Blog #421                                April 3, 2025

 

The other day, my granddaughter, Charley (17), gave me and Carol each a Hershey’s kiss.  What a sweetheart!  I ate mine instantly, all 22 calories.  My wife, on the other hand, peeled hers, bit off the tip and threw the rest away.  Who does that?  She barely got one calorie out of it.  It’s like licking a sirloin steak and then giving it to the dog.  It’s like buying one chocolate-covered raisin.  She did that too, you know, a few years ago at a fancy chocolate store.  Not only did she ask the clerk for one raisin, she pointed out which one she wanted, the fat one in the back on the left.  The clerk complied, weighed the lonely little thing and charged us eleven cents.  Who does that?

 

My wife does, that’s who.  She keeps herself in great shape by exercising and by eating only one chocolate-covered raisin every decade.  And she keeps her mind in shape by playing games.  She plays scrabble, bridge and Wordle on line and does Sudoku and crosswords in the paper.  She was doing a crossword the other day and the clue was “Court and Short” – five letters.  She couldn’t get it and asked me.  I said, “Rhyme.”  She asked, “Rhyme?  Why rhyme?”  I said because court and short rhyme.  She said no they don’t.  You see, St. Louis has this funny accent where the number 40 is pronounced farty, the opposite of tall is shart and nobody puts Baby in the carner.  I was raised by a Chicago-an mother, so I don’t have that accent and was able to answer the clue correctly.  It is an ongoing battle between us.

 

I really am sad to report

That my Honey cannot pronounce “short”.

She says “shart” instead

Drives me out of my head,

But I love her with all of my hort.

 

The interesting thing is that my daughters pronounce those words my way.  I guess I was the predominant influence in their lives – the strong, decisive father figure.  (I hope my wife’s not reading this.)  Truth be told, Carol and I have had our share of disagreements in fifty-seven years of marriage, and I have had about as many victories as the Washington Generals.  You see, I have the undergraduate degree in Mathematics, the graduate degree in Law and the Phi Beta Kappa key – but she has the brains.  (Too young to remember the Washington Generals?  Look it up)

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you are feeling well and happy.  What makes you happy?  Well, another granddaughter, Alyssa (19), just texted us a questionnaire to fill out.  It was for her college Sociology class and was about happiness.  She needed input from all age groups, and she chose us because she thinks we’re old enough to be the original cast of The Bible.  My wife and I are both 79 years old, and we look like a 158-year-old couple.  She looks 45 and I look 113.  Hey, mirrors don’t lie.  I just wish mine would stop laughing.  But besides the mirror, there are other nagging little reminders that I have passed my prime.  The main one is that I can’t even remember my prime.  When we were in North Carolina recently, I took my wife to the store to shop. Shopping for clothes is an activity I rate one step below watching C-SPAN and one step above having a tooth pulled without Novocain.  Luckily, I had a volume of short stories by Rudyard Kipling (does that even surprise you by now?) and I went to find a seat.  There were no seats for patient husbands, but near the door were two soft, comfy-looking wheelchairs.  I picked one, relaxed and opened my Rudyard.  Not a minute later, a woman carefully led her shuffling and drowsy mother to the other chair and left her.  And there we were --   the ancient and nearly-comatose woman and me sitting in our wheelchairs.  You don’t have to say it – I know. 

 

Anyway, back to the Sociology questionnaire.  It was about happiness.  One of the questions was to list the following topics in order of how important they are to your happiness:  Money, Friends, Children, Spouse, Job.  My #1 pick, of course, was my spouse.  Carol’s pick was her Friends.  Then her children.  I came in third.  I thought, “Well, third isn’t bad,” but then I recalculated.  Here’s how Carol’s list looks:

 

·        Her 75 closest friends

·        Three children

·        Eight grandchildren

·        Her hairdresser

·        Princess Kate

 

And then there’s me, in 89^th place.  In retrospect, I’m surprised I came in that high.  You see, my greatest pleasure is to mollycoddle my wife.  Mollycoddle, our Weekly Word, means to treat a person with excessive indulgence or attention, and I constantly try to make her happy, while her greatest pleasure is spending time with her friends gossiping and looking for round tables.  You know who you are.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  How bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes (As You Like It). What about me, Pops?  Am I not on your list of things that make you happy?  I follow you around more than she does and I spend more time on your lap than she does.  And I don’t shop.  Purr.

