MORE HELGA DIARIES

Dear Helga,


I hate this school! They're mean to me. I want to go home.

Bobby



Helga:

Bobby, please give me more information. I will not tolerate teachers or students being mean to other students.



Bobby's Reply:



Dear Helga,

I am Bobby who wrote to you. I am in kindergarten.

Can't you help me?



Helga:

Bobby, you need to stay off the computer! If I find where you are, your principal is going to be really mean. And so am I!

______________________________________________________________



Dear Helga,

I have the worst problem ever! My brother is being really bad. He hits me, bites other people and my mom won't do anything to him. He won't quit.

I'm afraid he is going to do something really bad.

Can't you help me?

Anonymous in Washington, DC



Helga:

Dear Anonymous, I would suggest that you let a neighbor know or a relative.

Let me know if that helps. And don't forget to write back.



Reply from Anonymous In Washington, DC



Dear Helga,

I am Anonymous in Washington, DC. I wrote to you about my brother. The neighbors won't do anything and neither will anyone in my family.

What should I do? Call the police?



Helga:

Anonymous in Washington, DC: Could you send me a private message so I can find out who your brother is? I might be able to suggest another way you can get help.





Reply from Anonymous in Washington, DC:



Dear Helga:

I am Anonymous in Washington, DC. My brother's last name is Edwards.

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Dear Helga,

Nothing is getting done in my house. The carpet isn't swept, the dishes aren't done and there are no clean clothes to wear! I am at my wits end. What can I do? All I do is watch news day and night on tv.

Carl in Cincinnati



Helga:

Dear Carl: Does this need a reply?

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Dear Helga,

My brother is wearing all of my clothes when I am not home! Every time I come home, I find my stuff thrown all over my bedroom. And when I try to find something I really want to wear, it's not there. What should I do to my brother?

Suzi

Helga:

Suzi something is wrong with your brother. Surely you know that by now!

Buy a padlock, put it on your door and wear the key to it around your neck.

______________________________________________________________



Dear Helga,

Things are just so bad. My food supply is running out and I hardly have any water to drink. No one should have to live like this. What can I do?

T. in Maryland



Helga:

Dear T.in Maryland: You don't tell me how old you are or if you are a boy, girl, man or woman. Yes, you situation is very bad. But I need more information in order to help you. Please write back and tell me more. I'll be waiting!



Reply from T. in Maryland:

Dear Helga,

I'm the one who wrote to you that I hardly have any food to eat or water to drink. What am I supposed to do? Get in the car and drive to the store?

I can't do that. Cats aren't allowed to drive and besides I don't have any money.



Helga:

Dear T.in Maryland: You are the first cat who has written to me. I'm so proud that you know how to use a computer! Your owners must be really bad is all I can say.

You need to go to youtube and post a video of this horrible plight. And things will be so much better for you.

______________________________________________________________



Dear Helga,

My neighbors are just awful. They scream and fight and throw stuff all over the place. It's really bad. I can't move so what am I supposed to do?

Tom in prison



Helga:

Dear Tom: Here is what you do. Stay in your cell and leave me alone.

__________________________________________________________



Dear Helga,

Things are not going well at all. When I'm in my car, I have to go 90 mph just to get home. I can't take this much longer. And when I get home, I have to close all of the blinds and leave everything off. No one should have to do this.

The Rock in Detroit



Helga:

Dear The Rock in Detroit: When is the last time you checked with your parole officer?

_________________________________________________________________



Dear Helga,

Oh oh I hate my life! I am ready to jump off the bridge. People are abusing me by calling me names and telling me I am going to crack up and be smashed to pieces! Can't you help me, please?

H.D.



Helga:

Your name wouldn't happen to be Humpty Dumpty would it? I'll just bet it is.

And I have news for you: What you wrote is going to happen and all the king's horses and all the king's men won't be able to put you back again. So there!

_________________________________________________________



Dear Helga,

I was afraid to write to you but here I am! I am eating lunch and dinner out every day and gaining weight and can't understand it.

Crissy in Georgia



Helga: Crissy: Look up idiot in the dictionary.

