Blog #16

My two youngest grandchildren are in California.  They are both adorable, but they are far away and don’t see us very often.  Mostly they see us on FaceTime, and I really believe Lucy and Parker think we’re a TV show.  Our faces are always on the screen, where they can turn us off or mute us.  We’re just another video.  The last time Lucy saw us on FaceTime, she just yelled, “Turn them off”, but Parker straightened her out:

That’s Mama’s old mother and dad.

When they say goodbye I’ll be glad.

They wave and blow kisses

And how boring this is!

I’d much rather watch Breaking Bad.

We need to have TV shows about old people that would appeal to the young, like Game of Crones or maybe Wrinkled is the New Smooth.  Or how about Breaking Wind.

Ok, aren’t you glad that’s over?  Get that silly limerick out of the way and we can get to business.  Welcome back.  Hope you are all feeling peachy!  I feel good, but my back is hurting.  Today . . .  ok, I think this is the time to talk about time.  I am writing this three weeks before you get to read it.  What, do you think I just pop into my study on Wednesday night and vomit out 1,150 words of delightful entertainment?  It takes hours and days and weeks of back-breaking work (maybe that’s why my back hurts) to keep you smiling.  You’re a tough group, so when I write “today”, it may not exactly be today.  Got it?

Today there is a golf outing about 40 miles from here, and we were invited.  I’m not playing because of my back, but I am driving out later for dinner, and I will pick up two others who are also physically not up to the golf.  I guess that makes me the Designated Cripple.  A sad title, to be sure.  But there are worse, like “The Late Designated Cripple”.  Oh, oh – I am late.  I’d better get going.

After dinner most nights I begin my evening activities, which mostly consist of finding a room in which my wife is not watching television.  Oops, too late.  She has both televisions blasting on different channels.  I searched for reasons not to blow my brains out and I found one – writing to you.  I like it, and you do too, I guess.  What a perfect match.

The Zoo was packed with a few thousand people.  They were all shapes and sizes.  They were black and white and Asian and everything else.  There were women in halters and shorts, women in hijabs, girls in Catholic school uniforms.  Young couples abounded, some holding hands, some pushing strollers.  They were of every combination: black and white, purple and orange, tall and short, striped and polka-dot.  And not one of them wanted to blow anything up or shoot anybody.  No-one cared about the color or religion or sexual orientation of the people next to them.  Everyone was polite and excited and hungry.  And all the kids behaved themselves. They made faces at the lemurs, followed the strolling lamas like rats following the Pied Piper and ate everything they could wheedle out of their parents.  And for a few hours everyone forgot about their job or the bully at school or their mother-in-law or the bills they couldn’t pay.  Everyone enjoyed the weather and the animals and even the old man with the green sash who gave them directions. When I’m at the Zoo I cannot resist an upwelling of love and faith in humanity.  Then I leave, turn on the car radio, listen to the news and realize how wrong I was.  It’s a shame we can’t all go to the Zoo.  The animals would love it if we do.

My wife was just talking to a friend who wanted to come over and pick up a book.  Carol said, “Just call when you get to the front and I’ll send Michael up with the book.”   Send Michael up with the book?  What am I, the Chinese butler in Auntie Mame?  I’ll send Hop Sing up with the book.  Oh, Hop Sing doesn’t care where we eat.  Oh, I’ll have Hop Sing pick up the movie tickets early.  Oh, Hop Sing, can you drop me off at the door; it’s raining.  Now don’t get all Alex Trebek on me because the Chinese butler in Auntie Mame was actually Ito.  I know that, but I like the name Hop Sing better.  Hop Sing was the cook on Ponderosa, and, speaking of Ponderosa, can you name all three Cartwright brothers?

