Years ago ...

I would put the telephone ringer in the "ON" position early on Tuesday mornings.

Tuesday morning was the time I accepted calls from JO'B, calls in which he discussed my work on that week's edition of one of publications I edited and published for his organization. The work kept me in enough money for lunches out, taekwondo, museum memberships, Prismacolor pencils, and books.

Always books.

I liked it well enough.

That Tuesday I had already talked with JO'B, but I had forgotten to move the telephone ringer to the "OFF" position.

That Tuesday, then, the phone rang and jangled and clanged before the answering machine took messages from the electronically hushed tangle of yammering voices.

That Tuesday my children and I washed and dressed.

And went grocery shopping.

And that Tuesday, as we moved among our fellow shoppers, I conceded that it might, indeed, be fun to try that; that choosing this and that would be fine; that getting those would not break my budget; that, in fact, getting these, too, was certainly a fine idea.

That Monday, by the way, was the last day on which my oldest, then eleven, was entirely a child.

Even so, that Tuesday he ate a bowl of Froot Loops and milk with his mother and sisters when we returned home.

Froot Loops taste like plastic fun and false hope.

And the colors run in milk.

We don't buy them often.