THE SOCIAL WHIRL

hortly before we were to leave Howard to join Dad in Medicine Lodge, I had my eighth birthday. Mother gave me a party. She put up a Maypole in the front yard and attached streamers of colored crepe paper. She had envisioned me and my little friends dancing around the Maypole, winding the streamers. As I recall, we couldn't get the hang of it, and it turned into a fiasco of running in circles and bumping into each other. But it was a great party anyway.

peaking of birthday parties, I remember the first birthday party I went to. How could I ever forget? It was at the Methodist parsonage in Howard. I suppose I was four at that time. During the party I needed to go to a bathroom, but I couldn't see one and was too bashful to ask. Then the hostess took all of us children outside to play games, and I was really left with only one alternative. I disgraced myself by wetting my pants and had to go home early. My introduction into polite society was a disaster. Later on my bashfulness, the bane of my childhood, caused me many more uncomfortable moments.