Let me tell you a story about a plunger.  “What?” I hear you moan.  Bear with me now, I’ll talk fast.  We have a plunger.  Everybody has a plunger.  I have no great place to put it, so I just keep it in a corner.  But I noticed that it had accumulated some mold or slime or some je ne sais quoi (it’s a French plunger), so I asked my wife to give me her Martha Stewart advice.  Should I soak it in bleach?  How much bleach should I use?  Can I use the bucket?  Do we have a bucket?  How long should I soak it?  I figured she would know what to do.  And she did.  She looked at it for two milliseconds and said, “Throw that disgusting thing out and buy a new one for three dollars.”  Simple enough.  Why didn’t I think of that?

My wife does not sleep well.  I do not have that problem and feel very sorry for her.  I have a sleeping pill that I take every night and it works.  I have suggested that she try going to the Opera, but instead she keeps trying new cocktails and stratagems, all suggested by her Voodoo friends who are quick to give her a list of things to try, none of which has ever worked for them.  “I take organic cherry juice and I never sleep.  You should try it.”  Each night she lays out a pill to take when she wakes up at 2:00 a.m.  It cannot, to my simple and well-rested mind, be a good strategy to plan to get up in the middle of the night in order to take a sleeping pill.  So yesterday Vicki, the head gypsy, whom I call Mama Doc, told her about white noise, random sounds that she could find on her iPhone.  Having selected three different ones and unable to decide which was best, she played all three simultaneously: screeching psychotic birds, torrential tropical monsoons and another that was just loud.  Amid the cawing, dripping and screaming – she could not sleep, and neither could I.  The next day I called Mama Doc to ask her if this cacophony of Muzak actually helped her sleep.  “Hell no,” she confessed, “but it keeps my husband up all night.  Why should he sleep if I can’t?”

I need a nap.  You probably do too, so I’ll let you go.  Stay well.  See you next week.

Hop Sing             

Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

(Adam, Hoss and Little Joe)

Blog #15

My wife’s having a birthday soon.  Birthdays at our age are fun, but lurking behind the merriment is the realization that we are now one year closer to all the stuff we don’t want to be closer to.  Grandkids are different; they want to get older. 

 

Kid:  Yay! Another year closer to getting my driver’s license. 

Grandparent:  Oy! Another year closer to losing my driver’s license.

Kid:  Yay! Another year closer to moving into a home of my own.

Grandparent:  Oy! Another year closer to moving into a home.

Kid:  Yay! I’m getting taller. 

Grandparent: Oy! I’m getting shorter.

Kid:  Yay! I’m growing up so fast.

Grandparent:  Oy! He’s growing up so fast.

Those young people certainly have lots of dreams, but when you get old, you realize that maybe your dreams are not going to come true after all.  But – you do what you do and you make the best of what you have and as my wise old father used to say, “You count your blessings.”

The senior years really don’t have to be bad at all.  There’s plenty of fun out there and always new things to learn, no matter how old you are.  It’s Summer now and I had some grandkids out swimming.  At the pool was an old man walking laps in the water.  I heard him tell someone he was 95.  God love him!  I showed the kids that if you take one of those Styrofoam noodles and hold one end over one of the underwater jets, then water will shoot out the other end.  They loved it.  After fifteen minutes or so I looked over, and there was the 95-year-old guy holding a noodle and making the water spurt out.  You’re never too old to enjoy being a kid.

Then there was a gaggle of elderly women in the pool.  You know, I’m not fond of the word “elderly”.   It’s so – ancient.  Let’s jettison the E word and just say these women were “of an age”.  The conversation among them was about how many miles they walk every day.  When I heard one say that she walks five miles each day, I just couldn’t resist.  I interjected myself and said, “I tried walking five miles a day for a week once, but I wound up 35 miles from home.”  Not even a giggle.  Their ears must have been waterlogged.

