Our esteemed leader admitted that she comes from a goofy family. Well, ‘goofy’ was not her word for it but it’s close enough it seems to me. At any rate I wondered if she thought that she expected her students to admit to being goofier than her family. It’s quite possible that some of us were even goofier.

I may as well start with my Uncle Kyle. He lived with his family about a mile from the village of East Stone Gap. Most every morning after he did his chores he walked to town to hang out with the gang of men there assembled. At lunch time he came back home, ate lunch and went back to town. Then he showed up at home again in time to do his evening chores and eat his supper. After supper he was done for the day. His sister claimed that the guys in town were loafers. Was he loafing or just taking a break? When he ran short of money he went to the shipyards in eastern Virginia and worked for a year or two then came back and continued his fellowship with the guys until he ran out of money, then back to the shipyards. By the way, he never got rich.

In my immediate family there were some things one might consider to be goofy. The children would stay in bed on Saturday morning too late. Their father had his own way of seeing that they were done sleeping. He simply played one his favorite symphonies on his hi-fi system with the orchestra extra loud. Soon all were awake and up before long. If that didn’t work soon enough he resorted to the old toe-pulling routine. Speaking of toes, while sitting on the couch with a certain individual it was wise to see that he had shoes on. Otherwise one might get pinched on the leg by a pair of toes that sneaked up while one was unaware of an attack.

How’s this for goofy? It’s the first day of summer vacation from school. A lad is looking forward to swimming and other summer fun. A stepladder stands in the driveway. The lad for an unknown reason climbs halfway up the ladder with a ball in his hand. He throws the ball to one side and overturns the ladder. Both the lad and the ladder end up lying on the ground. The ladder is unhurt but the lad suffers a broken wrist. With a cast on the arm, it’s good-bye to summer swimming.

A sister of this lad might have a tasty morsel on her plate that she is saving until last, one that’s so good that it makes her forget anything she ate that she didn’t like. If this sister sits beside the lad she had better keep a close watch on the lad. He has been known to snitch morsels from plates when nobody is watching.

Sometimes the sister would have a morsel that hung around on her plate for nearly the whole meal then suddenly disappear as if eaten. Ah but there was a slight of hand here. The morsel was a sausage patty stowed out of sight until it could be disposed of in the garbage. This tid-bit was discovered by confession.

About the middle of my kids’ growing-up years I bought a brand new Volkswagen bus, the deluxe model with sun roof and those cute little windows near the roof, the only truly new car I ever owned. Perhaps it was a goofy selection, but I liked it and there was plenty of room for the whole family together. Mary loved to drive the car, and when driving she waved at absolutely everyone she saw. Was that goofy?

Our family always took a vacation away from home. Once the least one grew old enough to stay out from underfoot we went tent camping at a state or national park. Maybe that was goofy but the children saw a lot of places they might never have seen. The goofiest scene of all, at least to our neighbors, must have been our packing the Volkswagen bus for our month-long camping tour of western national parks. We arranged the back seats to face each other and set up a game table between them, no doubt illegal these days. The rest of space was used to stow camp equipment. The roof rack was handy to stow two tents. Gear packed, four kids aboard, Ma and Pa up front and we were ready to roll the 35-horsepower bus down the road, goofy or not.