Questions? I've got a whole lifetime full of questions. That is not to say that most of my questions have not been answered because most of them have been. But I'm speaking of those questions that haven’t been answered…at least so far.

For example, has anyone ever actually seen a rutabaga, let alone eaten one? I'll wager not many...if any! Where do bobby pins and hairpins go? And socks? Not all socks, just one from each pair. Thumbtacks don't count. Someone always finds them...in their bare foot. That's an immutable law of nature, you know. It is so commonplace in our lives we don't even think about the uncanny disappearance habits of straight pins, safety pins, and needles. At least most people don’t.

Well, maybe we spend a minute thinking about these things when we need one or another of them. For some reason or other, or perhaps for no reason at all, I seem to need needles quite often, and therefore, I think about them, probably more than most people. Like I am one of the very few people I know who once had a tame sewing needle. I called it my "tame" needle because it hung around the house for over two years before moving on.

I used to talk to it from time to time- -'Hey old buddy, you're lookin' sharp today!' or 'Come on, let's get right to the point!' No, not very witty conversation, but that needle didn't have much of a sense of humor, either. Well, maybe it did in a perverted sort of way. One time, for no apparent reason, it sewed my finger to the dress I was hemming. As I pulled it out of my finger, the needle, not the dress, I swear I heard a high-pitched squeak. If it wasn't laughing, I don't know what it was doing. Certainly, it wasn't a cry of pain because it was quite well lubricated with my blood.

I speak of that needle as an "it", because I never knew if it was a he needle or a she needle. I suspect it was a she, because from time to time I stuck another needle in the pincushion beside it, and when I went back, the other needle was always gone. Don't female praying mantises and black widow spiders make way with more than their share of their own species when they breed? But I never did find out where it laid its little needle eggs...in some hidden away needle nest, I suppose. But then I think it must have eaten its babies, too, because I never found any baby needles at all.

And speaking of species, let's talk about our own. No one has ever been able to tell me who "they" are, you know the ones who are always saying something that everyone else repeats? When someone says "They say," to me, I always ask "Who says?", and all I've ever gotten in reply were vague answers like "Oh, you know," or "Everyone says that," or "I heard it on TV". Oh sure! When I was little, I was always told to "Stop being difficult" when I asked questions like that.

Anyway, 'they say' that writers should write about things they know best, things they are familiar with. Really? How about when what you know best is the best antacid, the best headache remedy, the best route across town, the best mouth wash, and...need I go on? See, just another one of those “they say” things. How could fiction ever be about what someone “knows best”? Unless they live very strange lives that is.

Speaking of living strange lives, I might as well talk about dentures and communication problems. Are you wondering if I have inadvertently rounded some esoteric mental bend? No, it's just that dentures and communication problems are firmly linked together...in my mind any way. Let me explain.

Have you ever had occasion to notice how difficult it is to carry on a sensible conversation with anyone at least two generations ahead of you or behind you? If it's just one generation or so, you can usually manage it, but any greater age gap causes 'what can I talk about and how can I talk about it?' problems. Something happens that causes huge gaps in inter-generational comprehension abilities. Perhaps it's the change in viewpoints caused by the passage of years? Or perhaps a matter of perspective? Couldn't be simple maturity levels, could it?

Here is an anecdotal memory from my Grandmother, the one that so firmly welded dentures and communication problems in my mind:

One spring day, the town in which Grandma was living- -which 'they' laughingly referred to as the "armpit of the world"- -was struck by a very severe windstorm. Tall trees were falling and electric wires were snapping through various neighborhoods, twisting and spitting like vicious snakes. After two huge trees and a power line fell on my Grandma’s property, she decided to leave while she could still get out of the driveway. She grabbed her purse, jumped in the car, and made the hair-raising trip to my Aunt’s house because there were no big trees in her area, and that sounded like the sensible thing to do. When she arrived, she immediately became the center of attention of three grandchildren (my cousins). Because she was wind-blown, disheveled, and scared to death? No, because she had forgotten her lower dentures.

"Hey! Lookit Grandma! Her bottom teeth are gone!" "Wow! She don't hardly got any chin at all!" "Did you swallow them?" "Did you yell 'n they fell out 'n you lost 'em?" There was no end to the disrespectful but innocent questions, and the situation was not improved by my Aunt’s barely-repressed giggles. Here was Grandma, fleeing a terrible natural disaster, seeking safe haven, trying to tell about the havoc wreaked by the windstorm, and all they could talk about was her lower dentures...or lack of them.

As if that wasn't bad enough, years later, when other people mentioned the day of the big windstorm, they were still talking about her lower dentures. Certainly, I heard the story…often. "Remember when Grandma forgot her teeth?" "Yeah, that was really funny!" "We laughed all day long." Then, someone would ask, "Wasn't that the day of the big windstorm?" and be answered by a casual "No, that was another day."

Thinking back, I call this a serious communication problem, don't you? And why were her lower dentures out in the first place instead of resting securely where they belonged? Because, she explained, she had a little sore place. Caused by a seed? No, even though all those TV commercials insist those little sores are caused by a little seed sneaking in where it doesn't belong. No, Grandma is very careful about eating things with seeds in them, and not just since she got dentures, either. She’s been that way as long as I can remember, as a matter of fact, and according to her, she’s been that way since she was a little girl herself.

A bit strange, you think? Well, you can thank HER Grandma and generational communication problems for that...you know, the same ones we've been talking about?

She was at the age when the world was new and strange and wonderful when she first saw a pregnant woman well into her "waddle, grunt, and grumble" days. When she asked her Grandma what was wrong with the lady's stomach, she was answered: "Oh, she just swallowed a watermelon seed and it sprouted."

Being a thoughtful child, she absorbed that information, and began to develop an aversion to eating certain fruits and vegetables. Certainly, she didn't want to chance something like that happening to her! When she saw the lady a few weeks later, her stomach was flat, and she was carrying a baby. The connection was difficult to miss, and Grandma made all the logical conclusions: If a swallowed watermelon seed could sprout inside and result in a sort of watermelon-colored baby, what would happen to a poor child like her who accidentally swallowed a tomato seed, or a cherry pit, or even several grape seeds?

To this day, Grandma does eat watermelon, cantaloupe, tomatoes, and other seeded edibles. She will only eat seedless grapes, and she approaches unseeded olives carefully. Sometimes she has been known to eye cucumber slices nervously, and scrape out the center before eating them, but she does try to be unobtrusive about it.

And she never eats or drinks anything blue, and we shouldn’t either is what she told us. Why? Because her Grandma told her not to. She never did find out why.

Oh, one last unanswered question: If a colon is punctuation, and a colon is my large intestine, do I have a semi-colon tucked away somewhere inside?