Hi there and welcome back.  Hope you’re well, whether you are a teenager or “of an age”.   A friend of mine had a little episode the other day.  She wound up at the hospital where the doctor told her . . .  Well, let’s start by saying what the doctor should have told her.  The doctor should have said, “Your heart started beating too fast; could have been caused by a lot of things.  We’ll keep an eye on it.”  Plain, non-threatening English.  What the doctor actually said was, “You have Paroxysmal Atrial Tachycardia.”  I’ve picked on you doctors before and now I’m going to do it again.  Remember your oath?  “Do no harm” it says.  First of all, scaring the crap out of your patient is harmful.  Second, using a bunch of indigestible words that only doctors can understand is insulting.  Don’t tell me my temperature is 39 and don’t tell me I have mumbo-jumbo-itis.  Speak English!  I think if doctors didn’t have to learn all that gobbledygook, they could graduate medical school in eighteen months.

The first time I visited Dr. Blood, he told me I had Monoclonal B-Cell Lymphocytosis.  I turned to him and calmly replied, “Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe.”  Aha!  Now we both understood each other that neither one of us understood each other, and we proceeded to speak English.  Try it sometime.  Your doctor will get the message.  By the way, the monoclonal stuff is just some heebie-jeebie thing in my blood that nobody has to worry about.  Is heebie-jeebie a medical term?  I bet it is.

Do you have a dog?  My, we’re just flying from swimming pools to doctors to dogs.  Strap yourself in.  Jennifer in North Carolina has three dogs.  I remember taking her oldest, Micah, out on a leash.  A dog’s morning walk is akin to your reading the morning newspaper.  If only Micah could talk: “Ok, Pops, a doe crossed over here this morning with her fawn.  Boy they smell good.  And look, it’s trash day.  Sassy’s humans had meatballs last night for dinner.  I bet they didn’t give Sassy any.  And ooh, ooh, look over here, Pops.  A squirrel was here not more than a few minutes ago.  Can you smell it?  No, I guess you can’t.  What a primitive species you humans are!   I can see better than you, hear better than you, certainly smell better.  And I can run faster too.  I’m the one who should be holding the leash.  Look, there’s Rocco.  Hi, Rocco.  Nice day to be walking your human, isn’t it?  Yah, this one’s just babysitting.  He’s old.  Oh, thanks.  Your butt smells nice too.”

Those humans shake hands, which is nuts.

That’s just not an option for mutts.

We’ve no hands, you know

So when we say hello

We do it by sniffing our butts.

How could you possibly have imagined when you awoke this morning that you would be reading such a thing?  Well, that’s what you get for hanging with me.  Glad you’re along for the ride. 

At McDonald’s there is a woman “of an age” lingering around the outside, welcoming patrons, directing traffic and generally being joyful and upbeat.  Her name is Bonnie.  Today we had this discussion:  Bonnie started with

Hello, Darling, and how are you today?

          I’m fine, Bonnie.  How are you?

          I’m good, Sweetie.  And very thankful to the Man upstairs.

          But Bonnie, what if it’s really a Woman upstairs?

          Then God help us all.

Ok, I have just insulted all my women readers.  Let’s move on to the men.

At the Zoo I saw two men looking over a map while their companions (wives? girlfriends? parole officers?) watched.  I walked up and offered my services.  No, the men said, we have it figured out.  I turned toward the distaff half and said, “Men never accept directions.  Come see me when they’re lost.”  C’mon, men, you know I’m right.  We never accept directions. “Siri be damned, I know how to get there.”  Really?  You don’t know where your reading glasses are.  You barely know where the bathroom is.  And how many times have you lost your car in the  parking lot?  We, as husbands, have learned how to say yes to everything.  Yes. Dear.  Yes, Honey.  Whatever you want, Cupcake.  Except, “Let’s ask directions.”  We would sooner be spayed than ask directions.  I’m a man!  I know what I’m doing!  And what do we do when we finally and inevitably get lost?  We start yelling at our wives, as if they had anything to do with our galactic idiocy.  I’d better stop; my wife is calling.  Yes, Dear.

Stay well; see you next week.  Don’t get lost.

