(Originally ran in The Times and The News-Star January 6, 2019.)

Happy New Year from Ask the Paperboy, a Q&A effort meant to educate, inform, and inspire. It has seldom accomplished any of those intended purposes.

This Chapter 53, and the best jersey-number 53 Paperboy could think of — and it’s a fine one — was Mick Tingelhoff, a favorite name of Paperboy’s childhood because it was so much different than the Moodys and Millers and Cooks of his youth; we were a simply named people.

(Oh to be Teddy Tingelhoff! Sounds like a Christmas character!)

But not Tingelhoff, who played college ball at Nebraska, was signed as a free agent by Minnesota, and started all 240 games — including four Super Bowls — of his 17-season career. Right before Fran Tarkenton would go scrambling, Tingelhoff would snap him the ball. He’s in the NFL Hall of Fame, finally. So, in honor of Mick, off we go.

Dear Ask the Paperboy: Is a date that you eat a fruit or veggie, and do they expire? Seems like since they are dates and all…

Feeling Unfruitful in Ferriday

Dear Unfruitful,

You never live fruitlessly if you enjoy dates, which are indeed a fruit in the palm family. I checked with our local Irony Sheriff, and he says that it is more coincidence than irony that dates have an expiration date, though in a sense they never stop being dates. A fact of life is this: we all have expiration dates, even dates.

Dear Ask the Paperboy: I was taught that a paragraph just isn’t a paragraph unless it has at least two sentences, but I see that “rule” busted wide open all the time. So was my instruction arcane, archaic, or Arkansas?

Grammar-locked in Shreveport

Dear G-L’d,

All three. That long-ago day in grammar class, you hit the trifecta. Paper boy garnered much of his grammar expertise from Schoolhouse Rock!, a brilliant show that, granted, never covered this specifically; oh, they taught us about adjectives and adverbs, and they were all over conjunctions (“Conjunction Junction, what’s your function?”). But they left us wanting in defining paragraphs. Most of what Paperboy knows of grammar these days comes from songs for children on Youtube, such as this one about paragraphs, which works if you sing it to the tune of The Itsy Bitsy Spider Crawled Up The Water Spout:

“Introduce the topic in a general way,

“Next you add the details of what you want to say,

“Then you write a clincher; put this sentence last.

“Now you’ve just completed your great paragraph.”

Instructional?

Yes!

And there is your four paragraph (or so) answer.

Dear Ask the Paperboy: When someone of relative youth and fitness walks by the staircase and waits four to five minutes for the elevator to arrive, only to go up or down one floor, is it permissible to beat and kick them until they have a noticeable limp? Just curious.

Aging Irritably in Jackson

Dear Aging,

Well of course it is. One way we use the experience of our years is to share it with a younger generation. Whippersnappers don’t know how good they have it. Tell them of the days when you walked upstairs 10 flights to school and another 10 flights upstairs to get home, usually with no air-conditioning and only a baked potato and some gum to eat. Every time they limp, they’ll think of you and have a new appreciation for your willingness to share. Oh, tell them all this right before you get on the elevator as the door is closing.

Dear Ask the Paperboy, When is the first time “bunny ears” were used in a photograph, you know, putting the V behind somebody’s head when they don’t know it? I just love that.

Never Gets Old in Minden

Dear Never,

As far as photo historians can tell, it was 1863, just after Grant’s Army of the Tennessee converged on Vicksburg and forced the Confederates under Lt. Gen John Pemberton to surrender their guns, horses, and selfie sticks. In the historic photo (which all photos are?), Grant is doing the “bunny ear” to Pemberton, who probably agreed to the photo just to get a tin cup of water after 40 days on that dusty hill over the Mississippi River. The great thing about the picture: It’s a selfie, taken by Grant. True story! True story…

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Trust me: the play will be worth going to for the wig she wears and the throwback shoes alone, I swear to you.

Local actor and fount-of-good-cheer Marcia Cassanova will portray Erma Bombeck, 40 years ago the most widely distributed columnist in America, in At Wit’s End, a one-woman play, Friday and Saturday (January 11 & 12) at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 2 at Shreveport Little Theatre.

Most of the tickets have been sold: call 318.424.4439 and get you one of the few left for $15.

Erma was syndicated in about 900 papers because of her humor and everydayness and her wit, and this is back when everybody read the paper.

Things have changed, but Erma’s wit and wisdom have not.

“This is a wonderful show because each member of the audience will identify with every word Erma says,” Marcia said. “So many things in the world have changed drastically over the years, but Erma speaks universal truths about parenthood and the joys and sorrows that come with being a wife, mother and dedicated advocate for women’s rights. What I love most about this play is that I slip immediately into the character of Erma because, being a wife and mother myself, I have lived a version of the things she writes.”

Unlike the time 20 years ago when Marcia was my Aunt Margarite and I was her nephew Junior in some country farce on the SLT stage, this is a one-person gig. No Junior up there to save you, Margarite!

“Like all of us, Erma switches subjects quickly, and there are places in the script where she doesn’t give me a clue what she is going to say next,” Marcia said. “But Anna Maria Patton and David  Brown have worked tirelessly to think of ways to maneuver around the literary mine fields. And Melina Keele with lights and Barry Butler with sound effects can be real lifesavers.”

Erma was. This is her. She was funny, but her life was no bowl of cherries. It was much like ours. You’ll relate. And you’ll love the wig.

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