 

I was just looking at Shakespeare and thinking about when we adopted him five years ago, which was right about when Covid started.  Can you believe what we all went through back then?  I mean, who could have imagined a year:

 

·        When entering a bank without a mask was forbidden

·        When, at a family gathering where everyone was smoking pot, the only thing that was illegal was the gathering

·        When the only math the children learned all year was how to measure six feet

·        When finding a needle in a haystack was easier than finding a roll of toilet paper in a grocery store

 

That was five years ago, and yes, Shakespeare, you make me very happy.  Such a good boy.  And you make me happy too, coming back each week to read my silliness.  But I think we’ve reached the upper range of your attention span by now, so I’ll let you go.  Stay well, count your blessings and please come back next week.  I want you to, and that’s from the “hort”.  See you then.

 

#89                                Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

 

Blog #420                                         March 27, 2025

 

Yes, it’s Thursday morning once again and time to read another inimitable Limerick Oyster.  How do I do it every week?  I wonder myself.  But somehow, through travail and hardship, misery and loneliness, sleet and snow, bread and butter, starsky and hutch, gloom and doom – somehow, I get it done.  Let’s start.

 

Let’s start with the Weekly Word, which is inimitable, meaning not capable of being imitated; matchless.  And so I am.  So inimitable, in fact, that I have something named after me.  It’s a cake.  My grandkids call me Poppy and the eponymous cake is called a Poppy Cake.  No, “eponymous” does not mean delicious; it means “named after someone”.  The cake is alternating layers of chocolate wafer cookies and Cool Whip Lite.  My mother used to make it and it was a favorite for me and my daughters. Back then it was called an ice-box cake and used real whipped cream, but times have changed.

 

The first thing that changed was the whipped cream.  It has too much fat and too much cholesterol and too much cream and too much whip and is banned from all foods except mocha Frappuccinos.  So now, instead of wholesome natural cream, we use an industrial paste mixed with air bubbles and sugar.  It’s delicious.  And we use the “Lite” variety to convince ourselves that chocolate cookies surrounded by some Noxzema-looking slime is good for your diet.  And they can’t even spell lite rite.

 

The next thing that changed was the name.  You can’t serve something called “ice-box cake” to a generation who thinks that “ice-box” is a Swedish martial art form.  No, the ice-box is a thing of the past, as dead as the rotary phone, the typewriter and Gene Hackman.  On my birthday I always ask for this delicious cake instead of a standard birthday cake, and somehow my grandkids started calling it Poppy Cake and asking for it on their birthdays.  Now I know for a certainty that fifty years from now, my grandchildren will be making Poppy Cake for their grandchildren and telling them who Poppy was, and each time they do, I will smile.   So go ahead, get eponymous, name something after yourself – Grandma’s cookies, Uncle George’s Secret Handshake, Sally’s Pajamas.  But don’t use the chocolate cookie and Cool Whip cake.  That one’s mine!

 

Message from Shakespeare:  Good name in man and woman, dear my lord, is the immediate jewel of their souls (Othello).  They named some silly poet after me.  I’m sure I had the name Shakespeare first, although Pops usually calls me Pooch.  I sent that Shakespeare dude two plays that I wrote – Taming of the Mew and Purrchant of Venice.  I think he stole them.  Purr.

