house across the street from his office then it wasn't snowy enough to call off school. i suppose he could still see it that day, tho' it was apparently too snowy for mom to drive me across town.

p.s. the picture above isn't from that day, it's from a couple of weeks ago when i was in oslo. it was just the snow picture i had at hand.

words i'll never hear again

when i studied in kazan, russia, in 1994, dad and norm huizenga came to visit me. i went to moscow to meet them and we took the 13-hour train ride back to kazan. along the way, there was a stop (the name of which escapes me at the moment) where there was a crystal factory.

times were tough in russia back then and the people who worked in the factory were paid in the crystal products that they made. chandeliers, cut glass pitchers, wine glasses, vodka glasses. some in beautiful cobalt blue and other vibrant colors.

the stop came very early in the morning...around 4 or 5 a.m., as i recall. despite the ungodly hour and no matter the weather--bitter cold, driving rain, blizzard conditions--the people from the village swarmed the train with their wares.

i remember my astonishment when dad handed me a $50 dollar bill and said, "get out there and buy something!" words which i'd never heard before and that i'm sure i'll never hear again.

weird kid thoughts

when i was little--maybe 5 or 6--and we lived in the house in town (the wetzel house, with a telephone in every room), i thought the local news people could see me. someone must have made a distinction in my presence between local and national news. it was this that caused me to think that the local news people could see me. so, if, for example, i was taking a bath upstairs and all of the clean clothes were downstairs by the dryer, i would sneak in behind dad's big gold chair, wrapped in a towel if there was any sign of les and gina harding on the screen. those were their names, right? if it was anyone else, i knew they couldn't see me from inside the t.v., but those local news people, you just never knew...

"what's that clicking sound?"

i had a friend over today who is from ireland and who is a fantastic storyteller. somehow, we got on the subject of electric fences. and i was reminded of how we spent endless hours of fun during one summer of my childhood, baiting the dimick boys into touching the electric fence that we used to string up for the horses to eat the grass off in the ditch out front of the house. those red-haired dimick boys were living out on the "harm hippen" (sp?) place not far from our house--at least for that summer. what was completely amazing was that getting them to touch that fence worked REPEATEDLY, providing endless source of amusement, all summer long. they simply never learned.

red-haired dimick boy: "what's that clicking sound?"
me: "huh? i don't hear anything..."
red-haired dimick boy: "ouch!"

i wonder what ever happened to them....

all alone again

so, once again, i'm the only one posting here. but i shall soldier on...and hope you're all still reading.

i was flying into oslo on tuesday evening. very late tuesday evening (tho' it wasn't planned that way...thank GOD for the GOLD LOUNGE at Kastrup!!)

the pilot mentioned something about kristiansand soon after takeoff. and it reminded me of a story. that although it's not technically a nachtigal story, it's a story from my dear danish husband, jens-peter, who, after ten years with me has at least earned honorary nachtigal-hood.

a number of years ago when he was still in the danish army, he went to a "PFP" exercise (that's some kind of partnership for peace-thingie) in kristiansand. which is in norway. it seems that the italians were among those invited (being in favor of peace and all, as well as having a penchant for crooked, mafia-run governments).

it seems that in sweden there is a place called kristianstad. that looks quite a lot like kristiansand, if your english isn't so good. so, imagine the surprise of the swedes when a whole bunch of italians parachuted into kristianstad and said, "we're here!" now, bear in mind, the swedes have prided themselves on their neutrality in recent decades (including WWII and the Cold War). so, to have a bunch of italians parachuting in was, to say the least, a tad alarming.

but, the italians' shoes were immaculate. and they were a little late for the exercise in norway.

those scandinavians. they all look alike...

short memory

when i was in the second grade, i was given a BB gun for christmas. for the express purpose of shooting the neighbor's annoying dog. i got quite good at it. after it was demonstrated for me.