It would be quite easy to claim I did it on purpose. I could have said, “Ha! I spelled it that way to see if you were paying attention.”
    It’s like an almost-daily routine in which I ask the Optic’s multi-talented, multi-tasking compositor Maria Sanchez what blasted keys I need to press to put a tilde or an accent mark over a letter. After she patiently explains, I reply, “I knew that. I was just testing you.”
    Last Saturday we drove around sections of Old Town, hoping to spot the place where a young couple had planned to set up a trailer they had just bought from our son.
    Driving around Taos, San Miguel, Mora and Chavez streets, we came across some interesting features: hills, trestles, bridges, places where we saw kids congregating. And they’ve done it for years.
    Ever get into a situation in which you’re incapable of processing all the information in front of you? But before some reader responds with, “Well, Art, it happened to you — every day in every grade in elementary school,” let me explain the data overload.
    The Trujillo family had a get-together for Christmas in preparation for sending off our oldest son, Stan, to Denmark, where he may be taking a new job.
    Desirous of a boys’ night out, he got together with younger brothers Diego and Ben for an evening away from our house. Stan said, “Dad, we’re going out for a couple of hours?”
    And almost as if participating in a really bad high school play, Diego said, “We’ll take our own car?” and Ben cut in with, “So don’t wait up for us?”
    It’s gone!
    The place where I was born no longer belongs to any Trujillo. My sister Dorothy, who bought us out after Mom died in 2002, let the house go to an outsider whose name I don’t know.
    Even when my parents were still alive, when I’d entertain out-of-town friends, I’d drive by their house and my birthplace on Railroad Avenue and say, “See that house, the neatest house on the whole street? Well, I was born there.”
    A school workshop I dropped in on recently featured three speakers. The keynote speaker, who’d traveled from Albuquerque to share her knowledge got paid for her services. The other two speakers, well, they kind of performed gratis.
    One doesn’t have to wait long before someone new to this area remarks on the way we in northern New Mexico “sing” many of our expressions.
    Whereas many people say, “I know,” around here, it’s usually something like “Eee guyy, I knoouuww.” And that’s only a slight exaggeration.
    If there’s one thing I could pass on to readers for the New Year, it’s guarding against getting bilked. Almost daily we read about the people falling victim to unscrupulous scammers who promise instant wealth.
    I was sweating it out this week, alongside David Griego, a retired Mora High School mathematics teacher. We were at the Abe Montoya Recreation Center. I wondered why he wasn’t even breathing hard while striding on his treadmill. With his 150-pound frame, he didn’t sweat at all.
    In my youth, I came across a professor who became particularly vexatious one day in employing what most of us consider profanity. Making the point that words don’t hurt, he asked us students, “How would it hurt you if — hypothetically — I called you a — (because this is a family newspaper, I can only imply the sexual and scatological tenor of his quote).”