Dear Editor:

My first bits and pieces letter was read by three people. Two were mildly amused. I shall try again.

• Eating bacon and toast together should be done by placing the bacon strip on the toast and taking a bite. It is not the same to bite the toast, then bite the bacon.

• Having a yard is like having children, a source of joy, but a great responsibility.

•. “What is so rare as a day in June?” I don’t know. What is?

•. I keep trying to teach my cat to say something in English, but he only gazes at me with those big green eyes, waiting for me to understand: Cats are patient and stubborn, but we do not speak English.

• My second grade teacher spoke seriously to my mother. “Paul is a dreamer!” My own thought went unspoken: Figured that out, did you?

• I’ve always liked Krystal burgers. The ones I buy in LaGrange today taste exactly like the ones I bought in Macon in 1944.

• I would like to be friends with Tom Hanks. If I got him on the phone, I’d say “Hi, Tom! My name’s Paul.” He’d say “How did you get this number?” Then he would hang up. Or, more likely, he would simply hang up. Friendship cannot be contrived.

• I liked my grammar school cafeteria’s spaghetti better than my mother’s spaghetti, but I never told her.

• God and I have an agreement that I won’t die in the middle of carving a piece of sculpture. When I finish a piece, I have motivation to start another quickly.

• Naked women are the best kind.

•. I’ve always liked my name, my eyes, my hands, my fingernails.

• I love the galaxy, even though I know very little about it.

• If somebody should ask if I were gay, I’d answer with a straight face. “I try to be pleasant.”

• The most fun vacation I ever had was two weeks in New York City in 1946.

• My father and I once tried to ride bicycles from Macon to McRae. I was nine years old. He was 49. Where was my mother when we came up with that nit-wit idea?

•I remember a toy P-38 I had back during the war. A few of the real ones are still around. If I had the opportunity, I’d fly in a P-38, even though I’m afraid of flying.

• In the kindergarten bathroom, I once discovered a piece of doo doo that hadn’t been flushed. I reported this to the teacher who rather corrected me, I thought, for delivering the news. I learned quickly: People do not like to hear about doo doo.

• I failed reading in third grade and had to attend summer school, which was a rip off. I still can’t read. My wife says I had a learning disability.

• Someday they’ll invent a machine to beam a person from one city to another in an instant, like on Star Trek. No more airplanes, yet accidents might still be possible. The medical report would give the cause of death: molecular dispersion.

• My favorite colors are deep purple, deep green, rusty red, deep orange, pale yellow, pale or darker brown, and any other shade of green.

• The happiest moment of my life was sitting on stage, listening to the overture of Cosi fan Tutte, waiting for the curtain to open.

• In my bank, the teller cashed my check and remained poised as I asked a simple question: “Do you think velocity is a function of time or a function of light?” She replied quickly and without changing expression. “It’s a function of light.” I nodded, turned, and walked out of the bank. Don’t deal with a bank unless the tellers know important stuff like that.

• On the bicycle trip to McRae, we made it to Cochran.

• “The time you won your town the race, we chaired you through the market place. Man and boy stood cheering by, and home we brought you, shoulder high.” A.E. Housman. Beautiful lines, I think.

Paul Doster.

LaGrange