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 20th 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
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