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
(Adam, Hoss and Little Joe)
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