Home  >> Stories  >> The Tale Spinner #2013-13

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IN THIS ISSUE

• Betty Audet forwards a story about a phone operator
• Barbara Wear warns about criminals´ technical knowledge
• Eve Cassidy´s post comments on a word with many definitions
• Bruce Galway sends some interesting facts about Lake Superior
• Catherine Nesbitt forwards an important warning
• Who would have believed our mothers taught us so much?
• Sites are suggested by Barbara Wear, Catherine Nesbitt, Doris Dignard, Irene Harvalias, Gerrit deLeeuw, and Nevil Horsfall

Betty Audet sends this story about

THE OLD PHONE ON THE WALL

When I was a young boy, my father had one of the first telephones in our neighbourhood. I remember the polished old case fastened to the wall. The shiny receiver hung on the side of the box. I was too little to reach the telephone, but used to listen with fascination when my mother talked to it.

Then I discovered that somewhere inside the wonderful device lived an amazing person. Her name was "Information Please" and there was nothing she did not know. Information Please could supply anyone´s number and the correct time.

My personal experience with the genie-in-a-bottle came one day while my mother was visiting a neighbour. Amusing myself at the tool bench in the basement, I whacked my finger with a hammer, the pain was terrible, but there seemed no point in crying because there was no one home to give sympathy.

I walked around the house sucking my throbbing finger, finally arriving at the stairway. The telephone! Quickly, I ran for the footstool in the parlour and dragged it to the landing. Climbing up, I unhooked the receiver and held it to my ear.

"Information, please," I said into the mouthpiece just above my head.

A click or two and a small clear voice spoke into my ear: "Information."

"I hurt my finger…." I wailed into the phone, the tears coming readily enough now that I had an audience.

"Isn´t your mother home?" came the question.

"Nobody´s home but me," I blubbered.

"Are you bleeding?" the voice asked.

"No," I replied. "I hit my finger with the hammer and it hurts."

"Can you open the icebox?" she asked.

I said I could.

"Then chip off a little bit of ice and hold it to your finger," said the voice.

After that, I called "Information Please" for everything. I asked her for help with my geography, and she told me where Philadelphia was. She helped me with my math. She told me my pet chipmunk that I had caught in the park just the day before would eat fruit and nuts.

Then there was the time Petey, our pet canary, died. I called Information Please and told her the sad story. She listened, and then said things grown-ups say to soothe a child. But I was not consoled. I asked her, "Why is it that birds should sing so beautifully and bring joy to all families, only to end up as a heap of feathers on the bottom of a cage?"

She must have sensed my deep concern, for she said quietly, "Wayne, always remember that there are other worlds to sing in."

Somehow I felt better.

Another day I was on the telephone, "Information Please."

"Information," said in the now familiar voice. "How do I spell fix?" I asked.

All this took place in a small town in the Pacific Northwest. When I was nine years old, we moved across the country to Boston. I missed my friend very much. "Information Please" belonged in that old wooden box back home and I somehow never thought of trying the shiny new phone that sat on the table in the hall. As I grew into my teens, the memories of those childhood conversations never really left me. Often, in moments of doubt and perplexity I would recall the serene sense of security I had then. I appreciated now how patient, understanding, and kind she was to have spent her time on a little boy.

A few years later, on my way west to college, my plane put down in Seattle. I had about a half-hour or so between planes. I spent 15 minutes or so on the phone with my sister, who lived there now. Then without thinking what I was doing, I dialled my hometown operator and said, "Information Please."

Miraculously, I heard the small, clear voice I knew so well. "Information."

I hadn´t planned this, but I heard myself saying, "Could you please tell me how to spell fix?"

There was a long pause. Then came the soft spoken answer, "I guess your finger must have healed by now."

I laughed, "So it´s really you," I said. "I wonder if you have any idea how much you meant to me during that time?"

I wonder," she said, "if you know how much your calls meant to me. I never had any children and I used to look forward to your calls."

I told her how often I had thought of her over the years and I asked if I could call her again when I came back to visit my sister.

"Please do," she said. "Just ask for Sally."

Three months later I was back in Seattle, A different voice answered, "Information."

I asked for Sally.

"Are you a friend?" she said.

"Yes, a very old friend," I answered.

"I´m sorry to have to tell you this," she said. "Sally had been working part time the last few years because she was sick. She died five weeks ago."

Before I could hang up, she said, "Wait a minute. Did you say your name was Wayne?"

"Yes," I answered.

"Well, Sally left a message for you. She wrote it down in case you called. Let me read it to you."

The note said, "Tell him there are other worlds to sing in. He´ll know what I mean."

I thanked her and hung up. I knew what Sally meant.