THE HELGA DIARIES PART ONE

Bringing you newly updated questions and answers daily from extremely quirky and zany real people.




Dear Helga,

I am having a hard tim posting comments on facebook.

And when I do, no one will look at thim.

Any advis? Bringing you newly updated questions and answers daily from extremely quirky and zany real people.



Dear Helga,

I am having a hard tim posting comments on facebook.

And when I do, no one will look at thim.

Any advis?

Lisa In Alaska



Helga:

Dear Lisa, apparently your problem is that you need to learn to spell.

Why don't you stay offline and take up reading your dictionary for a while?

That might be the best answer for now.

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Dear Helga,

My boyfriend looks at other women and it is really making me upset!

What should I do?

Shirley in Seattle



Helga:

Shirley, when is your boyfriend looking at other women?

Is it when he is with you?

Is it when he is looking at his phone?

Or is it when he is at his computer?

You need to be explicit in telling me but as for now, if I were you, I'd be looking at other men.

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Dear Helga,

My parents want me to move out of the house! I am way upset. I don't want to leave but they are making me. What can I do?

Missy



Helga:

First of all, Missy, I need to know more information.

Could you write back and tell me how old you are and if you have a job?



Reply back from Missy.

Dear Helga,

I had written to you about my parents making me move out of our house.

And I told you I was upset. I am 48 years old and work at a store.

Missy



Helga:

Dear Missy. Move out now! For heavens sake, you are not 16 years old.

Get out and get a life. Your parents will love you for it. Oh and by the way, you are too old to be living with your parents. Get a grip!



Dear Helga,

I have this problem which I really don't want to write about but I have to.

I wrote a book and no one will read it! I spent forever writing it and am so hurt!

Cindy



Helga:

Dear Cindy: What is the name of your book? Maybe I have read it. If so, I could pass on some thoughts to you as to why no one will read it. Please write back and let me know the title of your book.



Reply from Cindy.



Dear Helga,

I had written to you about my book and the fact that no one will read it.

You asked for the title and here it is: "I Hate You!"

Cindy



Helga:

Dear Cindy [again,]

No wonder no one will read your book! What a horrible title.

Disgusting!

Find something else to do as fast as you can.



Lisa In Alaska



Helga:

Dear Lisa, apparently your problem is that you need to learn to spell.

Why don't you stay offline and take up reading your dictionary for a while?

That might be the best answer for now.

Sherry Hill

BEEN THERE, WORN THAT--HAT!

“Been There, Worn That—Hat!”



While watching an old movie the other day, something jogged my mind about the many hats I’ve worn up to this point in my lifetime. A lot of them were forced upon me to wear, whereas others were worn out of pride or pure fashion.

As a baby, I had the typical baby hats put on me: I don’t remember them but have seen the pictures. As a young dancing student at the age of three, I wore a “blue bird hat” and more strange hats connected to dancing for a long while. But around the age of five and onward, I definitely remember having to wear a beret and at Easter, the proverbial “girl” hat that every girl despised.



In grade school, I wore a Girl Scout hat with pride: back then, every girl in scouts got to wear the entire uniform, hat and all once a month to school. When I was in the sixth grade, I was a patrol and when we went to Washington, D.C. for the patrol parade, all girls and boys wore white sailor hats. I thought I was something marching down Pennsylvania Avenue---even if I was scared to death with thousands of kids all around me.

Back home that year, I remember getting my own “Davy Crockett” coonskin hat: I didn’t wear it to school but after school when all the kids in my St. Albans neighborhood wore them. Cool? Of course!



Junior high seems to have been hatless for me except for the dreaded Easter hat which was forced upon me yearly.



But ah, in high school, I definitely remember getting to choose my own hat: It was one of those feather creations that was like a big headband. The only difference was that the feathers curved right into your eyes. Didn’t matter if I could see well or not, I knew it was pure fashion and my girlfriends and I would wear them downtown knowing full-well that we caught attention. On my part, it was probably the stumbling around but no matter, I felt so fashionable.



Easters became much more pleasurable, as I got to choose my own hat and trust me, they were never small or pitiful: They were big and usually had a ton of flowers on them. It was the “thing” to wear at that time.