Michael                                    Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

Blog #14

You’re Special!  That’s what the little pamphlet that was hidden in my library book said.  It went on with some religious stuff, and that’s ok, but it was just nice to be told that I was special.  So, listen up – you’re special.  You take the time each week to read my silly ramblings and that makes you special to me.  Welcome back.  I hope you’re doing well.

I have had many readers ask me where I get all the humorous stories I share with you.  Well, life is funny.  Plenty of humorous things happen around you all the time.  You just need someone to point out a different way of looking at them.  Henry David Thoreau said, “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”

Take The Gift of the Magi for instance, that heart-wrenching short story by O Henry. You know the plot.  A young married couple is very much in love but also very much in poverty.  She wants to buy him a silver chain for his cherished pocket watch, a gift from his grandfather, but she has no money, so she cuts her long, beautiful hair and sells it to a wig maker to get the money for the chain.  Meanwhile, he wants to buy her a set of ornate combs for her long hair but all he has is the watch.  He sells it and buys the combs.  A classic and sad tale.  Sad?  Not one bit.  Just fast-forward six months.  The girl’s hair has grown back and she still has the combs.  Plus, she returned the silver watch chain and got her money back.  So now she has her long hair and the combs and a fist full of money.  And the boy, the poor dumb schmuck, he doesn’t even know what time it is.  But he’s happy.  He has a loving wife with a fist-full of money and beautiful hair – and big combs.

W. C. Fields, one of the best known and most audacious movie personalities of the early 20^th century, was known to drink a bit.  One night at a party, a matronly woman said, “Mr. Fields, you are disgustingly drunk.”  “Yes, Madam,” he replied, “I am disgustingly drunk and you are disgustingly ugly.  But tomorrow I shall be sober.”

I remember when arcade video games came out.  We got an Atari in 1975 or so, and I remember two games I liked – Pong and Breakout.  That was a long time ago.  Now, kids are obsessed with all the games on Wii or Xbox or on a million phone aps.  My nine-year-old granddaughter, Charley, dragged me down in her basement the other day to show me her Wii.  “Look Poppy,” she said, and showed me a new game character she had created.  It was called Poppy and wore a yellow shirt (my favorite color) and had gray hair.  It also had an excessive collection of wrinkles.  I turned to Charley and asked if all those wrinkles were necessary.  She examined my face closely, smiled and said, “Yes.”  That’s ok, a grandfather is someone with silver in his hair and gold in his heart.  I watched her play a game with the new character.  There he was, wrinkles and all, limping around the course and taking all the wrong exits.  Go, Poppy! 

Do you recycle?  I mean I love the planet and I hate to waste, but today you need an engineering degree to know how to recycle.  My sweet daughter Stephanie in California has four containers in the kitchen (well, it’s California!).  I can’t remember what each one is for, but when we visit I always bring an empty suitcase just to put my trash in.  I can’t risk putting a compost item into a landfill bucket.  Heaven knows what havoc that would create in the state economy, so I just bring it all home. 

My Jennifer in North Carolina has an even more complicated system.  She has chickens, so you have to decide between compost (she makes her own), trash, recycle and chickens.  One afternoon she decided to give last night’s leftover eggplant parmesan to the chickens.  Who feeds their chickens eggplant parmesan?  But before she carried it down to the coop, she saw me and asked if I wanted some.  I declined, but told her I was grateful that I was mentioned in the same category as the poultry.  I guess that puts me just above compost.  Hey, as long as I know where I stand.  And yes, the chickens will eat leftover chicken.  I think there’s some biblical injunction against that (“You shall not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk”), but the last time we showed a Bible to the chickens, they ate it.

