Happy Birthday, Jeremiah!

Jeremiah's sixteen today -- sweet sixteen and never been kissed. He's embarrassed by this fact and some of his peers even tease him about it. I think it's wonderful. I told him that "the best kisses of your life come after you're sixteen. Maybe it'll be when your first child slobbers rice cereal on you, or perhaps when the minister says 'I do' and your wife's kiss takes your breath away. But trust me, the best kisses come after you're sixteen!"

I've been toying around with "The Party Line." I tweaked the first two paragraphs and, no, I'm not satisfied with them, but here goes:

The Plunderbund

The neighborhood phone tree operated with deadly results if not complete accuracy. Lydia Glunger crouched beneath a weeping willow tree and lit a cigarette at 3p.m. She knew despite chewing three sticks of gum that when she walked in the door smiling and Dentyne-fresh at 3:15, her mother would already know of her indiscretion. Mrs. Jennings saw Lydia smoking, called Mrs. Rectenwald, who then called Mrs. Walker who had three ladies on her party line. Those three ladies scooted to their respective back fences and whispered the news to their neighbors who, in turn, dashed back inside to spread the gossip to _their_ best friends. Poor Lydia didn’t stand a chance. For all its faults, the phone tree was more effective than Dentyne.

The worst aspect of the phone tree was its propensity to embellish the crime. At the drop of a lacy handkerchief, a Salem snuck under the willow tree might become a pot party by the time the news made its way around the community. An innocent conversation behind the gym could balloon and become a passionate tryst on its way down the phone tree. The old game “Gossip” came by its name honestly. So one Sunday morning when the neighborhood ladies spied Lydia Glunger’s blue Impala slathered in white shoe polish sentiments and festooned with wilted crepe paper, the phone tree kicked into high gear. In half an hour the news spread through kitchen extensions and back fences around the entire hill. Never mind that Lydia had only been a bridesmaid. It didn’t matter that she’d allowed the bride and groom to borrow her car and the wedding party had besmirched it. Forget that Lydia -- exhausted when she retrieved the Impala hours after her friends’ Saturday afternoon wedding -- drove it home without stopping at the carwash. As far as the party line was concerned, this was the scoop of the decade: Lydia Glunger was married.