How to Not be a Dumb Foreigner
By Renie Stag Smith
When Americans come across someone who doesn’t understand English, their first reaction is to get LOUDER and SLOWWWWWEEEEERRRRRR…… They aren’t the only ones who treat foreigners this way.
Several years ago, I went to Canada to ski. I loved Banff, the little town where I stayed. It was in the middle of the [...]
Goodbye, Davy Jones
By Renie Stag Smith
I dressed carefully, meticulously the day I first saw him in person. I put on my homemade, navy blue, cotton, Nehru dress. I curled my hair. I put on pink lip gloss. I slipped a large, round, golden medallion and chain around my neck. I looked mature and ready for adventure, or [...]
Freeze-Dried Dog – Part Two
By Renie Stag Smith
When last we left Renie, she had just found out that a colleague was waiting for her freeze-dried dog..
It took a supreme effort not to expel my bite of food with the guffaw that threatened to explode from me. I choked instead, and tears of laughter began falling from my eyes. [...]
Freeze-Dried Dog – Part One
By Renie Stag Smith
The A-lunch teachers bustled around the rectangular table in the middle of the small, austere teacher’s lounge, jostling for their regular seats while at the same time opening lunch boxes, microwaving leftovers, plopping coins into the vending machines. In between wolfing down bites during the twenty-minute lunch, they caught up on their [...]
4.74 Degrees of Separation
By Renie Stag Smith
Did you ever wonder how obscure you truly are when you are out and about people?
When my children were young, I told them that since we lived in a small town of about 37,000, they had to be very careful about what they did in public, as it would always get back [...]
Planned Obsolescence is All Washed Up
By Renie Stag Smith
The last load of clothes that I had put into the washing machine to cycle through the numerous rotations of wash, rinse, repeat were ready to get plucked out of the drum and dumped into the dryer to finish the weekly, monotonous task of doing the laundry.
But as I reached into [...]
Made in China
By Renie Stag Smith
Made in China. Made in China. Made in China.
No matter the print type, these three words have struck a discordant chord in one of my dear friend’s body. At a recent get-together, she announced that starting January first, she was boycotting anything that she possibly could that was made in China. [...]
Pride in a Job Well Done
By Renie Stag Smith
“You must be very proud every time you see this in the stores!” said one of the smartest eight-year olds I know.
She was talking about our family’s product. We have produced a powdered enchilada sauce since way before I became part of the family and it is sold to grocery stores around [...]
When Sons Grow Up
By Renie Stag Smith
I recently experienced a rite-of-passage dream that most mothers of sons have. Or an alien abduction of epic proportions, I’m not sure which.
I went shopping with my son for his professional clothing, at his insistence!
For those of you who are mothers with sons, you can probably relate. When younger, my son, like [...]
I May Be More Sexist Than I Thought…
By Renie Stag Smith
Sometimes, you just need a man.
As a feminist, I hate to admit that. But after the last two days, I can make a clean breast of it – I needed a man a couple of times.
My eldest daughter, Jenn, and I decided that it was time to get rid of her beige, [...]