 

In other news, Spring did not arrive last Friday, which was March 21^st.  Apparently, it was not sufficient to make life easy for everyone and allow the seasons to begin on the 21^st of March, June, September and December.  Now, some busybody scientist has determined that the actual Vernal Equinox (stay with me here, people) occurred on Thursday, the 20^th.  So Vernal this, you uppity scientists and let us poor beggars enjoy our simple, orderly world where:

 

·        The seasons start on the 21^st

·        There are nine planets

·        There’s only one Spiderman

·        It’s the Gulf of Mexico

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling well.  Have you looked at the stock market lately?  Holy Nasdaq, Batman.  The markets have had more highs and lows than a barbershop quartet, and it’s impossible to plan for the future.

 

Each day as I watch the stock ticker

My stomach gets sicker and sicker

I just learned today

From my 401K

That I have to die three years quicker.

 

Just another worry that comes with growing old.  Every day I receive cartoons on the internet depicting old men and women with distended paunches, sagging breasts, drooping jowls and vanishing hair.  None of my friends looks like these exaggerated cartoon characters.  Well, maybe one or two.  And what are these characters doing?  Forgetting things, losing things, tripping over things and using the wrong words.  And what do we old people do?  We laugh.  The cartoons are funny.  We can take it; we can laugh at ourselves.  Keep laughing at yourselves.  The world’s too serious as it is.

 

Besides, we have the Olympics to worry about.  Specifically, the Old-lympics, the games specially created for us oldies and goodies.  They have Pickle-Ball this year and Synchronized Napping and a new event called Sprint-Sprint.  Contestants start in a sitting position with their cellphones on their laps.  The winner is the first to reach his or her internet provider and speak to a live person.  The World Record is currently 47 minutes.  My wife is entering the Pentathlon where contestants must read a book, watch Netflix, play bridge online, talk on the phone and exercise at the same time.  She’s a shoo-in.

 

And, of course, I try to lend a hand to my busy wife.  Retirement gives me plenty of time and I don’t mind doing errands for my wife, whose busy schedule of bridge and canasta and happy hours does not allow her the freedom that my schedule (or lack thereof) allows.  Today she needed three bananas.  Now that may sound simple to you, and if it does it only means you have never purchased bananas before.  You see, the first one has to be 80% yellow, the second 50% yellow and the third 30% yellow, and that causes me a good deal of anxiety.  I don’t want to come home with bad bananas.  So I went and I bought and was so happy with my selection that I held the three yellow and green beauties up next to my face and took a Selfie.  I think they call that a Fruitie.  I texted the pic to my wife so she would know what a great job I did and immediately got this response: “Thanks, but I only wanted three, not four.”  I texted back, “That’s my nose.”

 

And now that prodigious nose has sniffed out the fact that it’s time to go.  Stay well, count your blessings and have a nice weekend.  And don’t forget that Monday is April Fool’s Day.  Ha, I got you.  April Fools!  It’s really Tuesday.  See you next week.

 

Michael                                    Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

 

Blog #419                                March 20, 2025

 

“My Mama didn’t raise no fools.”  Did you ever use that phrase?  “My Mama didn’t raise no fools.”  Besides the horrible grammar, I bet most of you have said it at one time or another.  I have used it a few times, and every time I do, my wife looks me straight in the eye and says, “Are you serious?  Your mother raised three fools.”  She is right, of course.  Fool #1 was my older sister, who was nuts.  She hated doctors, didn’t trust them and never went to one.  She died at the age of 63 from a curable disease.  Fool #2 was my older brother, who was lovable, but outrageously eccentric.  He hated doctors as well and never went to one.  He died at the age of 61 from a different, but also curable, disease.  Fool #3, of course, is me.  My wife says the only smart thing I ever did was marry her.  What The Princess lacks in humility she makes up for in common sense, because she’s right.

