Hissing watermelons and life’s other mysteries.

Before I jump into watermelons and mysteries and other assorted hoo-hah, please allow me to welcome a new reader to the ranks of Howdygram faithful.

If you’re thinking okay, who the devil is Eileen, she’s a sweet old lady in Ireland who also happens to be exactly my age and a pen-pal I’ve known since seventh grade, which is all the way back to 1964 in case you’re too polite to ask. Eileen and I lost touch years ago (moving, marrying and changing email addresses can be hell) but she managed to find me this past Monday through a convoluted web search that included a funeral home guest book page for my former boyfriend Joel, which I signed back in March with my maiden name and married name. God bless Google. Seriously!

For your possible interest, here’s a photo of me in England when I went to visit in the early 1970s and a shot of Eileen from the same trip. I apologize for the quality of these images. They were taken with a cheesy Kodak Instamatic camera and preserved for almost four decades in an equally cheesy photo album. The fact that I still have them at all is a miracle.

And now for my watermelon adventure. In the first place, I bought a gorgeous seedless watermelon a few days ago at Tom Thumb. I wanted to cut it up on Tuesday but we had these enormous storms and tornadoes and I figured I’d be better off running for cover in the walk-in closet than hanging out in the family room with a bowl of watermelon. So I postponed the watermelon an extra day. However, when I stabbed it last night with my big chef’s knife the stupid thing made a LOUD HISSING SOUND and SPEWED WATERMELON JUICE all over the kitchen counter like a warm bottle of 7-Up. I freaked out, shoved it into the sink, tied it up in a double plastic bag and slapped it senseless. (Okay, I might be lying about the slapping part.)

If any of you know why a watermelon would hiss and squirt please send me an email as soon as possible. Thank you in advance.

As for “life’s other mysteries,” I offer the following questions for the geniuses among you:

1.  Why don’t marriage licenses expire?
2.  Why are there no “B” size batteries?
3.  If electricity comes from electrons, does morality come from morons?

Thank y’all for reading this. Don’t forget to floss.