"Items about first days of school reminded me of a friend long ago in Philadelphia," says Wayne Smith, of Covington.
"She was single and adopted an infant boy. He was her life.
"One day, though, the first day of kindergarten arrived and she took the little fellow to his classroom and introduced him to his teacher.
"She said her goodbyes, but instead of leaving she went to the back of the room to make sure her little prince was going to be OK.
"Some minutes later, the little boy spotted his mother and walked back to her, took her hand, and said, 'You can go home now, Mommy.'
"He turned around and went back to his little classmates.
"My friend said she cried all the way home…"
What accent?
Debbie Smith, of Arabi, says, "I am from Mobile, Alabama, so my accent is different from my neighbors here in New Orleans.
"In my work, I visit various preschools and teach weekly classes. Before Katrina, I would teach at Gentilly Baptist Preschool.
"One week I said, 'We have rules for having fun.'
"A little boy asked, 'Rules? What are rules?' I went on to explain: 'Sit-up, look-up, hand-up…' and continued on with the story time.
"At the end of the session, the little boy asked, 'When do we get our rolls?'
"No wonder he was so well behaved! The teacher in the classroom commented, 'I had trouble understanding you too!'"
Gift with teeth
Allan Petretti, of New Orleans, says, "Got a kick out of your Saturday alligator story. Here's mine:
"When I was a kid in the 1950s, living in Hackensack, New Jersey, I too had an alligator.
"My father owned a bar in Miami Beach, and would be away for a month or two at a time.
"As a joke he mailed my brother and me each an alligator. We received these 2-foot-long boxes, each filled with wet seaweed and a baby alligator. My brother's was DOA, but mine was alive and biting!
"Needless to say, my mother was distraught, but I was able to keep it, first in a small fish tank, and as he grew (a lot faster than you could imagine) he lived in my bathtub. I fed him raw chicken.
"My mother got more and more disturbed as the bites to my hands became more and more obvious. Finally, the day came when she had enough.
"We packed him up, and were off to a small zoo not far from our home.
"I visited him every once in a while for 6 months or so.
"My father must have been laughing his rear end off at the thought of us, especially my mother, opening that long box and finding that alligator."
Aging process
"Old Friend" says this one might qualify as a Freudian slip:
"When asked how old she was, my cousin answered, 'I'll be 60 on the 29th of Doctortober.'"
Joke failure
"Your series on words and their use and misuse, as well as school stories, reminds me of a high school English class years ago," says Seldon McCleskey, of Lafayette:
"We were given the assignment to write an essay on someone who was outstanding in their field, and then present our papers to the class. We heard papers on Einstein, Churchill, Edison, and many other greats.
"I wrote about my grandfather, because he owned a lot of land, and all he had to do was walk across the road to be out standing in his field.
"Miss Henry failed to appreciate the brilliance of my originality, and I was no longer a straight-A student."