Forward to my first year at Marshall and I had to wear a hat which I despised probably more than the foisted-upon child Easter hat: It was a green beanie. The purpose of having freshmen, male or female, wear one was to stick out in the crowd and also to be picked upon by upper classmen. Luck was with me for I never got picked upon and was so thankful when my freshman year was over.

In my sophomore year and later, I wore a madras scarf tied around my head: It had to match my madras skirt. All girls were snared into this fashion trap but at that time, it seemed cool.

Jackie Kennedy’s pill box hat changed my mind drastically as it did every woman—young or old. And of course, I had my own pill box hat which made me feel glamourous. After all, Jackie was just that.



When the movie, “Love Story,” came out, I just had to have a crocheted toboggan like Ali McGraw who played the lead in that movie. All I can say about that hat was that it was warm but mashed my hair flatter than flat.



Although I became a teacher, I was still influenced by hats.

When I saw Debra Winger wearing a cowboy hat in “Urban Cowboy,” I just had to have one. And I remember wearing it while driving my sons around: luckily, my sons were young at that time or they would have been moritified. There was something about wearing that cowboy hat that seemed to make me feel more alive than anything I had worn in the past.

Maybe it was a break from the norm. Whatever it was, it was “Yahoo!!”



And yet during this period of motherhood and being a teacher, I wore a blue bandana tied around my head: It was knotted in the back. Why did I wear that? Because everyone else did; it wasn’t comfortable and like the “Ali McGraw Hat,” it mashed my hair flat. Course it did have its good points: If you had a bad hair day, the bandana worked wonders.



When I became a model first for the Diamond and later for Peck’s, I got to wear many different types of hats. Some were so special that I bought them and carried them along with me to my teaching job.

During the course of being a mother, I have worn many unseen hats, as all mothers have: A nurse hat, an arbitrator hat, a chef hat and on and on.

As a teacher, I wore basically the same unseen hats except for the chef hat: The cooks took care of that one for me.



I still love to wear hats and usually keep a stack in my car for summer or winter. But I have found that my eleven- year old granddaughter has worn my hats far more than I have, for she either looks for them in my house or my car. And as I used to do, she wears them with that flash of glamour. If you’re asking if one of them is a cowboy hat, yes it is.

Who doesn’t like to feel like “Yahoo!!”

The hat torch has been passed to yet another generation.

Luckily, she doesn’t have a horrid Easter hat foisted upon her as I did. And she has a choice of what type hat to wear---whenever.

But for a cowboy hat? Well, you never know because I still have mine. And when I put it on, I can scream and yet look semi-sane. Long live hats!!!!

This article was published in the Charleston Gazette [WV]

BEWARE THE IDES OF MARCH! I DO!

BEWARE THE IDES OF MARCH! I DO!



Definition: On the Ides of March (or March 15), 44 B.C., Julius Caesar was assassinated, at the foot of a statue of Pompey where the Senate was meeting. And a soothsayer warned him prior by saying, “Beware the Ides of March!”

Obviously, Caesar disregarded the soothsayer’s words. One of Caesar’s best friends, Brutus, stabbed him many times; while Caesar was still breathing, his last words were, “Et tu Brute?” Those three words meant: “You too Brutus?” As many as sixty senate members helped in the killing of Caesar.

Down through two thousand years plus, The Ides of March has come to mean a day of being cautious for something bad may happen. Some believe that while others shrug off the notion.

I am not one of them for too many bad things have happened to me on March 15th every single year. You name it and it has happened. Once I fell down a long staircase and a friend was on the other side of the door: I could not get up for a long time. Another time, I had been feeling just fine the night before only to wake up with a high temperature and the flu.

And on and on went the terrible happenstances every year on The Ides of March! Of course when I was teaching, I had to go to work but was always fearful of what might happen. And as always, something would happen—trite or major and not in a good way either.

Last year, on March 15th, I opened up my front door to go outside: The weather was unusually warm and sunny. As I approached my sidewalk, I saw a man parked over from my house: He was in a truck. And he said, “Just stay there pretty girl!” I looked at him and he looked over towards me and repeated that again. No way was I going near him and so I just stood on the sidewalk wondering what he was doing. Several minutes later he left.

