The maya can amuse. I might seem to be a writer who can’t stand trashy wording, only lighting with my writing. But actually I can be as sadistic as the worst of them littering the pages with punishment.

Dolly Parton travels a lot. Here are some grins from her last trip.

She was boarding the plane with her hair in quite a do. Behind her was a big male lion with a puffy, bouffant, coiffed mane. He was walking on his hind legs carrying a drawer in his front ones. The drawer was all full of Dolly’s makeup bottles. The greeting stewardess stopped them, saying, “I’m sorry, Dolly, but that creature simply cannot come aboard.” Dolly said, “No, he’s alright. I travel with him all the time. He’s my lair dresser.”

So, now that stewardess was ready to accept lions coming aboard; but enough was enough. Next came another lion, and this one was carrying two dead hyenas, one under each front leg. The stewardess just had to put her foot down for that. She said, “I’m sorry, sir, but you’ll have to check one of those for the baggage compartment. Our overhead is limited. We only allow one carrion per passenger.”

Then, when Dolly arrived at her destination airport, she was feeling a bit queasy. So, she found a door with a sign over it reading “Medical.” She went in and there was a doctor with a stethoscope standing over a bed with nothing on it but a big blob of white goop. Dolly, agape, asked him what he was doing. The doctor looked up, and said, “Oh, my, it seems you have come into the wrong room. This is the mayo clinic.”

Mayo, maya…whatever. Smile, pard.