bring your own bag winner

If you bring your own reusable bag you can enter a weekly drawing for $25.  After 30 shots at it I was thinking about quitting.  I looked at all those red tickets in the raffle wheel.  What if I give mine a slight twist?  Pure chance?  The little twist?  Two days later I got the call.  Twenty-five dollars!

I no sooner hung up the phone than I thought of spreading my good fortune.  Several times a week I benefit from those faithful, low-wage clerks.  So I bought six small cans of Planters Peanuts and gave them to the persons I see most often and one to the Leola Food Bank.

I got more fun out of that $25 than sometimes I get out of $250.  Giving makes me say something about myself and makes me vulnerable to others.  In accepting the recipient says something about themselves.  Face to face exchange--a rare thing.

Toadstools?

Mushrooms cuddling? Toadstools? What are these growths in the lawn?

Here are some definitions: "an edible agaric (contrasting with the inedible toadstool)"--whatever agaric is. "Fungi of Basidiomycota with a cap at the end of a stem arising from underground mycelium."

Well, my Latin is not very good today, so whatever that means.

I remember seeing things like this which had popped up overnight when I was a kid. I was so fascinated. I don't think my parents (or any of my fiends' parents) ever bought mushrooms at the local pop and mom grocery. What a waste! Buying air. It's not food. It won't fill you up or stick to your ribs.

I knew enough to know that some people eat them. My Mom knew enough to tell me that some are poisonous. Which ones? She didn't know. I don't know. There was no internet to tell us how to tell the difference. The online dictionary reserves the term "toadstool" for the bad ones. So am I looking at a scrumptious topping for my hamburger or agonizing indigestion and possible death?

I'll never know, because I had to mow them down.

It just leaves me with the thought--why isn't the atomic bomb cloud called the toadstool cloud?