Blog #20

Hamlet was wrong.  He said there were a “thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to”.  Now Hamlet may have been good at soliloquies, but his math wasn’t so hot.  He couldn’t even remember what apartment he lived in; he kept saying, “2B or not 2B.”  Horrible joke, but I’m getting the feeling that you like horrible jokes.  Anyway, he sorely underestimated the natural shocks that human flesh must deal with.  It seems that people I know are coming up with more exotic and previously unheard-of symptoms, syndromes and diagnoses.  Heart stuff, esophageal stuff, brain stuff, headaches, rashes, back aches, fungal infections.  All of a sudden “ablation” has become a household word.  As my friend, Fern, told me, “These aren’t the Golden Years; they’re the Rusty Years.”  It’s all very troubling and scary.  But, here we are, in whatever shape we are, doing the best we can and doing our damnedest to enjoy the world.  I hope I can add to that enjoyment every once in a while.

So, hi there and welcome back.  Glad you could join me today.  What should we talk about?  How about I tell you how brave I am?  A while back, I went to Dr. Skin for a treatment and she asked me to participate in a study.  I like Dr. Skin, was happy to help her out, and, a few weeks later, was back in her office, undressed and waiting for whatever.  The nurse came in and looked at me. “You know you’re going to get stitches,” she said.  “What?” I cried. “Yah,” she continued, “we punch two holes, one in an affected area and one in an unaffected area and then we have to stitch them up.  “What?”  I replied.  My vocabulary becomes very limited when I’m petrified.  John Wayne once said, “Courage is being scared to death and saddling up anyway.”  Maybe so, but this little cowboy galloped out of that office faster than Kathy Griffin at a Trump rally.

Ok, I’m a wimp.  Let’s just get it out of our system and say it all together now:  YOU’RE A WIMP!  Well you didn’t have to scream.  I don’t like stitches or drawing blood or shots.  I remember when I was a little kid and the family doctor, Dr. Golub, liked giving shots so much that he would come to my house with Nadine, his nurse, and the two of them would chase me around the bed just to stick a needle in me.  Now, when I get a shot from Dr. Back or Dr. Pain, I try to work through my fear by telling jokes to whatever medical personnel are around.  The jokes pass the time and sometimes even get a laugh.  “I went to a doctor who told me I was fat.  I said I wanted a second opinion.  He said – you’re ugly too.”

I told you a few weeks ago that I tasted octopus, and I liked it.  But I really am not a culinary daredevil.  I’m not into quinoa or kale; I don’t tend to order food that sounds unfamiliar; and I think avocados should be banned from the planet.  So it astounds me that I actually love two foods the mention of which makes most of my family and friends shiver in disgust:  herring and sardines.  I just made myself some tomato soup and herring for lunch.  Delicious!

Then my wife made herself lunch.  I’m telling you, no collection of animal droppings could possibly be as unappetizing as her plate.  Little, yellow, slimy-looking blobs accompanied by a mound of white mush surrounded by torn pieces of green and yellow growths.  Raccoons wouldn’t eat that stuff.  She calls it melted cheese, hummus and peppers.  I call it road kill.

I have not been ashamed, in these blogs, to reveal all my weirdnesses and eccentricities.  It’s fine.  I don’t mind sharing with you.  You are part of my electronic family, after all, so I might as well share a few more examples of what makes me what the rest of my family likes to call “that crazy old man”.  Hey, families are like fudge – mostly sweet with a few nuts.  So, eccentricity #1 – I do not trust anything saved electronically.  I don’t trust backups, the cloud, Carbonite or any other form of document security.  I have them all; I pay for them all, but I don’t trust them, so for everything I have written – 1,000 letters to my daughters, 1,000 limericks, several hundred poems and songs, 20 blogs to you – I have a hard copy.  Call me Ishmael!  I know it’s a waste of paper and I hate to waste paper, but it’s my stuff and I want to make sure it’s all there when I die so my family can save it for a year and then throw it in the trash.

Eccentricity #2 -- I really do hate to waste paper.  I tear whatever is blank into little squares and use them for scratch paper.  It’s good for the planet.  I wish you would do it too.

I’m asking you down on my knees

To re-use your scratch-paper please

So listen to Michael

And always recycle

‘Cause paper does not grow on trees.

Does it?

Calvin Coolidge was well-known as being a man of few words.  At a state dinner once, he was seated next to a woman to whom he had not spoken all evening until she turned to him and said, “Mr. President, a man today bet me that I couldn’t get you to say three words to me.”  The President looked at her and replied, “You lose.”  This is an often-repeated anecdote, probably true and certainly beside the point, but I thought I’d share.

