Not Saving That Sock (Wordless Wednesday) and Words for Wednesday

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Linking up with Wordless Wednesday, BeThere2Day, 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 to encourage 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:

• glass
• equally
• paying
• join
• forage 
  

And/or

• palace
• silent
• bullet
• stars
• extraordinary 

Charlotte (MotherOwl)has selected clay brown as the colour of the month.

The two men looked at each other and burst out laughing.

This happened every time they met at the yearly church conferences, their wives had come to expect it and even their older children knew the story and were EQUALLY ready to laugh along.

Newcomers and the younger kids hadn't heard it, but their laughter was contagious and most couldn't help but JOIN in.

Of course, when the laughter died down, someone who hadn't been there all those years ago asked what the joke was, and they sat down to recount the tale.

Steve always started with, "When we'd come to the conferences as kids, the girls would go in the side chapel to play when it was empty, they called it their GLASS PALACE."

Jerry would continue, "The two of us decided we wanted a place, too, away from the icky girls.  The dorms were no good, there were always people trying to rest or busy doing stuff, and one day we decided to FORAGE for a place by climbing the tallest tree we could get up into to see if we could spot a good place to go."

Steve picked up, "Once we got up there, we got the bright idea to stay SILENT and see how long we could hide from everyone.  Of course, it wasn't long before our parents were asking around about who'd seen us.  Everyone figured we were with somebody else, but finally the whole group at the conference was gathered, some of them right under the tree we were in."

"We were wearing kind of brownish clothes, Clay Brown and other dark colors, it mixes well with the leaves turning brown (it was a fall conference), and next thing we knew the women were crying and praying and rounding up all the other kids, the men were grouping into search parties and getting ready to divide the property into sections to search, we'd never seen such an EXTRAORDINARY performance, and just for the two of us," Jerry still sounded a bit proud of the accomplishment.

"We were trying to stay quiet," Steve would add, "but the STARS in their courses, as they say, were conspiring against us, and finally we both burst out laughing."

"He and I were laughing so hard, at first we didn't notice everyone was staring up at us with stern expressions and no one was laughing along with us," Jerry would shake his head.

"Once we saw the way everyone was looking at us," Steve noted, "we knew we'd be PAYING for our fun in a trip to the woodshed with our obviously angry fathers.  We tried to stay up there as long as we could, but when they threatened to come up after us, we bit the BULLET and came down."

'Punishment was swift," said Jerry.

"And deserved," Steve would remark thoughtfully.

"But we still think it's the funniest thing ever happened at a conference," the twinkle in Jerry's eye was quite noticeable.

(Based on a true story.  A church out in the country has dorms, kitchen and dining hall, and plenty of acreage for tents and holds conferences on weekends twice a year with people from other churches coming to hear speakers on specific topics.  The two boys who caused the mayhem are still friends and meet up there when they can make it to the conferences.)

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Today is:

Apple Wassailing Day -- Carhampton, England (ancient tradition to bless the trees, waking the tree spirits and scaring away bad spirits)

Blessing of the Animals -- Hispanic Christian (in association with St. Anthony's Day)

Ditch Your New Years Resolutions Day -- no info on origin, but probably someone who gave up; will you?

Felicitas -- Ancient Roman Calendar (honoring the goddess of good luck)

Festival of Janus -- Ancient Roman Calendar (main festival for the god of beginnings, endings, and doorways)

Hot Heads Chili Day -- no clue what this one means, but i guess we can have chili for dinner

Kid Inventors' Day -- celebrating how inventive kids are; on the birth anniversary of Ben Franklin, who invented swim fins at age 12

Liberation Day -- Poland (liberation from the Nazis in 1945)

Make Your All-Time Top Ten Favorite TV Characters List -- because nothing says you can't make your own top ten lists

National Hot Buttered Rum Day

Patras Carnival -- Patras, Greece (the town crier announces the opening ceremony, with festivities through Clean Monday)

Patrice Lumumba -- Democratic Republic of the Congo (Heroes' Day)