Curious me just had to go over past my car to see if he were parked down the hill. I looked down that direction and there was no truck. But when I started back towards my sidewalk, sitting right beside my car was a huge tan pit bull. Brain clicked in that the man was referring to the dog and my brain told me not to run for I knew that dog would pounce on me with incredible ferocity! Walking at a snail’s pace from my car to my front door seemed like it took days. My heart was ready to jump out of me. Somehow, I got inside and breathed a sigh of relief. And told myself that there was no way I was going to leave the house the entire day or night.

And I didn’t. But come the dark, a one-eyed possum appeared in my front yard: You just don’t see those all of the time. In fact, I’ve never seen a possum with one eye—ever. I saw him through my front locked storm door.

I hadn’t eaten dinner for frankly, I had forgotten about it with the pit bull and the possum and so I decided to fry a steak. And what would happen but the skillet caught on fire somehow [no doubt neglect on my part.] Grabbing the seared steak out of the smoking skillet, I managed to get the skillet into the sink and turn on the water. And then the smoke alarm went off!

After controlling the smoke alarm, I put the seared steak on a plate and put it in the refrigerator. And I went to bed having had no dinner but way too much excitement for the day—I just knew that it was going to be bad to begin with and it far exceeded my obvious expectations.

March 15th is not too far away. And trust me, you can be sure that I am not leaving my house, not going outside and no way cooking a steak. I am taking to my bed!



Sherry Hill

BREAD AND BUTTER

"Bread and Butter"




Several months ago, some neighbors invited me over for dinner. It was an unexpected treat as I sat down to a plate with stuffed peppers, mashed potatoes and green beans.

My neighbor's daughter went back into the kitchen and came out with a plate of buttered sliced bread and set it on the table.

Although I was engrossed with my stuffed peppers, I took one look at the buttered bread and so many memories flooded over me.

It had been ages since I'd eaten buttered bread with dinner, and yet it was on the table every night from the time I was a child well into my adult years, and my grown sons would serve sliced bread with butter for dinner nightly. But somehow, over the past few years, we've all switched to rolls, flat breads, or the like, instead of the basic staple of sliced buttered bread. And it's just not the same.

When I was little, the only time we had rolls was on Sundays or special occasions, and I continued that practice as an adult.

Bread has been a human staple for thousands of years, and it's available in so many forms. It's sad that the practice of removing fresh, sliced bread from its wrapper, buttering it, and serving it with dinner seems to have gone by the wayside. Is it simply not haute cuisine anymore?

Progress and commercialism has helped us in so many ways, yet sometimes we forget to appreciate the simplicity of certain foods. Don't get me wrong--I love trying new things and have enjoyed much haute cuisine in my life. But as I sat at my neighbor's dinner table, eating a slice of buttered bread, I savored how good something so basic could taste.

Bread is one of life's staples. Just as wonderful in its most humble forms as it can be as a gussied up dinner roll.

I'm grateful to my neighbors for reintroducing me to something that was such a longstanding part of my life, for reintroducing something I had been missing-simplicity.

This coming Thanksgiving, when everyone sits down to eat their big meal and give thanks for all that we have, let's not forget that it is the simple things in life for which we should be grateful.



Sherry Hill

This was published in the WV Gazette

WOULD YOU CARE FOR A LIZARD WITH YOUR BATH?

About ten years ago, I was very sick with bronchitis; so sick that I could scarcely get out of bed. As the saying goes, “The weather outside was frightful” and it took its revenge upon me.

Days went by with my taking an antibiotic, smearing Vick’s Vapor Rub on my chest so I could breathe and burning up with a temperature and then freezing. If you’ve ever had bronchitis, you know it is not fun. Not fun at all.

When I was out of bed I could have been mistaken for Tim Conway in one of his skits with Carol Burnett: I walked just like he did, all bent over and trembling.



By the fourth day I knew I had to take a bath. Even though the sheer thought of it would equivocate to climbing Mount Everest, I managed to half walk and half crawl into the bathroom while thinking to myself that this was the right thing to do. In a crumpled form, I turned on the hot water and poured in way too much bubble bath and waited for the tub to fill up.