Lately I have been busier than a termite on Pinocchio’s nose.  Even busier than Justin Bieber’s bail bondsman.  I have a letter to send to Carol and our three daughters.  I have a blog to finish up and I have four letters to send to four assorted grandchildren at camp.  The old man has to work hard.  They’re all labors of love, but sometimes my fingers just get stiff from punching the keys.  You know what it’s called when an old grandpa’s fingers get stiff?  Writer’s Gramp.  See, I knew you liked horrible jokes.  Here’s a suggestion the next time you send a letter to a kid at camp.  Write the letter, then cut it up into jigsaw pieces and throw them in an envelope. They’ll have to piece it together to read the letter.  They love it.  Or write one starting in the middle of the paper and continue to write in a spiral so that to read it, they have to keep turning the paper.

That’s about it for this week.  I’d cut the blog up into little jigsaw pieces, but it might hurt the computer.  Thanks for joining me today and stay well.  Writer’s Gramp or not, I’ll keep writing until you tell me to stop.  See you next week.

Michael                                    Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

Blog #19

Hi and welcome back.  I hope you are all spectacular today.  I’m good, but I can never be spectacular in the a.m. because there is a chore I must perform each morning that I am not qualified to do – getting dressed.  When it comes to dressing myself, I’m worthless, clueless, and classless.  It got so bad that a few years ago I took everything out of my closet that was made of linen and gave it away.  I just couldn’t remember in which months linen was allowed.  Does January have an “L”?

Yes, I know my fashion faults and limitations and so does my wife.  But she doesn’t scold me very often about my clothing.  I told her once that I’d rather her let me be a fool some of the time than treat me like a fool all of the time.  It was one of my best lines, and she respects that.  But there’s one article of garb that I will let no-one disparage or talk me out of – a gray sweatshirt that has comfort written all over it.  Actually it has “Sports Illustrated” written all over it and is as warm and as soft as a poodle.  I got it years ago for renewing my daughter Jen’s subscription to the magazine.  It was one of those insulting promotions available only to new subscribers, not available to loyal readers who have overpaid for a dozen years.  I bitched about that and begged and pleaded that my little girl (she was about 35 then) was a loyal reader and wanted to cuddle up with a warm sweatshirt and the Super Bowl Edition.  That worked, and when the shirt arrived, I stole it and never let her know about it.  Well, she had the Super Bowl Edition.

It's Summer and we decided to take our three local grandchildren to the St. Louis Art Museum and to Ted Drewes, a local frozen-custard landmark.  First we saw the Modern Art.  I have already told you that I’m not a fan of opera, and now I must admit that I am apparently without the gene that allows a person to be convinced that talentless trash is somehow subtle and meaningful.  But we liked the mummies and the knights in armor.  Then we went to Ted Drewes.  Now that is art!

Somehow I recently found myself accompanying my wife, daughter and 16-year-old grandson on an excursion whose sole purpose was to buy him clothing.  Shopping for clothes is an activity I rate one step above going to the Art Museum and one step below being sent to prison.  Luckily, I had a volume of short stories by Rudyard Kipling (does that even surprise you by now?) and I went to find a seat.  Near the entrance of the store were two hard, uncomfortable wooden chairs and two soft, comfy-looking wheelchairs.  I chose the wooden seat, not wanting to look my age, and opened my Rudyard.  Not a minute later, a woman carefully led her shuffling and drowsy mother to the other chair and left her.  And there we were --   the ancient and nearly-comatose woman and me.  You don’t have to say it – I know.  But I bet she doesn’t have a blog.

Right now it is pouring – really, really pouring.  I’m about to go out and look for two aardvarks.  I know, of course, that Carol is not going to join me.  She promised to love me in sickness and in health, but not in the rain.  It reminds me of the time we had planned a driving trip with another couple to Arkansas and Tennessee.  We had Triptiks and reservations and everything, but the forecast said RAIN!  My wife had consulted the National Weather Service, NASA, the Pope and L. Ron Hubbard and decided that the weather in Arkansas 96 hours hence would not be propitious, and we cancelled.

I’ll go on a trip in a plane,

A copter, a kayak, a train;

I’ll go on a ship

But when I take a trip,

I’m not gonna go in the rain.

Thank goodness my sweet wife was not on the ship with Columbus.  “Hey, Chris.  Did you know it was raining?  You better shut this ship up, Little Captain.  Nothing’s gonna get discovered today.  Uh-uh.  I’m not getting my hair wet for a bunch of Indians.  You can discover something tomorrow if the sun’s out.  And by the way, see if you can discover a Nordstrom’s.  These Gucci’s are killing me.”

When I’m not reading, writing, volunteering or drinking Diet Cokes – I’m thinking.  Sometimes I just think of strange things.  “Really”, I hear you chuckle.     I have two strange thoughts for you today.  The first is -- do Israeli musicians read music from right to left?  The second is – what do you say to God when He sneezes?  The first thought made me do some research and here’s what I found.  Music goes from left to right no matter who the musician is.  Hebrew lyrics must necessarily follow the notes left to right, but each Hebrew word is written, naturally, right to left.  The answer to the second thought is above my pay grade, and if any of you is disturbed that I called God by the term “He”, well go ahead and change it to whatever you want.  Just don’t leave a smudge on the paper.

