MY ATTRACTION TO SASS

I got a few questionable marks on my report card in conduct from kindergarten through high school.  I was a good student academically.  I just had things to say and loved to laugh when I probably shouldn't have.  Sass is word that probably describes a part of me.  Any of you remember Dorothy Hamill, Olympic skater just as equally famous not just for her athletic ability, but the hair cut that swept the nation aptly called, "the Dorothy Hamill".  It was a short, kind of bobbed, stacked sort of doo.  I had the Dorothy Hamill.  Since my aunt was a hair dresser I sat in the chair and imploringly asked if she would cut my hair in the Dorothy Hamill.  She did:)  There was something a bit sassy about that hair style.  When it got messed up a bit all you had to do was shake your head a few times and it would return to its short, bobbed, stacked sassiness.  It fit exactly who I was.  There is a picture of me kneeling in the front yard holding my cat Smokey (I was highly creative then too, naming him that because he was the color of smoke!), legs like toothpicks, pre-braces teeth, a face I hadn't grown into yet and that Dorothy Hamill cut.  I went to Adam's Cake Shoppe today to order a cake for my daughter and mom's birthday celebration next week.  Adam owns the place.  He is exactly what you would picture someone to look like that owned a cake shoppe - doughy, happy and full of life.  Sugar just makes you happy!  I love going there for two reasons; one, the cakes are amazing (and costly but worth it!) and two, Adam.  He sasses me up.  The minute I walk in the door we banter, we sass a bit, laugh a lot and just generally mess with one another.  He wasn't there today.  I missed his sass and the cake shoppe was just too flat.  Sass is that magic ingredient in life that makes things more pleasurable, more vivid, more real, more irreverent.  It's the salt of life that just makes everything more rich and flavorful.  Sass is the verbal equivalent to the sport of boxing.  You want to make direct contact, but really it's about the dance, the jabs, the give and take, the duck and slide.  I sassed a bit growing up with my parents - usually with a consequence.  I love people who have the edge of sass.  They seem to know squarely the seriousness of life, but play ball anyway.  There are several definitions for the word sassy - one means spirited and lively.  The other, a more negative connotation - rude and disrespectful.  I am using the word in the positive sense.  Sass is a way of grabbing life and being spirited and engaged in a lively sort of way - in actions, conversations, relationships.  It's a sort of sparring.  I don't have my Dorothy Hamill hair cut any longer.  I do though still have sass.