Clever apple dumplin'

Last week, as I waited in anticipation for Jud's graduation day, I purchased a treat for work. In order for my co-workers to know of the yummy food, I sent the following email:

"In honor of the fact that the apple of my eye, Jud Goldsmith, is graduating from ISU tomorrow (and has a job) – and the applet big sis Amy (who just started a new job) is taking the train in from Denver to help celebrate, the yummy loaf of Great Plains apple bread is in the triangle – get some before it’s gone!

I know – longest most run-on sentence ever. Good thing Jen is gone!"

(Jen is my supervisor who is quite the stickler for editing my writing...she was gone that day. She was on the email list however and did chuckle about the sentence, she told me later.)

But my clever little applet Amy reached wayback into the time machine - recalling that I single handedly stopped the Creston Pantherettes from being called that awful name. She emailed this: "what would the trojann's say about you calling me an "applet" instead of an "apple"? (I was part of the Atlantic group that voted to name the girl's team the Trojanns - even then I didn't like using "ettes" for girls teams. Trojanns is pretty awful itself, no?)

So back in the 90's sometime, I'd finally had it with the whole Pantherettes name - Amy was getting closer to the age that she'd be playing for the sports teams, and I was ready to take action. Other towns were dropping that ette ending. Tigerettes, Vikettes and so on were dropping right and left. So I wrote a letter to the school board, copying the local newspaper, imploring the board to consider such a change. I laid out my reasoning, stating that after all...a female panther is a panther.

I won't take full credit - the KSIB sports announcer Gary Bucklin also refused to call the girl's teams the Pantherettes. Shortly after I sent the letter, the ettes were no longer! Amy was always a Panther - as it should be.

So Amy merely pointed out that I had become my own worst nightmare. Thanks kid!