 

I admit that I have filled my 79 years with plenty of foolish decisions, but ignoring and avoiding doctors has never been one of them.  Hell, I have enough doctors to populate a cruise ship.  Which, now that I think of it, is not such a crazy idea.  Hire a bunch of doctors and have an Annual Physical Cruise for seniors.  You board the ship at 4:00 p.m. and immediately begin prepping for a colonoscopy which every passenger receives the next morning -- on the Poop Deck, of course.  Afterwards, you recover by the pool surrounded by a gluten-free, low-cholesterol buffet fit for a slender king.  Day two is your choice of a PET Scan, CAT Scan or MRI (open-sided of course so you can look out at the ocean).  Urine samples every night, physical therapy at the piano bar, walker-races on the Bridge, no-one on blood thinner allowed in the Dart Room, defibrillators in every cabin.  And there’s more:

 

We’ll give you a Heart-Cath in Cuba,

A Full Body Scan in Aruba.

Next day we’re at sea

And we’ll replace your knee

So you won’t need a cane when you SCUBA.

 

And it’s all covered by Medicare!

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling well.  Did all you Lads and Lassies enjoy your St. Patrick’s Day?  Now, wait, wait.  I know I just called you girls Lassies, but don’t get insulted.  I didn’t mean that you looked like a dog.  At least I didn’t call you Rin-Tin-Tin.  I had a girlfriend once who was very melancholy.  She had a body like a melon and a face like a collie.  Bada-bing, bada-boom.

 

This week is also Spring Break time, when Florida is packed with Gen Z-ers, the generation between ages 13 and 28.  These are the people who, for 51 weeks a year, without mercy or respect, lecture their grandparents about eating healthy and protecting the environment and spreading love and acceptance.  For the other week, they are down in Daytona Beach getting drunk, smoking pot, beating each other up and polluting the beaches with beer bottles, vomit and condoms.  Thank you, Gen Z, for all your advice.

 

I hope your electricity is on.  Mine isn’t.  On Friday night, St. Louis experienced violent thunderstorms and tornados.  Around 9:00, when the lights went out, Carol and I and a bunch of our neighbors went down to the garage to huddle in fear.  It reminded me of a time, about 7 years ago, when we had our three local grandchildren at the house during a period of tornado warnings.  We all went down into the garage for safety.  Tyler, who was 12, and Austin, who was 8, wanted to go outside and run around in the wind and rain.  Boys, right?  But Charley, my little 10-year-old Princess, was curled up in the back seat of my car.  I went to check up on her, and she said, “Poppy, I can’t believe I’m going to die with my hair looking like this.”  She’s still a Princess, only now she’s 17.

 

I’m writing to you now on Saturday.  The lights are still off, and I can only write until my computer charge runs out.  Carol, my fully grown Princess, has a luncheon today, so she is getting ready with a flashlight and two candles.  She called me back to the bathroom to hold the flashlight while she was applying whatever lotions and potions and sticks and tricks she uses.  And what was the first thing I did when I walked into the bathroom?  I turned on the light switch.  Don’t lie to me, you do the same thing when the lights go out.  It’s just a reflex.  Part of your brain knows that the lights won’t come on, but a different part just flips the switch out of habit.

 

Message from Shakespeare: I say there is no darkness but ignorance (Twelfth Night).  It’s so dark in the house and so quiet.  And so cold.  I like it warm in the house, but when I’m cold, I just go sit on the old man’s lap to warm up.   And get a schnoogle.  Purr.

 

The power finally came on early Tuesday morning.  It was out from 9:00 Friday night until 1:30 Tuesday morning.  We were in bed, asleep under warm covers and, since no lights came on in our bedroom, we were not awakened.  Later, however, I calculated through the application of Fourier transforms and the asymptotic algorithm, along with a trebling of the sidereal azimuth, that the correct time of power access was around 1:30.  Was that gobbledygook to you?  Me too.  The only word you need to know is sidereal, our Weekly Word.  It means relating to the stars and constellations.

 

You already know the word gobbledygook.  I actually used that word in a message to Dr. Aneurism this week.  I had my semi-annual ultra-sound, and they sent the results which could not have been less decipherable if they had been written in Urdu.  So I messaged back to request what all that gobbledygook meant.  They understood, and sent me an explanation.

