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Give up that red ball before someone takes it
By Carole Cloudwalker
This document was published online on Thursday, December 04, 2008
Here's a flash from Blue Ash, Ohio, where police said an 89-year-old woman is facing a charge of petty theft because neighborhood children accused her of refusing to give back their football.
Yep, Edna Jester was arrested recently in that Cincinnati suburb after one child's father complained that Jester kept the youngsters' ball after it landed in her yard.
Apparently there has been an ongoing dispute in the neighborhood about kids' balls landing in Jester's yard.
The maximum penalty for a petty theft conviction in Ohio is six months in jail and a fine of up to $1,000.
This kind of non-family values stuff just doesn't happen in Wapiti.
For one thing, houses are mostly too far apart for stray footballs to be a problem.
For another thing (based on the way smoke from the Gunbarrel Fire blew stuff away from the valley last summer) wind would carry stray balls right over to Powell, testing the mettle of residents there, not in Wapiti.
And a third consideration is we are far too practical, out there in the country to waste a fine, free present - even a football.
That's how my college friend Meredith viewed the world as well.
After college she lived in California where she was in a car accident that confined her to a wheelchair.
One day Meredith was out in her back yard with her then-small daughter Mira when a neighbor kid's Nerf ball came whizzing over the fence one time too often.
In the past Meredith always had wheeled herself out into the lawn, retrieved the ball and tossed it back over the fence.
But this was one time too many. Meredith, who is great at handicrafts, took the Nerf ball into her house. That evening, drapes drawn while Mira snoozed, Meredith began a surreptitious crochet project.
She crocheted a colorful disguise for the ball, which went from plain pale yellow foam to a spiffy series of concentric circles in multi-hued yarns.
Mira loved her new plaything. And the evidence was sufficiently concealed that the neighbor child suspected, but never knew for sure. Not even when he stopped by to say hey, and was observed scanning the nooks and crannies of Meredith's back yard, clearly looking for something.
I think Meredith encouraged the boy and Mira to have a nice game of catch. She's just like that, you know. A lady, but a sneaky one.
I believe Ms. Jester in Ohio actually may have been familiar either with Meredith or with the children's poem, “King John's Christmas,” (“Now We Are Six,” 1927, by A.A. Milne) and was merely taking a lesson from the author.
Milne related that:
“King John was not a good man -
He had his little ways.
And sometimes no one spoke to him
For days and days and days.
And men who came across him,
When walking in the town,
Gave him a supercilious stare,
Or passed with noses in the air -
And bad King John stood dumbly there,
Blushing beneath his crown ...
“And, round about December,
The cards upon his shelf
Which wished him lots of Christmas cheer,
And fortune for the coming year,
Were never from his near and dear,
But only from himself.”
King John had received no Christmas presents for many years, so this one December he composed a note to Father Christmas, that ended with:
“And, oh! Father Christmas, if you love me at all,
Bring me a big, red india-rubber ball!”
Sadly, the king was ignored once again. So on Christmas morning,
“King John stood by the window,
And frowned to see below
The happy bands of boys and girls
All playing in the snow.
A while he stood there watching,
And envying them all ...
When through the window big and red
There hurtled by his royal head,
And bounced and fell upon the bed,
An india-rubber ball.”
See? Like King John, Jester - and of course Meredith - had no obligation to throw their “gifts” back.
Though I confess that Jester was challenged more than most. Crocheting a cover for a round Nerf ball is one thing.
But like applying lipstick to a pig, you can crochet day and night to cover up a football but it's still ... a football.
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