Ryan Tramonte

You know, the more I think about it, the more I think there is something to the old adage “opposites attract.”

Take my sister Neely and me for example. We go to together like peanut butter and jelly, but separate us and you see just how different we really are.

It all began when I got my first bike and permission to leave the safety and overprotection of my family property to drop a letter at the post office for my Aunt Tina. It was like the whole world opened up and there were people everywhere. After I placed the letter in the out-of-town box, I decided to take advantage of my parole. I sat on the inside steps of the post office and watched as everyone from my small Louisiana home town came in and out dropping off packages, buying stamps, and picking up their mail.

In school, I hated math. The only math I enjoyed was counting the hours until history class. History was my ace because, as the name says, it’s a story…a true story about all the things that happened to make where we are and what we are doing today so important and special. New Orleans is steeped in history that runs up the river to the Garden District and down the once canal that is now I-10 to Lakeview.

Besides raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, flowers are a few of my favorite things; dubbed, by yours truly, as nature’s labor of love. When the dog bites or the bee stings, it is flowers that we use to pull us up out of the dumps and help us to “get it together Mary”, another saying dubbed by yours truly.