 

And now, the alignment of the starts (sidereal, remember?) tells me it’s time to go.  I’ll be back, with or without lights, and so will you.  Stay well and count your blessings

 

Michael                                             Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

 

Blog #418                                March 13, 2025

 

I was alone for three days last week as my wife was visiting with friends in Florida.  Wait, I wasn’t exactly alone.  I had Shakespeare, my little buddy.  Sorry, Shakes, I didn’t mean to insult you.  Still, it was a rough three days.

 

When that which you love goes to roam

To Florida, Paris or Nome

When they’re gone, you are sad

When they come home, you’re glad

I’m so happy my hair-dryer’s home.

 

Oops!  Now I’ve insulted my wife too.  Hi there and welcome back.  Let’s see if I can insult all the rest of you.  I hope you’re feeling well.  Let’s get the news out of the way.  First, in the category of Catholic news. it is Lent, a period of prayer and fasting during which Catholics prepare for Easter.  It’s a shame my wife isn’t Catholic.  I guarantee she could fast faster than anyone.  Plus, sure’n Begorrah, if it isn’t St. Patrick’s Day tomorrow!  A Happy Shamrock to you all and may the Blarney Stone kiss you right back.

 

Then Sunday, March 16^th marks the date, eight years ago, that the first Limerick Oyster was published.  People keep asking me how I come up with this stuff every week.  It’s very simple – I haven’t a clue.

 

The 16^th will also be the 5^th anniversary of when we adopted Shakespeare.  Such a good boy!  People ask me why we got a three-legged cat.  Well, here’s the story.  I know you love my stories.  We were at the shelter looking for a cat -- March 16, 2020.  That was right before the world shut down for Covid.  They had shown me three or four cats, and I wasn’t smitten (which rhymes with kitten).  Then the lady came back, holding another candidate, and asked me if I would adopt a tripod.  I asked what that was.  She said a tripod was a three-legged cat.  I immediately said no, and she said, “Ok, just hold this one while I look for another.”  She put the cat in my arms.  The little cat looked at me and I looked at the poor little thing and that was that. As John Galsworthy said in The Man of Property, I have “a heart that was made to be the plaything and beloved resort of tiny, helpless things.”  I told her I wanted the tripod, and the rest is five years of happy history.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  Society is no comfort, to one not sociable (Cymbeline).  I remember that day.  The minute they put me in his arms, I knew he was the one.  He looked so dumb and easy to control.  I could tell by the way his wife had him trained.  And I’m glad he took me.  I have him trained pretty well by now.  And what’s that dog poop about his being alone when Carol was gone?

Alone?  How can he say he was alone?  I was all over him like a cheap suit for three days and never left his side.  Alone, indeed!  Purr.

 

This week, I was driving home at night when a deer ran in front of my car.  I somehow missed hitting him, but it shook me up.  Isn’t it frightening how random and chaotic the world can be?  You just never know when you’ll collide with a deer or be struck by a meteorite or be fired by Elon Musk.

 

Last week, Judy, a friend and loyal reader of L. Oyster, gave me a suggestion.  She thought it would be nice if I volunteered to go to “senior centers” or “nursing homes” or whatever we’re calling them these days.  I had a friend in a very pricy, upscale such place.  He called it The Penitentiary.  Anyway, Judy suggested I could entertain the people there by telling them stories like those I tell you.  I’m going to pass on that suggestion.  I’m afraid if I go in there, they won’t let me leave.

 

I have eight grandchildren in all, and they each seem to have their own special name for me.  They call me Poppy, Pop, Pops, Popcorn, Popsadoodle, Papa and my youngest, when she sees me on Facetime, just says, “Turn him off!”  Well, they can call me anything they want; I love it.  But there is one thing I hate being called.  It was bad enough when I got to my 50s and 60s and the young men would hold the door for me and say, “After you, Sir.”  Sir!  But now it’s worse.  I now have men in their 50s and 60s holding that same door and saying, “After you, young man.”  They think I’m so old that it’s clever to call me “young man”.  It’s like calling a really tall person “Shorty” or a fat person “Slim”.  I’d rather they called me Pops.

