..... brought to you by the Ketchup Advisory Board. (PIANO)

TR: These are the good years for Barb and me. The kids are gone and we got an unlisted number and we got a new carpet with no pee stains on it and we've found a new church home, one that doesn't emphasize guilt so much as the possibilities for growth within each one of us, and we tried a new hair conditioner with aloe vera in it that made us both feel very very happy, and then one fine spring day, I found Barb in the kitchen, all upset and trying to slit her wrists with a piece of paper.

SS: Oh, Jim. I hate government studies. I don't know why they do them. They only make people miserable.

TR: What government study is this, honey?

SS: I come home from work, exhausted, I open up the paper, and there's an article that says that any child who spends more than 30 hours a week in child care, away from its mother, turns into a psychopath. Gee. Thanks a lot. As if I didn't feel enough guilt already.

TR: You did your best, honey. You did all you could.

SS: I don't know. Maybe I should've sent the dogs to summer camp and the kids to obedience school.

TR: You did all you could.

SS: I tried. I bought them educational toys. I played them Mozart. I sang Kumbaya and I read Goodnight Moon until I about went nuts, and I decided, instead of going nuts, I'd get a job and try to earn enough money to pay my babysitter, and I went to work, and now I find out I was condemning my kids to becoming aggressive monsters who will never get along with anybody and wind up living alone barricaded in mobile homes with their Rottweilers.

TR: Don't let some government study get you all upset, honey.

SS: And it says it's all Mom's fault ---- it makes no difference if the dad takes care of the kids. It all comes down to Mom. It's Mom's fault that the kids grow up to become vicious skinheads with poor social skills and a collection of automatic weapons. It's all because Mom put them in day care.

TR: Honey, do you remember when the kids came home from day care, how you used to fix them beans and wieners for supper and you'd pour ketchup over it?

SS: They loved it.

TR: You gave the kids an important legacy, Barb. A legacy of ketchup.

SS: I forgot about that.

TR: And someday when the kids sit in the prison cafeteria and look at that red bottle, they'll think of you and ketchup and those natural mellowing agents will help straighten those kids out and they'll become teachers and librarians and ministers and singer-songwriters.

SS: You're so right, Jim.

TR: What do you say I fix us some supper----

RD: These are the good years, spring has now begun.
A new day is dawning, see the morning sun.
Life is flowing, like ketchup on a bun.

GK: Ketchup. For the good times.

RD: Ketchup----ketchup…..

(c) 2001 by Garrison Keillor