Popeye Day -- The Sailor Man debut in the comics this date in 1929

Professional Boxer's Day -- Ali's birth anniversary

St. Anthony the Great's Day (a/k/a Anthony of Egypt, Anthony the Abbot, Patriarch of the Abbots; Patron of amputees, animals/domestic animals, basket weavers, brush makers, butchers, cemetery workers/grave diggers, epileptics, hermits, monks, relief from pestilence, swine/hogs, swineherds; Hospitaliers; Burgio, Sicily, Italy; Canas, Brazil; Castrofilippo, Agrigento, Italy; Fivizzano, Italy; Fontainemore, Italy; Mook, Netherlands; Sant'Angelo Lodigiano, Italy; against eczema, epilepsy, ergotism, erysipelas, pestilence, Saint Anthony's Fire, skin diseases and rashes) related observance

     Blessing of the Animals at the Cathedral -- Church of San Antonio, Mexico City, Mexico (where this saint is San Antonio Abad)

Zirgu Diena -- Ancient Latvian Calendar (Day of the Horses)

Anniversaries Today:

George Burns marries Gracie Allen, 1926

Octavian marries Livia Drusilla, BC38

Birthdays Today:

Kid Rock, 1971

Naveen Andrews, 1969

Michelle Obama, 1964

Jim Carrey, 1962

Susanna Hoffs, 1959

Anthony Glise, 1956

Andy Kaufman, 1949

Muhammad Ali, 1942

Maury Povich, 1939

Shari Lewis, 1934

James Earl Jones, 1931

Don Zimmer, 1931

Vidal Sassoon, 1928

Eartha Kitt, 1927

Betty White, 1922

Al Capone, 1899

Nevil Shute, 1899

Robert Maynard Hutchins, 1899

Mack Sennett, 1884

David Lloyd George, 1863

Anton Chekhov, 1860

Anne Bronte, 1820

Benjamin Franklin, 1706

Debuting/Premiering Today:

"Frontline"(TV), 1983

"The Goldbergs"(TV), 1949

"Popeye the Sailor Man"(Comic character created by Elzie Segar, in the Thimble Theatre comic strip), 1929

"The Cherry Orchard"(Chekhov Play), 1904

"The Rivals"(Sheridan Play), 1775

Today in History:

Pope Gregory XI moves the Papacy back to Rome from Avignon, 1377

Cesare Borgia returns in triumph to Rome from Romagna, 1501

Giovanni da Verrazzano begins his voyage to find a passage to China, 1524

The Edict of St Germain recognizes Huguenots in France, 1562

England's Long Parliament passes the Vote of No Addresses, breaking off negotiations with King Charles I and thereby setting the scene for the second phase of the English Civil War, 1648

An avalanche destroys every building in Leukerbad, Switzerland, kills 53, 1718

Capt James Cook becomes the first to cross Antarctic Circle (66° 33' S), 1773

The first cable car patented, by Andrew S Hallidie (begins service in 1873), 1871

Queen Liliuokalani is deposed, the Kingdom of Hawaii becomes a republic, 1893

Sir Robert Falcon Scott reaches the South Pole, one month after Roald Amundsen, 1912

The first fully automatic photographic film developing machine patented, 1928

Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, credited with saving tens of thousands of Jews from the Nazis, is arrested by secret police in Hungary, 1945

The United Nations Security Council holds its first meeting, 1946

The Goldbergs, the first sitcom on American television, first airs, 1949

The Great Brinks Robbery - 11 thieves steal more than $2 million from an armored car Company's offices in Boston, Massachusetts, 1950

The world's first nuclear-powered submarine, the Nautilus, makes its maiden voyage, 1955

A B-52 bomber collides with a KC-135 Stratotanker over Spain, dropping three 70-kiloton nuclear bombs near the town of Palomares and another one into the sea in the Palomares incident, 1966

Harald V becomes King of Norway on the death of his father, Olav V, 1991

The Czech Republic applies for membership of the European Union, 1996

Mount Nyiragongo erupts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, displacing an estimated 400,000 people, 2002

Rioting begins between Muslim and Christian groups in Jos, Nigeria, which resulting in at least 200 deaths, 2010

Japan unveils plans to build the world’s largest wind farm near the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, 2013

Academics report that a pelvis bone discovered in 1999 may belong to King Alfred the Great or his son, Edward the Elder, 2014