 

A few weeks ago, I had a CT scan.  They used to call it a CAT scan, but somewhere the “A” got lost or erased or sent to Siberia, and now it’s just CT.  Does that make sense?  CAT is one syllable.  CT is two.  We seem to have lengthened the word by losing a letter.  In any case, my North Carolina son-in-law, David, is a fancy kind of radiologist and he wanted to see the CT films, so I went to the hospital to grab a copy.  I was directed to a door, above which was a sign that read “Film Library”.  The door was a half-door kind of thing with the top half open, and, upon seeing me, a kid in a white coat came up and said, “Can I help you?” I said, “I’d like a copy of Gone with the Wind.”  Well, it said “Film Library”, and I thought that was kind of funny.   The attendant, however, did not smile, giggle or smirk.  Nothing!  You see, I made my mistake in thinking this impertinent jackanapes had ever heard of Gone with the Wind.  I should have said Power Rangers.

 

That was mean – I admit it.  I’m ashamed of myself and I’m sending myself to my room.  Don’t worry; I’ll be out in time for next week’s blog.  Stay well and count your blessings.  Wait, I bet you want to know what jackanapes means.  It’s our Weekly Word, and it means a rascal or whippersnapper.  I have one more Weekly Word – bye.

 

Michael                                             Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

 

Blog #417                                March 6, 2025

 

Wow!  Blog #417!  It’s really awe inspiring to have you as my loyal readers.  It’s like I am the Master and you are the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.  Wait, that’s immigrants.  Well, what difference does it make?  I don’t believe all this immigrant nonsense anyway.  They say California is overrun with Hispanic immigrants.  I’m not buying it.  I think it’s the street signs that make everybody talk with an accent.  My middle daughter lives in the Berkeley area, and to get from her house to the nearest McDonald’s I had to drive down Cerrito, left on Solano, right on San Pablo.  By the time I got to McDonald’s I was talking like Speedy Gonzalez.  “Cerrito solano san pablo.  Àndale àndale epa epa!”  They gave me some very strange looks – and a Diet Coke, so I must have said it right.

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you had a nice Fat Tuesday and Ash Wednesday and are feeling lovely.  Don’t forget that on Saturday, you will need to change to Daylight Savings Time.  I’m not really good at either Springing Forward or Falling Back, although I am becoming an expert at Lying Down.  So when I get up on Sunday, I won’t be sure whether it’s 6:30 or 8:30 or even Sunday.  In Arizona, they don’t change the clocks.  They know how to keep time in Arizona.  And it’s a dry time too.

 

I am now back from my little trip.  Well, I can’t call it a trip.  It was a cruise.  You see, you have to learn a whole new vocabulary when you go sailing or suffer draconian consequences.  The first thing I asked was what floor we were on.  The nice cruise employee gave me an icy look and a lecture:

 

You call it a deck, not a floor

Your room is a cabin, what’s more

For the time you’re afloat

You say ship, and not boat

Or we’ll throw your dumb fat ass ashore.

 

The ship was the size of Delaware, only taller.  One morning, I watched the captain maneuver this behemoth into port in Nassau.  Now, I don’t know the actual dimensions of the ship, but one afternoon after lunch, I walked from the dining room to my cabin and arrived just in time to leave for dinner.  The captain must have owned a pickup truck, because he backed the ship into a slot between the dock and another ship and left it two feet from the dock—perfect!  I can’t parallel park my Corolla into a space big enough for an eighteen-wheeler, so I was impressed.

 

We all, our group of twenty, had a very nice time on the cruise and behaved as was expected for a group our age – no-one ever put on a bathing suit and we all were in bed by ten.

