Blog #4

How are you all?  Everybody good?  I hope so.  I went to get a haircut today, and that always reminds me of my Dad.  My Dad was 96 when he died, and the last couple of those years he was blind and living in a nursing home.  But even blind, he knew the phone numbers of every grandchild and everyone else he needed to call.  He had a black, cordless phone with extra-large push buttons and had no trouble dialing.  Isn’t it interesting that we still say “dialing” even though no-one has dialed for forty years?  Anyway, his phone worked great until he placed the thing in a glass of water instead of its cradle.  He immediately asked me to get him a new one exactly like the old one.  I went to the store and they were out of black, so I bought the same phone in white.  When I plugged it in, he asked me if it was black.  No, I said, it’s white.  He said he didn’t want it.  I reminded him he was blind and couldn’t tell the difference.  He told me to take it back and get a black one.  Now most of you are wondering why I didn’t just lie to him and tell him the white one was really black.  I didn’t because I knew he would have asked the next nurse who came in to tell him what color the phone was.  Don’t ever lie to your dad.

In the place he lived, there was a barber shop and beauty salon in the lobby for the convenience of the residents.  But every three weeks my Dad called a cab and travelled fifteen miles to his barber.  When I asked him why, he said he liked the way his barber did his hair.  I reminded him once again that he was blind and could not see his hair.  “But I can tell,” he said.  And so getting my hair cut reminds me of him.  By the way, I travel about twenty miles to the same barber I have used for decades.  When I worked, I was in a hurry and he was near my office.  Now I’m retired and not in a hurry one bit, so I get in my car and drive past 897 other hair-cutting establishments just to go to my same guy.  He does a good job.  I can tell.

You know, everything I tell you here is the truth.  Sure, there is an obvious joke here and there, but the stories, like the one above, 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.  And who did we mourn the most last year?  Prince!

The Brits actually have an official who is charged with keeping track of all those Royals.  Here’s his latest report:

I give you the Royal Account:

Of Dukes we’ve the proper amount

Prince Consort is there

And Queen’s in her chair

But somehow I may have lost Count.

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 kids’ only problem 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 great-granny is the damn Queen.  (Sorry, Lizzy.  I still love you.)  She is the only person in the world whose father-in-law, husband and son are all in line to be a King, and she is presuming to “relate” with the common woman?  The whole idea makes my back hurt.

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:

Back Beauty                                      Up the Down Steroids

Moby Disc                                         Frankenspine

A Farewell to Backs                           Bonfire of the Vertebrae

Atlas Limped                                     The Pain Mutiny

Fifty Shades of Ouch                         The Andromeda Pain

You are already used to seeing a limerick every week.  Now you’ll need to get used to a funny list every once in a while.  That was one.  I thought it was funny.  I love books and read all the time.  In fact, every morning I go to McDonald’s, drink a Diet Coke and read my book. One morning I was reading 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.”  (Do you know what books start with those lines?  I’ll give the answers at the bottom.)  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, ‘cause this one is “outa here”.

Stay well

See you next week

Answers:   A Tale of Two Cities, Moby Dick, the first Harry Potter book