Barbara Wear forwards this warning:

NOT ALL THIEVES ARE STUPID!

Some people left their car in the long-term parking at San Jose while away, and someone broke into the car. Using the information on the car´s registration in the glove compartment, they drove the car to the people´s home in Pebble Beach and robbed it. So if we are going to leave the car in long-term parking, we should not leave the registration/insurance cards in it, nor your remote garage door opener.

GPS

Someone had their car broken into while they were at a football game. Their car was parked on the green which was adjacent to the football stadium and specially allotted to football fans. Things stolen from the car included a garage door remote control, some money, and a GPS which had been prominently mounted on the dashboard. When the victims got home, they found that their house had been ransacked and just about everything worth anything had been stolen. The thieves had used the GPS to guide them to the house. They then used the garage remote control to open the garage door and gain entry to the house. The thieves knew the owners were at the football game, they knew what time the game was scheduled to finish, and so they knew how much time they had to clean out the house. It would appear that they had brought a truck to empty the house of its contents.

Something to consider if you have a GPS - don´t put your home address in it. Put a nearby address (like a store or gas station) so you can still find your way home if you need to, but no one else would know where you live if your GPS were stolen.

CELL PHONES

This lady has now changed her habit of how she lists her names on her cell phone after her handbag was stolen. Her handbag contained her cell phone, credit card, wallet, etc. Twenty minutes later when she called her husband from a pay phone to tell him what had happened, hubby said, "I received your text asking about our pin number and I replied a little while ago." When they rushed down to the bank, the bank staff told them all the money was already withdrawn. The thief had actually used the stolen cell phone to text ´hubby´ in the contact list and got hold of the pin number. Within 20 minutes he had withdrawn all the money from their bank account.

Moral of the lesson:

Do not disclose the relationship between you and the people in your contact list. Avoid using names like Home, Honey, Hubby, Sweetheart, Dad, Mom, etc....

And very importantly, when sensitive info is being asked through texts, confirm by calling back.

Also, when you´re being texted by friends or family to meet them somewhere, be sure to call back to confirm that the message came from them. If you don´t reach them, be very careful about going places to meet ´family and friends´ who text you.

As of now, I no longer have "home" listed on my cell phone.

Eve Cassidy comments on

THE MOST OVERUSED WORD IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

There is a two-letter word in English that has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that word is "up". It is listed in the dictionary as an adverb, preposition, adjective, noun, or verb.

It´s easy to understand up, meaning toward the sky, or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake up? At a meeting, why does a topic come up? Why do we speak up, and why are the officers up for election, and why is it up to the secretary to write up a report?

We call up our friends, brighten up a room, polish up the silver, warm up the leftovers, and clean up the kitchen. We lock up the house, and fix up the old car.

At other times, this little word has real special meaning. People stir up trouble, line up for tickets, work up an appetite, and think up excuses. To be dressed is one thing but to be dressed up is special.

And this up is confusing: A drain must be opened up because it is stopped up. We open up a store in the morning but we close it up at night.

We seem to be pretty mixed up about up! To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of up, look up the word up in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes up almost 1/4 of the page and can add up to about thirty definitions. If you are up to it, you might try building up a list of the many ways up is used. It will take up a lot of your time, but if you don´t give up, you may wind up with a hundred or more.

When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding up. When the sun comes out, we say it is clearing up. When it rains, it soaks up the earth. When it does not rain for awhile, things dry up. One could go on and on, but I´ll wrap it up, for now … my time is up! Did that one crack you up? Now I´ll shut up!

Bruce Galway forwards these facts which illustrate

WHY IT´S CALLED LAKE SUPERIOR

Lake Superior contains ten percent of all the fresh water on the planet Earth.

· It covers 82,000 square kilometers or 31,700 square miles.

· The average depth is 147 meters or 483 feet.

· There have been about 350 shipwrecks recorded in Lake Superior.

· Lake Superior is, by surface area, the largest lake in the world.

· A Jesuit priest in 1668 named it Lac Tracy, but that name was never officially adopted.

· It contains as much water as all the other Great Lakes combined, plus three extra Lake Eries.

· There is a small outflow from the lake at St. Mary´s River (Sault Ste Marie) into Lake Huron, but it takes almost two centuries for the water to be completely replaced.

· There is enough water in Lake Superior to cover all of North and South America with water one foot deep.

· Lake Superior was formed during the last glacial retreat, making it one of the earth´s youngest major features at only about 10,000 years old.

· The deepest point in the lake is 405 meters or 1,333 feet.

· There are 78 different species of fish that call the big lake home.

· The maximum wave ever recorded on Lake Superior was 9.45 meters or 31 feet high.

· If you stretched the shoreline of Lake Superior out to a straight line, it would be long enough to reach from Duluth to the Bahamas.

