The guest of honor had to be coaxed into opening his birthday presents and blowing out candles. He was having too much fun playing on the cargo nets at Planet Kid. The guest of honor was my great grandson, who was turning five. I was not ready to be a great grandfather when he was born any more than my daughter was ready to be a grandmother in her mid-30s. We were too young – no canes, no hearing aids, no long white beard. But there he was, ready or not, and life hasn’t been the same since. Nothing like a new kid to shake things up. As he opened his birthday gifts, it struck me how different life is…
Tim Woodward is a longtime Idaho columnist. His columns appear one Sunday a month, often more frequently, in The Idaho Press and are posted on woodwardblog.com the following Mondays.
Posts by Tim Woodward
The poltergeist that haunts my house has a new name now: Casper, after the protagonist of the “Casper the Friendly Ghost” cartoon series. A recent column about the poltergeist that inhabits the Woodward residence cited instances in which keys, a cell phone, a robe and other common items vanished for months, even years, only to reappear in plain sight. It asked, only half jokingly, if readers could recommend a good exorcist and encouraged them to share their own poltergeist stories. I didn’t really expect much in the way of responses. How many people, after all, even believe in ghosts these day? And how many would actually have stories about them, let alone be willing to share them? Well, let me tell you…
Anselme Sadiki knows what it is to be a refugee escaping a life of horror in his native country with little hope of being welcomed in a new one. His story is an object lesson for our times. For the last three years, Sadiki has been the executive director of the Idaho Children’s Home Society. He has a good life in a city and country he loves. What it took for him to get get here, however, is a story that most of us with comfortable lives have trouble just imagining. A native of the Democratic Republic of Congo, then Zaire, he was a university student when the country’s dictator launched a campaign of terror against intellectuals. His thugs…
(Note to subscribers. Sorry to be posting this a couple of days late. As you’ll discover from reading it, I tend to be a bit absent-minded. — Tim) Wanted: exorcist. This is not a joke. My house is haunted. Not haunted in the sense of a horror movie – no apparitions, spectral voices or things that go bump in the night. My house is haunted by a harmless (well, relatively harmless) poltergeist. It’s been happening for years. One exasperating incident after another. Things simply disappear. Some vanish for good; others reappear in plain sight after weeks or months of looking for them. The latest casualty was a Costco Cash Card. I laid it on a dresser, left the…
Quick, what’s the longest it’s ever taken you to name something? A dog or a cat, maybe? My wife and I took weeks to name one of our dogs. A car? A child? Most states require babies to be named before they leave the hospital. Some states allow a bit longer, but the idea is pretty much the same everywhere. Give the kid a name. Now. What’s the longest it’s ever taken a kid to be named? Good question. But it’s a pretty good bet that Eagle resident Tamara Scribner would be in the running. She wasn’t legally named till she was 16. And she’s not a dog or a car. How did this happen?…
This week, for the first time in most of its residents’ lives, Boise will not have a Sears store. When its doors closed last week, the store in Boise Town Square joined one of 142 closing nationally – casualties of Sears bankruptcy. A once unthinkable demise for a company that made history as the largest and most innovative retailer in the world. The rise and fall of Sears began in 1888, with the Sears Catalog. There was a time when virtually every home in America had a copy of the famous “wish book.” Customers used it to order everything from socks and sweaters to sewing machines and saddles. Sears and Roebuck opened its first retail store in Chicago in 1925. In…
The email containing the December schedule for the homeless shelter where my wife and I volunteer was as welcome as a petrified fruitcake. “They want me to work Christmas morning?” We’ve been volunteering there for years, but this was the first time either of us had been asked to come in on a major holiday. Christmas morning? The morning when the grandkids open their gifts? The morning when carols are playing on the stereo and the house is filled with the aromas of sizzling bacon, holiday muffins, Irish coffee … Not a chance. I emailed the volunteer coordinator back to say I couldn’t make it. Why would they even have the shelter open on Christmas morning? Who would…
Most young people today have little or no idea what the expression “basic training” means. If they’ve heard of it at all, they could be forgiven for thinking it was a course on the Internet for Dummies. Firsthand experience with basic training, also known as boot camp, has become far less common since Congress ended the draft in 1971. The draft, for young people unfamiliar with it, was conscription into the armed forces. Young men received “greetings from the president of the United States” ordering them to report for military service, the first component of which was boot camp. Boot camp involved weeks of being shouted at and humiliated, coupled with grueling physical exercise and instruction on how to march, shoot and…
Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite holidays, which is odd when you consider that it’s often been a disaster at my house. Who doesn’t love Thanksgiving? The seductive aroma of turkey roasting, the annual gathering of friends and relatives from near and far, the uniquely American-ness of it all? True, Thanksgiving is celebrated in other countries, but nowhere is it enjoyed more universally, or ravenously, than here in the U.S. It’s a documented fact that Americans eat more food on Thanksgiving than any other day of the year, as anyone who has downed an after-dinner Alka Seltzer and groaned through a quarter or two of football can attest. Last year, after cooking and hosting Thanksgiving dinner forever, my…
TROY, Alabama – The scene: a motel on the outskirts of Troy, Ala. In the parking lot, a black Dodge Charger that practically screams Boise State University football. Stretching the width of the front windshield are the words “Boise State,” across the top in blue and orange letters several inches high. Painted on the rear windshield: “#Game Day Bound! #Bleed Blue.” Blue and orange dice hang from the rearview mirror. Two BSU flags dangle from the back windows. The rest of the car is all but wallpapered with Bronco logos. Its license plates are in BSU frames. It was the opening day of what was expected to be the Broncos’ dream season, before Oklahoma State and San Diego State downsized the…