Good Morning.
My younger son used to put chicken bones in his desk drawer. This was because we had a cat who got into the kitchen waste basket no matter what we did to secure the lid, and there she found items that she carried upstairs during the night and gnawed on until my son removed the noisy material and put it in his desk.
Spook was a trollop of unprecedented stamina. In one year she had three litters of kittens, all of which we managed to place in good homes. One bunch was born in my son’s bed in the middle of the night, the second emerged during a tornado alert while we sat around in the basement, and the last group was more properly birthed in a laundry basket. Finally I got her to the vet before she slipped out the door again, and she was not a bit pleased about it.
The cat lived for another fourteen years after she came to live with us, and when she went into kidney failure, my son was in college and on the track team. I obtained his permission to do the inevitable and the next morning, she went to be with Jesus despite what anyone may say to the contrary. We wrapped her in an athletic shirt and placed her with track medals and love letters in a plastic tool box I purchased at K Mart. Later that day my daughter was crying in a high school religion class when the boy behind her started meowing. One of her friends, a young woman of uncommon grace and beauty, told this kid what he could do with his dreadful self, and fortunately the teacher agreed with the directive when advised of the circumstances.
I had always thought the key word in the chastisement was of German derivation, but my son’s older brother says it has an American heritage dating to the time of the pilgrims who threw people in the stocks for a variety of transgressions and posted a sign above the miscreant’s head. For messing around with a fair maiden outside of the sanctity of marriage, the sign read For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge. I find this etymology absolutely fascinating but am not impressed that the acronym often diminishes its historical significance.
Best regards,
Elisabeth
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