How to Turn Your 60+ Year Old Husband Into a Kid Again (Wordless Wednesday) and Romantic Past (Words for Wednesday)

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Linking up with Wordless Wednesday and Sandee at Comedy Plus.     

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Words for Wednesday was begun by Delores and has become a moveable feast of word or picture or music prompts that encourages us to write stories, poems, or whatever strikes our fancy.   

This month, the prompts are being provided by Elephant's Child.    

This week's prompts are two phrases and a very short story for you to expand (or not):

You can't judge a book by its cover;

And/or

The squeaky wheel gets the grease

And/or

For Sale.

Wedding Dress.

Never worn.

"What's this newspaper ad clipping in Granddad and Gramsie's scrapbook?"

"Let me see -- oh!  I had no idea they'd kept that!"

"You know about it?"

"Yeah, it's part of Granddad's story, and rather romantic of him to keep it, although I'm sure Gramsie encouraged it."

"Granddad doesn't look like the kind of guy who has a dramatic or romantic backstory."

"Well, you can't judge a book by its cover."

"So what happened?"

"As much as he loves Gramsie, as good a life as they've had together, there was someone else once."

"If you tell me he ever cheated on Gramsie, I'll punch your lights out!"

"Calm down!  It's nothing like that, nothing at all.  Granddad isn't that kind, never has been.  It was before he ever met Gramsie."

"The deep, dark family secret has to do with a weird ad in the newspaper classifieds years ago?"

"It isn't even a deep, dark family secret.  Most of the older members of the family know the story, it just doesn't get mentioned much.  My dad told me when I was looking through a picture album a couple of years ago and saw a picture of a young girl I didn't recognize.  When Granddad was in high school he had a sweetheart.  They were going to get married, then she got cancer."

"They continued their wedding plans for right after graduation anyway, even though she got sicker and sicker.  Cancer treatment then wasn't what it is now, and she went into the hospital and was there over a month.  The hospital didn't want to let them get married in her hospital room, back then they were so strict children couldn't even visit their own parents and non-family members were discouraged from coming, too.  But the squeaky wheel gets the grease.  She said if she was going to go to heaven, she wanted it to be as his wife, and they all wanted her to be happy.  He even helped her pick a dress from a mail order catalog, one that was really too expensive for them, but he made it happen.

"The big day came, and as her mom and sister were going to help her get into her dress, she looked over at Granddad, said, 'I love you so much,' and she died.  They say he lost it, fell on her bed and howled.  When he finally calmed down, he snatched the dress, said he would deal with it himself.   Put that ad in the classifieds and joined the army.  About a year later he met Gramsie."

"I don't blame him for keeping it, or Gramsie for letting him.  Thanks for telling me."

"You're welcome," he said to his cousin as he touched the outlines of the yellowed old newspaper classified ad that read:

For Sale.

Wedding Dress.

Never worn.

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Today is:

Boss's Day -- either celebrate, or roll your eyes, both are acceptable responses (begun by Patricia Bays Haroski in 1958 in honor of her boss, who was also her father; this date was his birthday) 

Chicago International Film Festival -- Chicago, IL, US (oldest competitive international film festival in North America; through the 27th)

Chrysanthemum Festival -- Japan ("The Festival of Happiness", various shrines; through Nov. 15)

Circleville Pumpkin Show -- Circleville, OH, US (celebrating with over 100,000lbs of pumpkins, squash, and gourds; through Saturday)

Clean Your Bug Zapper Day -- internet generated, and we're getting a bit overboard here, aren't we?

Day of National Concern About Young People and Gun Violence -- US (students around the nation are asked to sign the Pledge Against Gun Violence)   

Day of Pope John Paul II -- Poland

Dictionary Day / Learn a Word Day -- Noah Webster's birth anniversary

Dress Like A Dork Day -- does someone have it out for us with these?

