Blog #7

Do you have something named after you?  I have a cake.  Hi there and welcome back.  Are you doing ok?  I hope so!  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”.  What a great word.  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 whipped 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 people who think 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 Michael Jackson.  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 sixty 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!

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.  Do not ever 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.”

The other day, my granddaughter, Charley, gave me and Nonnie (that’s my wife) each a Hershey’s kiss.  What a sweetheart she is.  I ate mine instantly, all 22 calories.  Nonnie 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 nicely-clad clerk for one raisin, she instructed said clerk to grab a particular one, the fat one in the back row 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 Candy Crush 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 all my daughters pronounce those words my way.  I guess I was the predominant influence in their lives – the strong, powerful, decisive father figure.  (Ooo, I hope my wife’s not reading this.)  Truth be told, Carol and I have had our share of arguments in almost fifty 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)

I’m rambling here with a lot of disjointed thoughts, but that’s ok.  Here’s another.  At the Zoo the other day I encountered a big Canada goose wandering about the outdoor food-seating area begging for scraps of bread.  This is a big animal, 15 lbs., and often testy, and I did not want the young kids getting snapped at. They can’t get bitten because birds don’t have teeth.  Did you know that?  Aren’t you glad you have me to keep you informed?  Birds do not chew, they swallow.  I had an uncle like that.  Anyway, there I was, a limping old fool trying to scare away this aggressive bird who thought I was a – well, a limping old fool.  It worked for a while but when I was gone he came right back.  I tried.  I’m not sure I would have been so brave if it had been a bear or a hyena.  A fifteen pound toothless bird is about at the upper range of my bravery.

And I think we’ve reached the upper range of your attention span, so I’ll let you go.  But I want you to name something after yourself.   Go from anonymous to eponymous.  And please come back next week.  I want you to, and that’s from the “hort”.  See you then.

Stay well,

Michael

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