My wife went to see Madame Butterfly the other evening.  People in my generation know that’s an opera.  My grandchildren think it’s a monster movie.  My friend Larry loves opera, and I have been to five operas with him.  I have hated every single minute of every one.  I must be a philistine, because opera is just not for me, but I like Larry and I go just to keep him company.  The last one we saw was La Donna del Lago by Rossini and consisted of five really good singers spending four hours telling us (in Italian) how miserable they were and how each one wanted to die.  Would that I could have helped them!  About midway through the second act, one of them thankfully succeeded in dying, whereupon the other four became instantaneously jubilant and took about 40 minutes to tell us so.  And that was it.  The story took place in Scotland amid warring Scottish clans, and I did learn a lot about the Scots: 

The Scots ride the hills on a stallion

And fish the cold seas in a galleon

They learn when they’re young

The pure English tongue

But sing all their songs in Italian.

Stop your groaning!  You go find two words that rhyme with Italian!

I told you we got an Alexa.  Progress is a wonderful thing, but it does have its challenges.  I just heard this exchange:

Carol:    Alexa, play some Barbra Streisand music.

Alexa:   I cannot find a movie of that name near you.

Carol:    No, Alexa, play some Streisand music.

Alexa:   Ok, connecting you to the Albanian Embassy.

Carol:   Damn it, Alexa, PLAY BARBRA STREISAND!

Alexa:   Getting directions to the nearest farmers’ market.

I know you’ve had the same conversation before.  And speaking of high-tech troubles, some of you have still not figured out how to get the blog automatically by email.  Ok, if you can’t, you can’t.  Then make yourself a note to go each week to:

limerickoyster.blogspot.com

And catch up on the ones you’ve missed.  I’m counting on you.  I spend hours and hours writing, re-writing and re-re-writing (is there such a thing?) these blogs.  I’m relying on you to stay tuned.  Jeesh!  Meanwhile, stay well, and shihemi javen tjeter.  That’s Albanian for see you next week.  The Embassy was very nice.

Michael

Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

Blog #13

Sometimes I pick on my wife here, but that’s just for laughs.  There’s nothing wrong with her.  I am the weird one.  I know it.  No, I’m not clinically psychotic like my sister or demonstrably eccentric like my brother, but deep down behind the silly rhymes and the spectacular good looks lurks a good deal of abnormality.  I tell you this now to prepare you for my next announcement: last week I started to read Moby Dick for the fifth time.  Ok, I know, call me strange.  Call me bizarre.  Call me Ishmael.

In 10^th Grade Miss Bowers gave me a D in English because of Moby Dick.  That was the worst grade I ever got.  Miss Bowers was still around at our 50^th reunion, so she may still be alive.  Hey Bowers, if you’re out there somewhere, look at me now.  I’m a writer!  And I’ve read Moby Dick four times!

I lay in bed this morning very still.  I was comfortable, neither cold nor warm, and I had nowhere to go.  Nothing hurt, so I thought:  Why stir things up?  If I get up and start moving things like my eyeballs or elbows, my knuckles or knees, my tongue or toes – well, anything could happen.  I could break a hip or dislodge a shoulder or contract iron deficiency anemia.  So I lay there for a while longer.  Now I’m up and the sun is shining and everything seems to be fine.  So good morning and welcome back!  Glad you could make it.

As you know, every morning after I coax myself out of bed and take inventory of all the moving parts, I go to McDonald’s for a Diet Coke, some reading and getting acclimated to the day.  McDonald’s in the morning is full of white hair and canes.  The average age is so glacial, it’s beginning to look like a Civil War Reunion.  Over there are four old men drinking “senior” coffees.  There’s a table of six lovely, silver-haired women talking about grandchildren.  And, of course, in the quietest and most secluded corner sits a grey-haired old man sitting alone with his Diet Coke, reading Moby Dick.  People who like the Grateful Dead are called Dead Heads.  I wonder what they call people who like Moby Dick.  Well, no matter.