Meanwhile, I had forgotten that the newly put on tub surround was not glued very well to the tile; in fact, the surround was put up over a big hole that once had been tile covered. It was the farthest thought out of my mind and oh, I wish it hadn’t been.

By some spirit that seemed to move me, I placed one foot over the tub and then the other and got on my knees in the deep hot water that was full to the top with bubbles. There was no way I could sit down for I was in too much pain so I stayed in that position hanging onto the spigot for dear life while soaking in the bubbles.



Out of the corner of my left eye I saw something long and black slither down into the tub. Before I knew it, whatever it was, was slithering around the back of my legs and I was hysterical! I think I almost pulled the spigot off the wall attempting to get out of the tub while the black thing was slinking around in the bubbles. I screamed out to my then husband who thought I had gotten scalded: he came running in and I told him that there was a snake in the tub. He couldn’t see anything till this creature, that was submerged in the bubbles, reared its head and then its feet were visible: I knew then it wasn’t a snake but a lizard. Just the thought of that thing being in the bath with me sent me into fear overdrive for it had been all over the back of my legs.



My then husband told me to go in the kitchen and get a knife to kill the thing. There was no way I could even walk that far being so sick and also now freezing as I was dripping wet with a big towel around me. Eventually, he went and got the knife, jerked the lizard up out of the bubbly tub water and threw it into the bathroom sink. It lay there wriggling its feet and it was ghastly just to look at it. He cut up the lizard into a gazillion pieces and promptly picked them up and flushed them down the commode.



After drying off, I was back to my “Tim Conway” way of walking and somehow managed to get back into bed where I think I must have passed out from not being sick but from fear.



Days passed and I would not go into that bathroom: I even went so far as to put a towel under the shut door from the outside when I was alone. During those days I used the master bath for I had always heard that where there’s one lizard, there’s another.

Well, another did not appear but it took much longer for me to recover from bronchitis and lizard fear. I would strongly advise anyone is very sick to never take a bubble bath ever. You never know what might crawl into the tub with you and like me, you just might get the shock of your life.

In the summer, fall and spring I will not touch the ivy that surrounds my house for I know that lizards are lurking somewhere in there----just waiting to terrorize me all over again! Like “Adrian Monk,” I suffer from a phobia too only mine is not on his list. Mine is called “Lizarditis.” Thankfully, the tub surround has been long gone, new tile adorns the walls all around the tub area and at least if a lizard decides to enter the bathroom, it isn’t going to crawl down the wall.

And I don’t think about that specific incident until I start pouring bubble bath into the bath water----and then it all comes rushing back into my mind. Popeye said it best: “Shiver me timbers!” And no thank you, I don’t care for a lizard with my bath.

Sherry Hill

SEARCHING

Searching

I go out many nights and stare at the stars

And search as hard as I can

For I am searching for what was

And what was can never be again.

It could have been if I let myself get engulfed again

In him but no, I did not want to let that happen.

He tried to take my very soul.

He tried to break me into a million pieces.

And he almost succeeded.



I often wonder if someone else is searching

At the very same time I am.

And I wonder if he knows that I have a lot to give

And a lot of me that is so wounded.

Sometimes I feel like a pair of scissors with one

Side missing—where is the other side?

I may never find it ever again.

It is hard to search with tears in your eyes

For it clouds up what might be right in front of you.

And you miss it.



The searching goes on but not as much as before

I have let myself slow down this search

And I know the reason why.

My heart was shattered and flung into a place

That is so deep I have quit looking.

I know it is still there for I feel it.

I know it is still there for it is still hurt.

And I know that there is another he

Who can fix it—for it needs fixed and put back

Like a jigsaw puzzle.

I can only hope that if he is looking at the same

Star at the very same time that he will find me.



Find me and stop my searching.

But beware that almost once my very soul was

Gone and retrieved.

And that trust is a fragile thing—fragile as tissue paper.

But if ever, I can be strong once again and end this

Quest for no one wants to keep on searching forever.



Sherry Hill