 

Our Weekly Word today is draconian which means extremely severe or cruel.  Like corporal punishment or the death penalty or being forced to watch Trump’s speech last Tuesday.

 

As I said, I’m home now, but Carol is not.  She stayed a few days extra with some friends, so for three nights it was just us boys -- a three-legged cat and a two-footed fool.  Of course I missed my wife, but it was also nerve-racking to know that if something went wrong, there was no-one there to help me.  But really, what could possibly go wrong?  I mean, was I going to break a glass on the kitchen floor? (That happened the first night.)  Or pull the faucet handle off the sink? (Second night.)  Or cut myself and start bleeding on my khakis?  (Yes, the third night.) 

 

And besides, she had the hair-dryer.  But I improvised and was very proud of my bad self.  I have a small space heater in the bathroom, so I turned it on and let it blow hot air on my head while I brushed.  Did it work?  Damned straight!  And so was my hair.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  Journeys end in lovers meeting (Twelfth Night). I’m so glad Pops is home.  I was lonely.  Now I have a warm lap to sit on and a warm body to sleep next to.  It’s too bad he had a good time.  That means he might go away again.  Purr.

 

Every week, besides the Weekly Word, I like to share a piece of fascinating and useful information with you.  Here it is.  According to Fermat’s Second to Last Theorem, it is mathematically impossible to get all of the little rings out of a can of SpaghettiOs.  No matter how much time, strength, energy and guile you apply, there will always be at least one little sucker stuck to the side of the can or dangling from the rim.  Believe it.

 

I love books and read all the time.  One morning, I was reading at McDonald’s when a woman approached me.  “Oh,” she said, “you’re at the end.  That’s always the best part.”  I don’t think the end of a book is the best part, unless you hate the book and are glad that it’s over.  The best part of a good book is the beginning.  That’s where the author grabs you and seduces you and twirls you about his finger and shows you something you’ve never seen before or never seen quite that way.  It is where you open a book, caress its pages in excitement and anticipation and read “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” or “Call me Ishmael” or “Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal.”  The end of a good book is almost never the best part.  It’s where the mystery that has been tantalizing you for hundreds of pages disappears.  It’s where the characters you have grown to love or to hate or to fear or admire all say goodbye forever.  It’s where the true joy you have had for days or weeks ends.  But there’s always the next book.

 

And there’s always the next blog.  Don’t you dare miss it.  And, while you’re waiting, stay well and count those blessings. The opening lines of books I mentioned above are from A Tale of Two Cities, Moby Dick and the first Harry Potter book. 

 

Michael                                    Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

  

 

Blog #416                                February 27, 2025

 

I got on an elevator the other day along with another man – tall, big, 40ish.  In other times, you would look at the person, smile, nod your head, maybe say an innocuous word or two.  Not anymore.  Now, you can’t even make eye contact because everyone is reading a device.  They are reading their texts or their emails or their Twitter or Limerick Oyster.  What have we become when we no longer interact with the people around us?  We have become a sad and robotic society.  Social media has made us anti-social.  Obviously, Mr. Big-Tall-40ish and I did not communicate.  His loss.  Maybe mine too.

 

But, later that day, I went to get a blood test.  I hate blood tests.  Even somebody else’s blood test!  When the young man began to take my blood, he asked me about my book.  I had a book. Is there ever a time when I’m without a book?  Is there ever a day when a mattress is not on sale?  I sat with this young man for 15 minutes after he was finished.  We talked about books and his job and his trip to the Grand Canyon.  What a pleasure.  I didn’t want to leave.  He didn’t want me to leave.  Simple, friendly, social contact.  If you’re ever down on people and need a lift, just go get your blood taken.  It’s fun.

