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

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