My wife is an indoor girl.  To her the outdoors is something you are forced to go through to get to the canasta game.  I like the outdoors.  I mean I’m not Johnny Appleseed, but I like being outside at the Zoo or a soccer game or a Cardinal game.  Not Carol!  I always drop her right at the door of the restaurant or the grocery store.  It’s not the walking she minds; she does miles on the treadmill every single day.  It’s the dreaded outside.  If she can go from our indoor garage directly to the underground parking at the mall – Heaven!  But when the only thing above her head is sky, she’s miserable.  It’s too hot or too cold.  It’s too windy.  It’s too humid.  And rain?  The Eleventh Plague.

I actually don’t think Carol and I have much in common at all besides our mutual social and educational background.  I like animals; she likes clothes.  I like the outdoors; she’s an indoor girl.  I like quiet; she likes television.  I like collecting; she likes clothes.  But in one crucial respect we agree.  We have the same goal in life -- to keep her happy.  It works for us.

Let’s make a deal.  I’ll skip the limerick if you’ll indulge me in a little poem.  My daughter read a book called Lamb to the Slaughter by Roald Dahl.  In it, the wife bludgeons her husband to death with a frozen leg of lamb.  It’s light reading.  Then, when the police come to investigate, she cooks up the lamb and serves it to them for lunch, thus eliminating the evidence.  Well, I couldn’t resist:

Mary had a leg of lamb, as tough as hardened steel.

She smashed her husband’s head with it, then served it as a meal.

She cut it up into a roast, a lamb shank and some chops;

She added some mint jelly, then she fed it to the cops.

Our Mary still is on the lam; she’s never been arrested.

The cops just have no evidence; it all has been digested.

So if you see our Mary and she’s got a little lamb

Just say you’re vegetarian and eat the toast and jam.

I told you I was abnormal.  Call me Ishmael!

Well, I made you suffer through that, so I’ll let you have some fun – a quiz!  Do not attempt this quiz unless you are old enough to remember when there was only one kind of Oreos and Pluto was a planet.  What’s with that anyway?  You can’t just eliminate a planet because you have a degree in Astronomy.  Nobody can just pop up and tell me that Pluto’s not a planet!  Or that Elvis is dead!  Or that Goofy was a dog!  If Goofy was a dog, what was Pluto?  Don’t you dare say “a planet”.

 Ok, the quiz -- here are some lines from oldies but goodies; name the song:

1.     Drove my Chevy to the levee

2.     I made it with a red-haired girl in a Chevrolet

3.     Someone stole my brand new Chevrolet

4.     Got an old, gold Chevy and a place of my own

5.     I took her for granted – I was so Cavalier

6.     He’s trading in his Chevy for a Cadillac

Carol and I are Class of ’63, University City High School.  We were high school sweethearts.  Awww!   One of our classmates, Diana, was kind enough to send my blog to all the members of the class.  Thank you, Diana.  She is also in charge of informing us when one of our classmates dies.  Kind of gruesome, but whatever!  Someone in our class just died, a girl who happened to have been my second cousin.  Got a minute?  Here’s the cousin thing:  if you have the same parents, you are siblings.  If you have the same grandparents, you are first cousins.  (Go on, pick a cousin, work it out.)  If you have the same great-grandparents, you are second cousins, and so on.  If your first cousin is Joe, then Joe’s daughter is your first cousin, once removed because she is one generation away from your first cousin.  Her kid would be your first cousin, twice removed.  Are you ready to blow your brains out yet?  Are you ready to blow my brains out?  I’d better stop.  Back to the Chevy Quiz:

Answers:

1.     American Pie – Don McLean

2.     Keepin’ the Faith – Billy Joel

3.     Neutron Dance - Pointer Sisters

4.     Crocodile Rock – Elton John

5.     She’s Out of My Life – Michael Jackson

6.     I’m Movin’ Out – Billy Joel

How’d you do?  I know --  it was on the tip of your tongue.  Sometimes the tip of my tongue gets more crowded than the Rose Bowl. Time to go.  I hope you enjoyed.  Stay well and see you next week.

Ishmael

Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com