Captain’s Log – Tweezers and Readers

Sometimes when ideas come for this column, I'll say to whomever I'm talking, "That's a column!" and then quickly make a note in the story list folder so when it's time to write, there is something in the idea bank. 

This week, it happened during a conversation with friends at the office. We were all sitting around chatting while we processed mail, discussing the inordinate number of reading glasses we stash around our lives – next to the bed, in the bathroom, in the car, in the purse. That led to a lively confession regarding witch hairs, those pesky antennae that grow sneakily for several months out of your chin or cheek or eyebrow until one day you catch a glimpse of the offensive strand in just the right angle of sunshine in the rear-view mirror while you pause at a stoplight. 

How in the heck could you have missed that thing for it to have gotten that long? 

Which leads to the confessional of the tweezers. Apparently, we all have an equal number of those stashed about our lives as we do readers. 

And then we were laughing that it has all come to this – we sit around talking about the vestiges of age. We used to talk about boys and the weekend, what we would name our children, and what we're wearing to prom. Now it's a good day if we're talking readers and tweezers instead of that damn hip or our week knees, or how long we have to stand and let things adjust and warm up when we rise from our desk chair before taking that first step. 

This week we'll have Book Club. The original book club, the friends who helped launch this paper, the OG focus group, the ladies who started out as a softball team and morphed into a drinking club. Then, by default of age and interest, into the newspaper support crew, still exists, and we still get together fairly often – as evidenced by the reader conversation around the mail table. 

But now we've branched off and expanded a bit into a more traditional book club, mostly out of curiosity. After all this time as "Book Club," Denice suggested one day that we maybe ought to consider getting together in a more structured situation. One that actually reads. The same book. And when we're done, we get together and talk about the book and have snacks.  

It's fun. We take turns picking the book, which is interesting because we all like different stuff. We've stretched quite a bit in our views, and we've practiced considering ideas outside our own closely held opinions. And so far, we've all remained friends. It's been really good for us.

So with my newly plucked chin and these stashed readers, I'll be quickly trying to finish "Theo of Golden" while we all are right here…

…Keeping you Posted. 

Rach