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If you have a question for Ms. Magnolia, please mail it to P.O. Box 669, Vidalia, GA 30475, or e-mail to msmagnoliaadvance@yahoo.com.

Ms. Magnolia

Reader Dear Reader, I like to refer to Robert Fulghum’s “All I ever needed to know, I learned in Kindergarten.” Here are some highlights: Share everything. Play fair. Don’t hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don’t take things that aren’t yours. Say you are sorry when you hurt somebody. Wash your hands before you eat.

Flush. Live a balanced life. Learn some and think some and draw some and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some. Take a nap every afternoon. When you go out in the world, watch for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.

Wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup? The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why. We are like that. Goldfish and hamsters, and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup, they all die. So do we.

Think of what a better world it would be if we all – the whole world – had cookies and milk about three o’clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had as a basic policy to put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.

And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out in the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

Letters have been edited for length and clarity.

Dear Ms. Magnolia, I am shocked by the lack of manners of people today. I am surrounded by rude people with no regard for other people at all. What can we do?