· Over 300 streams and rivers empty into Lake Superior, with the largest source being the Nipigon River.

· The average underwater visibility of Lake Superior is about 8 meters or 27 feet, making it the cleanest and clearest of the Great Lakes. Underwater visibility in some spots reaches 30 meters.

· In the summer, the sun sets more than 35 minutes later on the western shore of Lake Superior than at its southeastern edge.

· Some of the world´s oldest rocks, formed about 2.7 billion years ago, can be found on the Ontario shore of Lake Superior.

· It very rarely freezes over completely, and then usually just for a few hours. Complete freezing occurred in 1962, 1979, 2003, and 2009.

Catherine Nesbitt forwards this warning about

SHAMPOO

Do not wash your hair in the shower!

It´s so good to finally get a health warning that is useful. It involves the shampoo when it runs down your body when you shower with it.

I don´t know why I didn´t figure this out sooner. I use shampoo in the shower; when I wash my hair, the shampoo runs down my whole body, and printed very clearly on the shampoo label is this warning: "FOR EXTRA BODY AND VOLUME."

No wonder I have been gaining weight! I got rid of that shampoo and I am going to start showering with Dawn dishwashing soap. Its label reads: "DISSOLVES FAT THAT IS OTHERWISE DIFFICULT TO REMOVE."

Problem solved. If I don´t answer the phone, I´ll be in the shower!

THINGS I LEARNED AT MY MOTHER´S KNEE (OR SOME OTHER LOW JOINT)

My mother taught me to appreciate a job well done: "If you´re going to kill each other, do it outside. I just finished cleaning."

My mother taught me religion: "You´d better pray that will come out of the carpet."

My mother taught me about time travel: "If you don´t straighten up, I´m going to knock you into the middle of next week!"

My mother taught me logic: "Because I said so, that´s why."

My mother taught me more logic: "If you fall out of that swing and break your neck, you´re not going to the store with me."

My mother taught me foresight: "Make sure you wear clean underwear, in case you´re in an accident."

My mother taught me irony: "Keep crying, and I´ll give you something to cry about."

My mother taught me about the science of osmosis: "Shut your mouth and eat your supper."

My mother taught me about contortionism: "Will you look at that dirt on the back of your neck!"

My mother taught me about stamina: "You´ll sit there until all that spinach is gone."

My mother taught me about weather: "This room of yours looks as if a tornado went through it."

My mother taught me about hypocrisy: "If I told you once, I´ve told you a million times. Don´t exaggerate!"

My mother taught me the circle of life: "I brought you into this world, and I can take you out."

My mother taught me about behaviourism: "Stop acting like your father!"

My mother taught me about envy: "There are millions of less fortunate children in this world who don´t have wonderful parents like you do."

My mother taught me about anticipation: "Just wait until we get home."

My mother taught me about receiving: "You are going to get it when you get home!"

My mother taught me medical science: "If you don´t stop crossing your eyes, they are going to get stuck that way."

My mother taught me ESP: "Put your sweater on; don´t you think I know when you are cold?"

My mother taught me humour: "When that lawn mower cuts off your toes, don´t come running to me."

My mother taught me how to become an adult: "If you don´t eat your vegetables, you´ll never grow up."

My mother taught me genetics: "You´re just like your father."

My mother taught me about my roots: "Shut that door behind you. Do you think you were born in a barn?"

My mother taught me wisdom: "When you get to be my age, you´ll understand."

And my favourite: My mother taught me about justice: "One day you´ll have kids, and I hope they turn out just like you."

SUGGESTED WEBSITES

Barbara Wear recommends this BBC site. From the icy Arctic to Africa´s dense jungles - and the mountain tops of Mongolia to the deep waters of the Pacific - the BBC series Human Planet has explored mankind´s incredible relationship with nature:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-12618167

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Barbara also sends the URL for a video of Japanese teenage girls playing in a style that would have made Benny Goodman proud:

Catherine Nesbitt forwards this link to a very funny commercial:

Catherine also suggests this site for a new impression of Sarah Palin by Tina Fey:

http://arunaurl.com/4mb1

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Doris Dignard sends the URL for a video of magician Michael Carbonaro as a clerk at a convenience store selling instant chicks - with hidden cameras placed by the Jay Leno Show:

Gerrit deLeeuw recommends this site for stunning views of Niagara-on-the-Lake and Niagara Falls in Ontario:

Irene Harvalias sends this link to a video of Jackie Evancho singing "Sing, Sing, Sing:"

And for people who don´t mind heights, Nevil Horsfall sends this link to a video of people leaping off mountains in wing-suits for undisclosed reasons:

To check out the features of the "freedictionary", which changes daily, go to