Grandma Henke

People tell me I am clever.  Sometimes it isn’t clever to be clever.  

If you’ve ever written a clever Christmas letter you are expected to do an even cleverer letter the next year.   Then all of a sudden you come to a non clever year and you are up an artificial Christmas Tree without a ladder.     The only way out is to procrastinate until it’s too late to write one anyway.  

It’s the kiss of death if you are introduced at a party as being clever or funny.  In the blink of an eye there isn’t a funny bone in your body.   People stand around and look at you waiting, and if you can’t perform you feel you’ve let them down.  It’s heavy … but you can’t force clever.

Clever begets clever, however, and it is much easier when you are among your own kind.    All a clever person needs is to be around another clever person … or a group of clever people and suddenly all is good.   In fact if you’re all clever it doesn’t matter if you’re all in a slump because everyone talks at once and laughs so much no one is listening to what you say anyway.    

Clever is a funny word.  I keep looking at it and thinking it isn’t even spelled right.    

Most bloggers are clever people … at least the ones I like to read are clever.    If they aren’t real clever they are at least real smart and that in itself is clever.      My husband is clever.   In fact, he’s so clever he catches people off guard with his cleverness and they say to me, “I had no idea he was so clever.”     That’s because he’s also smart.   You must be careful, though, because being clever and smart can make you a smart aleck.   

Once we took my parents and my aunt for a ride in our new 1978 Volkswagon Van.   It had the front that goes straight down so from the back seats it can be scary if you aren’t used to it.  You you think you are too close to things.   So Lynn took us all up to look over the city from the mountain that overlooks it.    From the back it looked like he was going to drive right off the edge of it when in fact there was just a little hill and then there was about 10 feet to the guard rail.    Aunt Lou insisted he back up, so being the clever man he is he put the car into gear, looked over his right shoulder and pushes on the gas.    Well, he’d put the car into 1st gear to give them all a little scare so while he was looking back he was moving forward.       When you have 80 year old people riding  with you, scaring them to death is not clever.   Aunt Lou, who is actually rather fond of my husband said, “You do know why they don’t send donkeys to college, don’t you?    Nobody likes a smart ass.”    Now … THAT was clever.   

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