Blog #441                                August 21, 2025

 

Women have this crazy yearning to invent what they call Thought Questions, like “Would you rather be unattractive and rich or gorgeous and poor?”  They always answer that they’d rather be rich and gorgeous, thereby avoiding the thought component of the exercise.  I was the target of one of those questions the other day: Here it is: Had I been a better father or grandfather?  Well, I’d like to believe I am still a good father.  You don’t stop being a father just because you become a grandfather.  I love my daughters.  I hurt when they hurt and smile when they smile and am always excited to see them or talk to them.  Even the two ingrates who abandoned me and moved out of town.  So yes, I think I am a good Poppy, but I’m still a proud and devoted Daddy.

 

I’m also a proud and devoted story teller, so let’s get started.  Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling well.  We’re back from our visit to Boulder.  We had a great time.  I saw a sign in Boulder at some kind of community center.  It read:

 

WE WELCOME:

ALL races and ethnicities

ALL religions

ALL countries of origin

ALL gender identities

ALL sexual orientations

ALL abilities and disabilities

ALL spoken languages

ALL ages.

 

This was a real sign and a wonderful thought, but wouldn’t it have been better just to say Everyone’s welcome?  Why list every category of people’s differences?  And if you’ve gone that far, what’s to stop more additions to the list, like:

 

ALL insy and outsy belly buttons 

ALL people who pull their toilet paper from the top and all those who pull it from the bottom

ALL Coke drinkers and all Diet Coke drinkers

But not Pepsi drinkers

 

The drive home from Colorado included five or so hours in Kansas.  I enjoyed the scenery in Kansas.  It’s the Great Plains, the heart of America, the vast, glorious, open, fertile expanse where the deer and the antelope play.  It became, and still is, the breadbasket of our nation, and as we drove, we saw miles and miles of open grazing land and cultivated corn and soy beans.  Almost no signs of civilization, clean and open prairie.  I loved it.

 

We stopped for gasoline at a Quik Trip (QT).  I grabbed a juicy grilled hotdog from the rotisserie, a large Diet Coke and a package of four Oreos.  It was a satisfying, even delicious dinner and cost me exactly $5.57.  And the employees at Quik Trip all looked and behaved like they had graduated from Princeton.  Is this a great country or what!

 

Near the QT was a prison.  I think it had a Death Row because there was a nice-looking medical clinic attached.  You know, being on Death Row is the safest place to be in the country.  First, the nation’s correctional system is extremely cautious about the health of its Death Row inmates.  Their motto is: We don’t want y’all to die until we want y’all to die.  They also have a sign:

 

Don’t smoke while you’re lying in bed

Don’t fall – you might injure your head

Stay safe and be well

‘Til you’re pulled from your cell

And hanged by the neck until dead.

 

And second, being on Death Row guarantees you will live a healthy life for thirty more years.  Why does it always take thirty years after the murder to perform the execution?

 

Let’s talk apples.  There are more than 7,500 varieties of apples.  And just among the varieties you can find in American grocery stores, they range from Earligolds and Liberty and Jazz, Keepsakes, Sundance and York York to Ashmead’s Kernel.  And I don’t know my Ashmead’s Kernel from a hole in the ground.  So, there I am in Walmart when the phone rings.  “Pick up a couple of Fuji apples,” says the Apple of my Eye.  Sounds easy, doesn’t it?  Except that Walmart has chosen not to label their apples.  There was a bag marked Golden Delicious and a bag marked Granny Smith, but the loose apples had no labels.  Am I supposed to know what a Fuji looks like?  Even more pertinent, am I supposed to be able to find a Walmart employee?  I hear they have a million and a half of them, but finding one is harder than finding Whoopi Goldberg and JD Vance doing the tango.

 

Anyway, I picked up two dark red apples with a big crown and a narrow bottom.  That was wrong of course; apples are not fungible.  But today the God of Useless Husbands must have been looking down on me because help arrived.  A daughter called.  I asked her if she knew what a Fuji looked like.  Well of course she did and led me right there.  Whew!  The God of Useless Husbands, as you know, is not Jupiter.  It’s his brother, Stupider.

 

Grocery shopping is not for the ill-informed.  Even if I am armed with written descriptions of the product, color photographs and Martha Stewart, I always get it wrong.   “I wanted Italian, not Creamy Italian.  And BBQ sauce without salt, but Soy Sauce with salt.  And you bought the cheap toilet paper!  Is that what you think of me?”   But then she tries to make me feel better.  “But you did really well on the potatoes.  I asked for two and you got two. Good job.”  I was always good at Math.  Why is it that women are somehow born with the genes for identifying Fuji apples, sewing and picking out curtains whereas men are born with the genes for fishing, killing spiders and putting up curtains?  Actually, I can’t answer that because I am horrible at fishing, killing spiders and putting up curtains.  The last time I tried, I broke the window.

 

Message from Shakespeare, the three-legged cat:  When I do count the clock that tells the time (Sonnet 12).  I’m good at math too.  I can count to three.  I used to be able to count to four until they cut one of my legs off.  Purr.

 

I admit to being a bit garrulous today.  Garrulous, our Weekly Word, means

excessively talkative, especially on trivial matters, and I have thus run out of space.  So I’ll say goodbye.  Have a nice week, stay well and count your blessings.

 

Michael                                    Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com