Remember These? (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.    

Much thanks to Lissa, who provided the prompts last month.  

This month, the prompts are being provided by River.  

This week's words/prompts are: 

1. poised 

2. reef 

3. crashing 

4. bridge 

5. wrecked 

6. turquoise 

7. glitter

Charlotte/Mother Owl's color of the month is Olive Yellow.

It had been a long two weeks.

Arriving in the college dorm that would be my home at least for a semester, I'd explored the building and found the laundry room, but not used it yet.  Those weeks were spent just getting accustomed to the classes and the pace, and I'd left laundry until, like a coral REEF that builds up little by little until it's an atoll, I had what my mom would have called a Mount Washmore POISED to come CRASHING down.

Not wanting to be caught with no clean underwear and the desperate need wash this minute or go buy more to prevent disaster, I bit the bullet and dragged everything down and started loading it into washers.

Another student came in a few minutes later, and we nodded at each other, then he got to work.  He dumped everything on the floor and began to divide and sort everything into three separate piles.

Now, I know the importance of not washing some things together.  I'll never forget the mess it made when my little sister's shirt with TURQUOISE and Olive Yellow GLITTER got into a load of bathroom towels and we all found the stuff on towels in the bathroom, and on us after drying off, for weeks.  Or the time "nobody" left a permanent marker in a pocket and it WRECKED a whole load of clothes.

I thought this guy was being a bit too meticulous, but who am I to judge?  I'd just put detergent in the first of my two machines and turned it on when I saw him stand back and look at the three piles and nod with a smile of satisfaction.

Then he picked up all three and stuffed them in one machine!

I lost it and laughed out loud, I couldn't help it, and he looked up and with an impish grin said, "I've always promised my mom I'd sort, but I never said I'd wash them that way!"

We both laughed and I said, "Your secret is safe with me!"

When we'd stopped laughing, he introduced himself and asked if this was my first semester.  I told him it was, and he asked, "Do you play Rook, by any chance?"

"Yes," I told him.  "My parents taught all of us, we played a lot.  They tried to teach me BRIDGE, too, but it was boring and I never learned."

"Come join us in the commons room on weekends, we get a Rook-a-Rama going, there are several of us, 3 or 4 tables.  We can always use more players."

I'll always be glad I did laundry that day.

(Loosely based on two true stories from college days.)

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Today is:

Alamo Day -- Texas, US

Celebrate Your Name Week -- Wednesday:  Learn What Your Name Means Day, go look it up, it's probably very interesting

Feast of Excited Insects -- China; Korea (sometimes called Chinese Groundhog Day, the day insects are supposed to awaken for spring; date approximate)

Foundation Day -- Norfolk Island, Commonwealth of Australia

Headache Relief Day -- aspirin was patented by the Bayer company today in 1899

Independence Day -- Ghana(1957)

Kirishima Jingu Otaue-sai -- Kirishima Jingu Shrine, Kirishima, Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan (rice planting festival)

Mi-Careme -- Guadeloupe; Saint Barthelemy; Saint Martin (Mid-Lent)

National Frozen Food Day

National White Chocolate Cheesecake Day

Oreo Cookie Day -- no history found on why this day, but if you like Oreos, do you need a reason?

Stoneware Pottery Appreciation Day

St. Colette's Day (Patron of Corbie, France; against the death of parents)

St. Rose of Viterbo's Day (Patron of exiles, people rejected by religious orders, tertiaries; Viterbo, Italy)

World Maths Day -- International   

Birthdays Today:

Ryan Nyquist, 1979

Shaquille O'Neal, 1972

Amy Pietz, 1969

Connie Britton, 1968

D.L. Hughley, 1963

Tom Arnold, 1959

David Gilmour, 1946

Rob Reiner, 1945

Kiri Te Kanawa, 1944

Dave Gilmour, 1944

Ben Murphy, 1942

Willie Stargell, 1941

Valentina Tereshkova-Nikolaeva, 1937

Lorin Maazel, 1930

Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, 1928

Alan Greenspan, 1926

Ed McMahon, 1923

Will Eisner, 1917

Lou Costello, 1906

Bob Wills, 1905

Ring Lardner, 1885

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1806

Anna Claypoole Peale, 1791

Cyrano de Bergerac, 1619

Michelangelo Bounarroti, 1475

Debuting/Premiering Today:

"Lend me a Tenor"(Play), 1986

"Deep Blue Sea"(Play), 1952

"Both Your Houses"(Play; Pulitzer Prize for Drama), 1933

"La Traviata"(Opera), 1853

"La Sonnambula"(Opera), 1831

Today in History:

Ferdinand Magellan arrives at Guam, 1521

The First Fleet arrives at Norfolk Island (an external territory of Australia) in order to found a convict settlement, 1788

York, Upper Canada is incorporated as Toronto, 1834

After a thirteen day siege by an army of 3,000 Mexican troops, the 187 Texas volunteers defending the Alamo are defeated and the fort is captured, 1836

Giuseppe Verdi's opera La Traviata receives its premiere performance in Venice, 1853

Dmitri Mendeleev presents the first periodic table to the Russian Chemical Society, 1869

Bayer registers "aspirin" as a trademark, 1899

The trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg begins, 1951

United Kingdom colonies Gold Coast and British Togoland become the independent Republic of Ghana, 1957

After 19 years of presenting the CBS Evening News, Walter Cronkite signs off for the last time, 1981

Michelangelo computer virus begins to affect computers, 1992

A referendum in Moldova results in the electorate voting against possible reunification with Romania, 1994

Picasso's painting Tête de Femme is stolen from a London gallery, and is recovered a week later, 1997

Microsoft is fined €561 million for not providing E.U. residents with an alternative web browser to Internet Explorer, 2013

The Crimean parliament votes unanimously to make the Crimea part of Russia, 2014

NASA's Dawn space probe enters orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres, 2015

The world's oldest message in a bottle is found in Western Australia, thrown from the German ship Paula 132 years ago (12 June 1886), 2018

On his first visit to Iraq, Pope Francis meets with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in the Shiite cleric's home in Najaf, 2021