OUR THERMOMETER

My brother makes fun of me--and others--for naming inanimate objects. My cars have always had names. My current one is named "Jay" for Jay Sebring; the Corvette is named "Louis" for Louis Chevrolet (Gerald said I should have named it Billy Durant). One of my trees is a birch and I named it "Robert Frost" in honor of the poem "Birches". Another birch tree died and Les said, "You shouldn't have named it "John Birch". Of course, one of the roses this year was "The Rose of Tralee"; one of the lilies was "Lili Marlene".

Norman was visiting and I asked him to look at a problem I was having with "Amelia"; I saw him wince as he said, "Tell me you didn't name your computer!"

However, when discussing the weather, he will also chime in with "What does ARTHUR say?" as do the rest of us in our family. I thought that everyone used that phrase, but when I said recently, "ARTHUR said it was 90 degrees!" a person asked, "What channel is he on?" I said, "ARTHUR is OUR THERMOMETER!"