I'm So Excited . . .

Photo by Chris Duffy

I had so many peony blooms on my bushes Friday evening that I made THREE bouquets for the house and one for the neighbors . . . and still had plenty of blooms left on the bushes.  This is my biggest crop of peonies so far.  I just love them.  I like the white ones, the light pink ones and the dark pink ones. 

The Saga of Doris

MiddleAgeGuy's  blog reminded me of a funny thing that happened years ago when we lived in Seattle.  My husband was a professor then, and one of his students worked in a clothing store.  They were throwing away some manicans that were in bad shape, and for some strange reason this young man thought it would be a hoot to have a manican in the men's dorm, so he asked if he could have one. 

He took this armless, legless, hairless manican back to the dorm, and believe it or not, the guys gave her a name. . . Doris.  They dressed her up, gave her a ski cap to cover her bald head and took her to parties and even to a couple school functions.  Doris became very popular and was soon kidnapped by the girls' dorm.  She continued to make periodic appearances at school functions and was always dressed in appropriate attire for the occasion.  But eventually the school authorities decided that it was not a good idea for Doris to be coming to school functions and she was banned.  Persona non grata! 

So now she represented "forbidden fruit", which is the stuff college kids dream of.  It became a contest . . . the boys would steal her and the girls would steal her back.  She split her time this way between the two dorms for several months, always hidden away until her next "appearance". 

Finally, one night the guys conducted a raid on the girls dorm and reclaimed her and stuffed her in the trunk of the young man's car, and he headed back to the guys' dorm.  He opened the trunk, but since the dorm parents were considered part of "the authorities", he decided he'd better run into the dorm first to make sure the coast was clear.  Then while in the process of getting Doris out, a police car drove up.  Seems an elderly woman across the street with nothing better to do than look out the window at 11 at night had called the police about something terrible going on at the college campus.   She was sure there was a body in the trunk of a car parked in front of the dorm. 

Well, evidently our poor young man was not a good negotiator, or just couldn't think fast enough on his feet, because he spent the next two hours at the police station trying to convince them it was all innocent fun.  It was obvious that the manican wasn't a real dead body, but it still took some time before he was free to go.  I believe they gave him some stern advice about how it might not be such a good idea to be carrying around manican body parts in the trunk of his car.

And as Paul Harvey would say . . . "Here's the rest of the story". 

Doris' had made her rounds on campus about six months before my husband and I left Seattle for Texas.  My husband was a wonderful teacher and he was much loved by his students.  They also knew that he thought the whole Doris thing had been rather funny and that all the fuss the school had made about her appearances only fueled the flames for the kids.  So it was that on the day we were to leave Seattle for good, several of his students came by to wish us well and to say their final farewells.  They also presented us with a gift-wrapped box. 

As my husband opened the box and pulled back the tissue paper he began to chuckle. . . then he began to belly laugh.  He took the gift out of the box and we all had a good laugh. 

Photo by Chris Duffy  

There was our very own little Doris. . . they named her Doretta.  They had found a doll and relieved it of both arms and pulled out all of it's hair and presented her to us.  We laughed all the way to Texas on that one.