Don't Cry For Me, Argentina

Just want to go on record, stating that I know my condition--an old hag puttering about a cluttered house, trying to cope with the mess and the animals and still get SOMETHING DONE! It's all there in my head, but my back, legs and hands lose a little bit of headway every day.

Still, something remains, at least in my head. I accomplished something, though we don't yet know what.

I wanted to act. They didn't even laugh. But I did make a big splash as Camilla Ann Dusenberry in "Quit Your Kidding," our senior class play at Leeds High School.

I wasn't born with the ability to dance, but took several years of instruction at Arthur Murray's and in college PE classes. It did nothing for my dancing ability but probably was good for my health.

I wanted to sing, and went around trying to imitate Eddy Arnold and Marian Anderson. In Montgomery they did let me sing in the choir. Once or twice.

I was never pretty like others in the family, but a few ambitious males called me beautiful. The true significance of that emerges these days when, on television shows, even fat women who dress like Green Berets are called beautiful.

But "that's all shove be'ind me, long ago and far away." I'm not still young inside. I'm ooooold, all over, inside and out. And wouldn't have it any other way. Youth didn't seem to do much for me except to get me here. So welcome, octogenarianism, if I make it a couple more years.

". . . And this grey spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought." -- Tennyson, "Ulysses"