East Texas Yamboree -- Gilmer, TX, US (yam it up with the family at the carnival, watch them crown the Yamboree Queen, enjoy the livestock show, and more; through Saturday)

Elephantine Festival -- Ancient Egyptian Calendar (several such celebrations of elephants were held around this time of year in Egypt)

Ether Day (first demonstrated use, see History)

Feast of 'Ilm (Knowledge) -- Baha'i

Frankfurt Book Fair -- Frankfurt, Germany (world's largest international book fair; through Sunday)

Hagfish Day -- a day to celebrate the uniqueness and necessity of even the ugliest of sea creatures, like the hagfish

National Feral Cat Day -- US (sponsored by Alley Cat Allies)   

National Fossil Day -- US (National Park Service information) 

National Liqueur Day

National Support Your Local Chamber of Commerce Day -- US

National Take Your Parents To Lunch Day -- US (sponsored by Kiwi Magazine, encouraging parents to go to school and have lunch with the children, learning what goes into a healthy lunch) 

Niihama Drum Festival -- Niihama, Japan (three day festival with two ton drum floats)

Sennin Musha Gyoretsu -- Tochigi, Japan (procession of 1,000 warriors; through tomorrow)

St. Hedwig's Day (Patron of brides, duchesses, difficult marriages, widows; Bavaria; Berlin, Germany; Gorlitz, Germany; Silesia; against the death of children, jealousy)

Teachers' Day -- Chile

World Food Day -- UN

Anniversaries Today:

The first birth control clinic in the US is opened, 1916

Brigham Young University is founded in Provo, Utah, 1875

Girton College, Cambridge is founded, becoming England's first residential college for women, 1869

Zion's Co-Operative Mercantile Institution, America's first department store, opens, 1868

The Collegiate School is established(forerunner of Yale University), 1701, Old Style Date

Birthdays Today:

John Mayer, 1977

Kellie Martin, 1975

Flea, 1962

Tim Robbins, 1958

Melissa Louise Belote, 1956

Barry Corbin, 1940

Bob Weir, 1947

Suzanne Somers, 1946

Gunter Grass, 1927

Angela Lansbury, 1925

William Orville Douglas, 1898

Eugene O'Neill, 1888

David Ben-Gurion, 1886

Oscar Wilde, 1854

Noah Webster, 1758

Debuting/Premiering Today:

"The Red Mill"(Musical), 1945

"The Man Who Came too Dinner"(Play), 1939

"Billy the Kid"(Ballet), 1938

Jane Eyre(Publication date), 1847

Today in History:

Jadwiga (yes, a she) is crowned King of Poland, 1384

Olivier van Noorts' ships reach the Philippines, 1600

George Washington takes Yorktown, 1781

Marie Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI, is guillotined, 1793

Sir William Rowan Hamilton comes up with the idea of quaternions, a non-commutative extension of complex numbers, 1843

Dentist William T. Morton demonstrates the effectiveness of ether, 1846

Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre" is published, 1847

John Brown leads a raid on Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, 1859

The Cardiff Giant, one of the most famous American hoaxes, is "discovered", 1869

John Harwood takes out a patent on a self-winding watch, 1923

The Disney Company is founded, 1923

Benjamin O. Davis Sr. is named the first African American general in the United States Army, 1940

Fidel Castro is sentenced in Havana to 15 years in prison, 1953

The People's Republic of China detonates its first nuclear weapon, 1964

In response to the October Crisis terrorist kidnapping, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau of Canada invokes the War Measures Act, 1970

Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, 1973

Pope John Paul II is elected after the October 1978 Papal conclave, 1978

Wanda Rutkiewicz is the first Pole and the first European woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest, 1978

Desmond Tutu is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, 1984

Reinhold Messner becomes the first person to summit all 14 Eight-thousanders, 1986

Bibliotheca Alexandrina in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, a commemoration of the Library of Alexandria that was lost in antiquity, is officially inaugurated, 2002

A 1,255lb. portion of the Chelyabinsk meteor is recovered by divers in Russia, 2013

New Zealand, Malaysia, Angola, Spain and Venezuela are elected to the United Nations Security Council, 2014

Ed Whitlock, 85, becomes the oldest person to ever finish a marathon in under 4 hours, completing the Toronto Waterfront Marathon in 3 hours 56 minutes, 2016