Today, at Kroger, an announcement came over the PA system, "Mrs. Smith, your grandchild is at the Self Check Out Line." The name was NOT Mrs. Smith, but I wouldn't want to give her real name and publicly embarrass a grandmother for misplacing her grandchild!
Shortly, I heard a child screaming and I asked the woman next to me, who appeared to be in my age group, "Did you read O. Henry's The Ransom Of Red Chief when you were in school?" She said that she had not, but she had read The Gift Of The Magi. I gave her a brief synopsis of the story: two crooks came up with a plan to kidnap the child of the town's wealthiest man. They ended up having to pay the father to take back the kid because he was so bad and the kid was known as Red Chief.
The child's screaming escalated and the woman asked, "Wonder how much she'd pay?"
See O. Henry's story by CLICKING HERE. It's worth re-reading!
2 comments:
My favorite O. Henry story is "The last Leaf"
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