From the Frastley Family Files (ooooh I alliterated again!)

Glee. GLEE. G.L.E.E.: Jubilant delight, joy. I like that word, and think people don’t use it nearly as often as they could. Try it. I dare ya. Make it your business to correctly use the word GLEE in a sentence today.

Which brings me to a story that fills me with glee just thinking about it.

My mother - (we'll call her Esmé for respectful anonymity purposes - what? You thought my REAL name was Millicent?! Snork! ) - anyway...Esmé used to enjoy talking to herself in the kitchen. She would consult herself on all topics relating to or involving the need for advice. She would tell herself the problem, then she would advise herself on it and either argue that the advice was ridiculous, subsequently hurting her own feelings and having to apologize to herself for bringing it up in the first place, or she’d thank herself for the advice she just received from herself. She rarely followed the advice she gave so freely, but it gave us countless hours of...you guessed it...GLEE.

Esmé had an incident once while having a rather vehement argument with herself in the kitchen. The conversation had reached a fevered pitch, with both her sides being extremely passionate about her opposing points of view, when all of a sudden she yelled “NO!” at herself and the four front teeth in the top of her mouth just flew out. Actually, they broke in half and it was the half parts that flew out, but nonetheless, teeth were flying on that particular day. She stopped arguing with herself immediately and looked rather stunned. She then put her hand up to her mouth, said “Oh Thhhit” and ran out of the room. I’m not sure how the force of her own yelling at herself would break her teeth, and I think there were probably other contributing factors, like faulty dental care during the Depression or something like that, but whatever it was, she wasn’t able to see the dentist right away. So in order to avoid humiliation, she chose to distract people's attention from the possible noticing of her mouth damage by wearing huge rose colored sunglasses. The kind one might have seen on Elton John during his fashion hey day. That in combination with the beehive hairdo was quite a sight let me tell YOU.

She later became mayor of the town, but that is a decidedly different story for a different day. And no. I did not make any of this up. My family is madcap and zany.