When I was a little girl… maybe 4 or 5 years old… I was at Stumps Grocery Store with my Mom.  It was on Main Street, in Dayton, Ohio.  We used to shop their on occasion.. but not frequently.  It was smaller than Liberals.  Which is where Mom really liked to go.

At any rate, it was just my Mom and I.  She was somewhere.  And I remember looking at the rack which was set up by the Wonder Bread guy.  All the bread on that stand was marked down.  Day old bread.  Stale.

Just about them, some woman grabbed my arm.  She jerked it hard and started leading me past the cash registers and to the front door.  She was really moving me along.

I started screaming.  Like Godzilla when the laser rocket hits him in the neck.  I kept screaming.  She let go of my arm.  I didn’t see where she went because I was crying so hard.  One of the clerks came running over to me, and then Mom.

I was scared.

This story came to mind today.  I wonder where I would be or what my life would have been like… If I hadn’t started screaming.  I wonder where she would have taken me… And what I would be like now.  Who knows.  I can’t imagine the outcome would have been good.

But for whatever reason, the events up to that point, and ever since then have come to this exact moment.  When I type… once again…. those ever-familiar….dot, dot, dots.

Which then brings me to this.  Maybe I thought of the story, because I am getting so stale here.  It seems like this writing has lost its snap, its crackle and its pop.  I am on the Wonder Bread Rack.

And as  my dear old boy Webster puts it…

Stale is an adjective… With a few different meanings… But all up the same dang alley.

It means that a food source is no longer fresh and pleasant to eat; hard, musty, or dry;  OR… a topic is no longer new and interesting or exciting;  OR maybe even a person… is no longer able to perform well or creatively because of having done something for too long.

STALE. Like day old bread.  In Stumps.

So….maybe somebody needs to grab my arm and lead me out of here.  This time… perhaps for the good.  Who knows what might be ahead…  just on the other side of those grocery doors.

“Not every end is the goal. The end of a melody is not its goal, and yet if a melody has not reached its end, it has not reached its goal. A parable.”  –  Friedrich Nietzsche

“If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.”  –   Lao Tzu