When I was a girl, my mother purchased a set of melamine dishes in a variety of colors. There was a clear plastic outer liner and a little woven basket-weave piece in the middle and the color part was inside. Being the girl of the house, the pink set was mine.
That is, until Tommy came along. Tommy was my stepfather's brother-in-law. For some reason, I never referred to my stepfather or his people with a more formal title. This seems odd to me now as even my mother's closest friends were given the honorary title of Aunt or Uncle. Tommy most certainly did not deserve to be my uncle.
He was a such a girly little man. Short and stocky, he was always complaining about something. Still, I loved going down to their house in the "country" just below McComb, MS. There were stocked ponds full of catfish and if they weren't biting, Tommy would throw some feed on the water and dip them up in a dip net for an impromptu fish fry. The berry patches were magnificent; I swear I could eat my weight in them! Around the bend lived my step grandmother and her husband, a dairy farmer in his eighties. He would let me help feed the cows and reward me with a cup of cold fresh cream. And then there was Buster, may favorite cow of all.
In that story, I wrote of Tommy's love of the color red:
... if at all possible, he ate out of a red bowl or plate… said it made his food taste better. If there wasn’t a red bowl, pink ‘ould do! If there wasn’t a pink one, he’d pretty much go hungry!
So, when they came to our house, guess who had to "be the bigger man" and give up her pink plate and cup? Yep, me!
He must've made a lasting impression on me because I swear my coffee tastes much better when I put it in the cup you see above.
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