Not quite a native Ripley Countian - she attended only her last year of high school in Doniphan though she taught in the R-1 system for 32 years - Teresa (Pearson) Lee delights in surprising readers and herself with anecdotal observations of life in general. Maybe you can blame her St.Louis roots for a quirky humor and some slightly-askewed opinions, but never doubt she writes from the heart.

...___... (SOS)

Posted Saturday, December 31, 2022, at 3:09 AM

Dot, dot, dot, dash, dash, dash, dot, dot, dot. That’s Morse code for S O S. To me it’s a song title popularized by Abba. The line “Can’t you hear me S.O.S?” might stay with you for a bit now if you are of my generation. In reality it is a signal selected in the early 1900’s for its ease and clarity in sending and receiving in times of distress. The dots and dashes referring to the letters S O S improved upon a former sequence of more complicated code that stood for the letters C Q D. We humans like our letters to stand for something. Come Quick, Distress was changed to Save Our Ship.

Change is the constant in our lives and the topic on our minds as 2015 exits. No one wants a repeat of the same ol’ s*^# in the coming year, so though we might vow not to make resolutions we can’t keep, we do it anyway, even if we don’t post our good intentions on facebook or tape them on the fridge.

A common plan is to join the gym, hit the track, chow down on more veggies. Take a look at the Hello Parody video on YouTube, a spin-off of the current hit by Adele. Your abs will get a workout from the belly laughs.

So some other slant on greeting the new year might help. It’s high time to wipe off the slate of subjects old and useless, in search of substantiality to save our souls from stacks of similarities that clutter up the new year with the same old statistics as the end result. We might strive to avoid the sickening overdose of sameness by slaying our sinister demons that push us toward a downward spiral of soul-searching.

Soul-searching should be uplifting. The songs of our souls can benefit from the science of success to secure a string of smiles throughout 2016. Don’t forget that the same ol’ stinkin’ thinkin’ produces the same ol’ snags to change. Shove out senseless oppressive stuff so 2016 earns a stamp of satisfaction on its exit. Startling outcomes surface in conjunction with action fueled by thoughtful change.

May the Force be with you!

PS. I had fun stringing s-o-s phrases together. How many can you find?

This was initially written to appear in the December 30, 2015 edition of the Prospect-News, the local weekly in Doniphan, MO.