Blog #8

Welcome back.  How are you?  I’m good.  You know, I have many friends who are doctors, my son-in-law is a doctor and all my doctors are doctors.  And I have great respect for their dedication and for the time and effort they invested to earn their degrees.  Having said that, I have a little bone to pick with doctors.  And it ain’t no metatarsal.  My wife and I belong to a country club and in the lobby there is a big board with a list of all the members.  The names are in alphabetical order: John Ames, Frederick Atwater, Rocky Balboa, etc.  But any member who is a doctor has an MD after his name.  You have every right to be proud of what you have accomplished, but this is a country club -- a group of folks who want to get together to eat, drink and play golf  -- and nobody gives a rat’s divot if you are a doctor or not.  Yes, you’re successful and rich and highly trained and all that, but so is a plumber or an accountant or a guy who sells ice-melt, but you don’t see their professions plastered after their names.  And some members have DDS after their name.  Seriously?  One guy even has DVM.  Now that’s insulting.  And bottom line, nobody cares what you are.  You’re just Fred or Joe or Sally.  Take all those letters away from your name and put up your handicap instead.  Then we’ll see how proud you are.

Now I hope all you doctors, dentists, and dog-groomers out there don’t get mad at me, especially Dr. Ken who just went above and beyond to do me a generous and caring favor.  I know what the MD stands for after his name – Mighty Decent.

Last night my wife went out to dinner with “the girls”.  It was Happy Hour at the gas station or something.  For a bunch of old women who can barely tolerate half a glass of wine, they sure don’t miss a Happy Hour.  Which makes me think of cemeteries.  You probably have figured out by now that I have a warped and unpredictable thought process.  Some people have a train of thought; I have a train wreck.  Anyway, it occurs to me that most people really don’t want to trudge out in the weather to visit an old grave in a depressing cemetery.  I sure don’t.  So here’s the light bulb!  Let’s bury our loved ones indoors, in a big warehouse, and then turn it into a bar.  Every night we could have a special memorial time called Sad Hour where we pay respects to Grandma and eat half-priced calamari at the same time.  Hey, that’s where I want to be when I’m gone.  At least I know my widow will be thinking of me over a chilled Chardonnay and a fried artichoke.  “C’mon, girls, I need a drink; let’s go visit what’s his name.”   And she could drink a toast to my memory while laying shrimp tails and empty mussel shells on my plaque.  We’ll call the place “Shots & Plots” or “Tears with Beers” or something goofy  like that.  I told you I was warped.

But that’s ok.  I mean, what are we here for anyway?  To have fun?  To make money?  No, I think we’re here to leave a part of ourselves in the memories of others.  Your loved ones still live in the memories you have of them; you know they do.  And you will live in the memories you leave behind:

“Wasn’t Grandma terrific!”

“I remember how Grandpa used to play baseball with me.”

“My Mom was such a good cook!”

“My Dad had a warped and unpredictable thought process.”

Well, some memories are better than others.

You know, there are some things I just don’t do.  I do not eat kale; I do not drink alcohol; and I do not fish.  I had dinner the other night with my friend Harmon and he asked me to go fishing with him.  “I’ll go,” I said, “but I won’t fish.  I don’t feel the need to torture little animals just because I have nothing else to do.”  He assured me that the hook really doesn’t hurt the fish, so I told him that when I see him stick a hook through his own upper lip, pull it out and smile – then I’ll go fishing.  I have not heard from him since.

The other day I was with my nine-year-old granddaughter, Charley.  She was practicing being grown up by putting on some lipstick.  She looked up, struck a pose and said, “I’m just like Nonnie.”   I told her, “You’re a very lucky little girl if you’re just like Nonnie.”  And she replied, “That’s cause I get to marry someone like you.”  It was all I could do to keep from collapsing into a puddle.

I had to ask Google whether “nine-year-old” should have hyphens.  I love Google.  Anything you want to know is right there.  It’s wonderful.  Before there was Google, there was my big brother.  He knew everything.  If we were sitting around wondering what Queen Elizabeth carried in her purse, we would just call Uncle Ricky.  He would always know.  Now we have Google and we don’t have him.  I miss him.  By the way, Lizzy has lipstick, handkerchief, a £10 note to place as an offering at Church on Sunday and a little suction cup with a hook.  She takes it out of her purse, moistens it with spit and then sticks it to the underside of the table.  She then hangs her purse on the hook.  Really!  If you don’t believe me, call my brother.

The big news today was that 41% of Americans are obese.  I thought we had gotten past those harsh, accusatory words like “obese”.  We don’t say “illegal aliens” any more.  Now it’s “undocumented immigrants”.  We don’t use “handicapped”, substituting “challenged” instead.  It’s time we got rid of the hateful word “obese”.  I have a modest suggestion:

When words are just too filled with hate

A substitute term we’ll create,

So from now on we’ll cease

Calling people “obese”;

We’ll just say they’re “short for their weight”.

Did you know that 41% of Americans are short for their weight?  I’ll bet you thought you were going to get out of here without a limerick.  Not a chance. 

And speaking of politically correct phrases makes me think of my Dad.  He was brought up in the 20s and 30s and had to struggle sometimes to adapt to the new terminology.  In 1994 when Nelson Mandela became President of South Africa, my Dad said to me, “What do you think about South Africa electing an African-American president?”  I replied, “Dad, he’s not an African-American; he’s an African-African.”  He smiled.  And I hope you smiled a little while reading this.

Stay well and come back next week.

Michael

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