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling well.  Tomorrow Carol and I are going to sea.  No, not a three-hour tour on the Minnow with a rotund and jolly Skipper.  Not a three-year voyage on the Pequod with a wretched and maniacal Ahab.  We will be embarking instead on a three-day cruise to Key West and the Bahamas.  I am certainly relishing a chance to get away from the freezing winter in St. Louis, but I do harbor (there’s a nautical term for you) a good deal of trepidation about traveling.

 

Carol and I travel almost every year to Naples to visit friends, then to Carol’s sister in West Palm and up to my daughter in North Carolina, but it always makes me anxious when I go out of town.  And for good reason.  Once, when I was out of town, I had quadruple bypass surgery.  Another time I was in the hospital with pneumonia.  Another time I was hit with a urinary infection.  I think I have a new plan:

 

Whenever I travel I dread

Winding up in a hospital bed

I’m thinking next year

I should leave my wife here

And take all my doctors instead.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  Now I am alone. O, what a rogue and peasant slave I am! (Hamlet).  Why doesn’t he take me?  I hate being alone.  My neighbors come by and feed me and pet me, but I’m so sad.  Send him home soon.  Purr.

 

You know, everything I tell you here is the truth.  Sure, there is an obvious joke here and there, but the stories I tell you are true.  And I know you can tell they are.  There is something about the truth that makes itself understood.  I don’t have to make up funny things; much of life is funny.  You just have to listen.

 

For instance, I heard a funny thing on the TV the other day.  It was Princess Kate advising other women how to be a good mother.  We all love Princess Kate, don’t we?  She’s pretty and the kids are cute and – they’re Royalty.  Here in the Colonies, we love the English Royalty.  I mean -- Downton Abbey!  We loved Princess Di; we adored her as if she were our own Princess.  And now we adore Princess Kate.  But not satisfied with pretty little princesses from across the Pond; we try to create our own royalty.  When I was growing up, we worshipped Elvis Presley, so we called him The King.  And John Wayne – he was the Duke.  Even today, well, would you go to see a singer named Stefani Gaga?  Of course not!  But call her Lady and she’s a star.  How about Dana Latifah?  No chance.  But call her Queen and she makes the big bucks. 

 

But I digress.  I passed up the major point which was:  Princess Kate is telling us how to raise our children!  Are you kidding me?  Her children are never woebegone.  Their only trauma is that on Tuesdays and Thursdays they have to share the same palace.  Raise her children?  She doesn’t raise her children; they have nannies, maids, tutors, riding coaches, voice coaches, piano teachers and, of course, royalty coaches.  And besides, they’re grandfather is the King.  Kate is the only person in the world whose father-in-law, husband and son are all a King or in line to be a King, and she is presuming to “relate” with the common woman?  Nobody in my family is a king, although I do have a queen and a few princesses.  And I am the poor Court Jester, just a silly fool in a funny hat.

 

Weekly Word:  Woebegone means sad or miserable.

 

I finished a book the other day, and the ending made me cry.  I’m not embarrassed.  A lot of things make me cry:

 

·        The ending of Puff the Magic Dragon

·        The ending of The Miracle Worker

·        Every episode of The View.

 

Now I’m looking for a new book.  I have a bad back.  Do you have a bad back?  I hope not, but if you are vertical long enough, your back gets messy.  So I looked on Amazon for books about bad backs.  Here’s what I found:

                            

Moby Disc                                         Frankenspine

A Farewell to Backs                           Bonfire of the Vertebrae

Atlas Limped                                     Up the Down Steroids

Fifty Shades of Ouch                         The Andromeda Pain

 

Have you noticed that this is Blog #416?  Do you know what that means?  Well, to those of you who thought 2^nd Grade was the best three years of your life, let me explain:  416 blogs in 416 weeks; divide by 52 weeks in a year and you have eight years of blogging and whining and rhyming and scolding.  How could you have put up with it all?  You deserve a medal.  And I deserve a rest.  But no, your indefatigable correspondent will faithfully plod onward and be back next week.  Be there.  Stay well and count your blessings.

 

Michael                                    Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com