Column for Aug. 26, 2009

Last week, I wrote about LaPlante's Law and made a tangential comment about a streetlight being burned out and my neighbor having asked for a year to have it replaced or repaired. I am pleased to type that the very afternoon that the column hit the news stand, I got a phone call from the Selma's electrical department wanting to know which light to replace. The next morning, a crew replaced the offending light. Kudos, guys. My neighbor is happy and took the time to write me a note saying so.

Last week's column actually started out being entirely different. I had planned for a few weeks to write about some casual observations around town. That is how I intended to write, starting with LaPlante's Law and going from there. It is not unusual to end up somewhere other than my intended destination when I sit down to craft my weekly rant.

Well, here are some of my observations.

1. New streetlights in Selma are very bright. In fact, they are brighter than the old ones nearby. This is by no means a complaint. It is merely an observation.
2. Selma actually has properties in town selling for over $350,000. Though some of the higher end homes I have seen are beautiful and the real estate listing web sites have showcased some flattering pictures, I wince that the two or three houses I absolutely love in town are well beyond my budget right now.
3. It takes years to get the flagpole in front of the post office painted. But it was painted. I even got to see it being done. Yay!
4. There are some young, intelligent, attractive teachers at Selma Elementary.
5. I am not quite old enough to be the father of some of those teachers, but some days I sure feel like I am and then some. Today was one of those days.
6. There are/have been three day care centers opening in Selma recently or in the near future. And I thought we already had a bunch of them.
7. There are also two new barbershops, bringing the total of which I am aware to at least four. I did not know that there were that many male heads of hair to be shorn in this town. In the town where I grew up, which was slightly bigger than Selma, there was but one. When my old, faithful barber lost his lease on his shop, he would come to our home on an appointment basis.
8. My word processor does not like the terms "flag pole", "street lights", "barber shops", and "post script" to be separate words. It prefers them as compound words, but that is not the case with "news stand" versus newsstand. Both are acceptable. My word processor also does not like the possessive form of my last name. It tells me that "LaPlante's" is misspelled. Misspelled, one of the most often misspelled words in the English language, however, was accepted without objection.
9. I forgot some of my other observations and should have written them down when they crossed the synapses of my brain. That in itself was a fresh observation.
10. I can not find a whole lot of people from Selma on facebook.com but did find a bunch on myspace.com. The people on MySpace are mostly younger whereas Facebook folks tend to be a bit older. Find me on either, user name troylaplante.
11. Even after road closures and construction projects, we still can not get a smooth crossing over the railroad tracks on Ricks Road. On Peedin Street in Smithfield and at the main crossing in Lillington, that is possible, but apparently not in Selma. Crossing those tracks at that spot is annoying, but nothing I type here will make any difference. After all, it is not a streetlight (one word).

Though I am not currently outside applying LaPlante's Law, the law of entropy is applying itself to me. I have struggled all day to keep a positive attitude, not speak too negatively, and resist just plain being ornery. My resistance to orneriness was severely tested at this evening at a meeting, especially with the postscript (one word) attached to it. However, I am sure that subject will be fodder for another column some other day as well make for interesting news in this paper.