It is Sunday, March 5. There are only 295 days until Christmas so start making those fruit cakes so that they have time to harden by the holiday.  Today we remember the birthdays of Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, Elisha Harris and Leontine Kelly.  On this day in 1623, in Virginia, the first American temperance law was enacted, in 1836 Samuel Colt manufactured the first pistol, the 34-caliber “Texas” model and in 1923 Montana and Nevada became the first states to enact old age pension laws.  In Boston, MA it is Boston Massacre Day and in the US it is National Absinthe Day and National Cheese Doodle Day.

Let’s take a few minutes to pull out our useless information folder and fill it with some facts about the Boston Massacre.  As you may have surmised, it occurred on the evening of March 5, 1770.  Five civilians died as a result.  All of the victims, Crispus Attucks, Samuel Gray, James Caldwell, Samuel Maverick and Patrick Carr, were buried at the Granary Burying Ground in Boston.

There were two separate Boston massacre trials.  The trial of Captain Preston started eight months after the incident and the trial for the soldiers started about a month after the Captain’s ended. Preston and six of the soldiers were acquitted and two soldiers were found guilty of manslaughter.  One of the more famous engravings of the incident was one done by Paul Revere.  However, it is not certain that he was even present during the fatal accident even though his engraved depiction of the event was used as evidence in the trial to establish the locations of the bodies.

One final note, during the trials, under British law, the defendants were not allowed to speak on their own behalf.  This was because they had an interest in the case.  I am sure that you are now enlightened on the Boston Massacre and can happily put the useless information folder away.

I have spent time, lately, wondering what it is about being old that makes people feel like they do not have to show common courtesy to others.  I see examples of this on a regular basis.  Fortunately, most of the time it is in stores and malls and does not include vehicles that can cause severe bodily harm, but not always.  Much of it seems to take place in the grocery store.  I am not sure if that is because I am there a lot or because old people don’t pay as much attention there.

There are so many opportunities for me to get myself into trouble that, without too much effort, I could be banned from the store.  Of course, this problem goes back a ways.  There was one time, before we moved, that I was in a store and a woman had her cart partially blocking the aisle while she gazed at the items on a shelf.  I walked up to her and said, “You know if you turn your cart just a little more this way, you could block the aisle completely.”   She did not take constructive criticism very well … but I digress

I live in an area where there are several 55+ Adult communities.  As a result, there are a lot of 55+ adults (read senior citizens) that shop in the store that I go to.  For some reason those seniors do not feel it necessary to consider anyone else around them.  They walk along in the middle of the aisle, SLOWLY, looking at every item as if seeing it for the first time.  They do not consider the fact that there is anyone else in the store or in the row they are in.  They walk along, stop, leave their cart where it is and then walk back to look at something again.  

Yesterday, I went to the store to pick up a couple things I needed.  As I walked along, there was a woman in front of me who felt the need to stop and look at an item every few feet.  She was in the middle of the aisle and it was not possible to get by her.  Finally, she passed the area that I needed to get to and I was able to pick up what I needed.  I decided that I could be annoying , too, so I waited to see where she was going next, then I went around and got into the aisle ahead of her. As she came around the corner, I was in front of her and started doing the same thing she had been doing.  I could hear her, behind me, getting annoyed.  At one point I stopped, left my cart in the middle of the aisle and walked over to look at something.  She asked me if I could move my cart.  I told her that I could, but I didn’t.  Finally I went back to my cart and before I walked off I said, “Now you know what it was like being behind you.”  Then I walked off before she had a chance to respond.

The only thing that bothers me more are the people who ride around on those motorized carts.  I saw one guy riding the cart around, impatiently saying excuse me when he came up behind someone, without giving them the opportunity to move.  I was not aware that riding a motorized cart gave you permission to be rude.  There must be a label on the cart that tells you it is okay.  The worst was the person I saw who would drive into an aisle, stop his cart, get off and walk up and down the aisle getting what he needed and then getting back on the cart to go to the next aisle.  Someone needs to explain that those carts are for people who are disabled, not lazy.

This week our fact tells us that polar bears are the only mammal with hair on the soles of its feet.  I can’t help but wonder what the polar bears are doing.  When I was a kid we were told that certain actions would cause hair to grow on our palms.

Go have some cheese doodles and enjoy the day.