Let’s ramble on to some other useless topic.  How about the IRS?  When I got back from Asheville, the mail included a notice from that miserable, draconian and loveless agency informing me that I did something wrong and owed them $1700 in penalties.  There was a number to call, so I grabbed my book, found a comfy chair and settled in for a few hours of “hold” music.  You know, it isn’t so much the waiting that I mind.  I’m sure all of the vicious, greedy and evil employees of the IRS must be very busy stealing, conniving and cheating us poor slobs out of our money.  Plus, I’m certain that each sadistic, sinister and disgusting agent gets a demonic thrill making us wait on the phone.  No, it isn’t the waiting I mind; it’s the music. Where do they get that crap?  If that’s elevator music, the elevator is on its way to Hell.  I’m convinced that most of the mental health problems in America are caused by “hold” music.  Over and over, never-ending, loud and horrible.  But I had no choice, and I punched in the number.  Six minutes later a very polite gentleman answered the phone.  He listened to my excuse and decided to waive all penalties.  The entire call lasted eleven minutes.  Don’t ever say anything bad about my friends at the IRS.

Ok, back to the book title thing.  Week One Winner was The World According to AARP.  Week Two Winner was Into Thin Hair.   So now we have two good titles.  All we need is a book.  I’m working on it.  Thanks for participating.

And thanks for reading.  Stay well and see you next week

Michael                          Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

Blog #18

It’s all your fault!  I only did it because of you!  You see, I was recently with my wife and daughter, Jennifer, in Ashville, NC.  I have never been to Ashville before, and yet I have seen it a dozen times.  It’s Berkeley, it’s St. Louis’ Central West End, it’s Greenwich Village and Boulder and every other college town or ski resort.  It’s seedy and tacky; it’s edgy and artsy and chi-chi all at the same time.  Where ragged street jugglers, magicians and string quartets compete for tourist dollars on the street corners.  Where every restaurant is dog friendly, gluten free and vegan.  Where the forgotten culture, the counter-culture, the homeless culture, the drug culture and the artist culture merge somehow to become the avant-garde culture.  Where every night has an art festival, a revival and an exhibition.  Where a store charging $2,500 for a flower vase is next to a Himalayan gift shop that smells of incense and yak dung.   Where a double-decker bus is turned into a chocolate restaurant. Where everybody accepts everybody and loves everybody no matter what they are or believe.  It’s loud and exciting and troubling and expensive and fun.

We ate at a Spanish tapas place the first night.  On the menu, among salads only a sheep could love and a litany of other complicated and mysterious choices, was Galician-Prepared Octopus.  My first thought – no, my first thought was “No way, Jose!” (it was a Spanish restaurant, after all).  But my second thought was that Galicia was a northern land-locked province of the Roman Empire in the interior of what is now Ukraine, and, being land-locked, would have no use for an octopus recipe.

What? – I hear you cry.  Galicia? Roman Empire? What is that wordy old fool rambling about now?  You should already know that I read strange books and am a “diligent student of the impractical and the largely useless”.  That’s what they said about Herodotus, and who remembers him?  Actually, he was a Greek who wrote the first history of the world around 380 BC.  You’d think there wasn’t much history to write about back then, but he was somehow prolific.

My third thought (stay on track now; we had a first thought, then a second thought and now here’s the third) was to check this out on Google.  I hate to take out my phone at a dinner table.  I think it’s rude when my friends do it, but this was Galician-Prepared Octopus and I felt I deserved an exemption.  And lo, there is a province of Spain also named Galicia which indeed borders on an octopus-filled ocean.  Even so, I still was not about to eat the slimy little creature.  But then I thought (this would be my fourth thought for those of you who remember second grade as the best three years of your life) – I thought, “I need a fun and interesting experience to write about in my next blog, and eating some slimy, undercooked and likely-poisonous sea serpent from a province of Spain I never knew existed would be just the thing.  And I did it.  I took a bite.  I told you it was all your fault.  And you know what?  It was delicious.  No, it was spectacular and I took another bite!  Octopus!  Who’d have thought it?  And it was all your fault.

In Asheville, the most common sights were homeless people and tattoos! Everybody has tattoos – all over them.  Well, I thought (that’s five), if I can eat an octopus, I can get a tattoo.  I’m old and I don’t understand it but it’s the thing.  So why not?  My wife and I took the plunge and got matching tattoos.  Mine says,

I Love Carol.  So does hers.

You know, I take these blogs very seriously, and sometimes I get a little depressed wondering if anybody actually reads them.  The feeling doesn’t last long, however, because down deep I know I have a built-in audience of faithful readers who monitor everything I write – Google, the NSA and Edward Snowden.

Every tweet, post, blog or text that you write is electronically monitored and tracked by these sinister forces who know where you are, what time you go to bed, where you shop, who you call and what you read.  I find it somehow comforting:

Each blog that I write with such care

The NSA plucks from the air

So when I write a letter

It makes me feel better.

At least I know somebody’s there.

Hi, Edward.

Oh, and speaking of sinister people reading my blogs, did you read last week’s where I asked you to pick from four proposed titles for my book about Seniors?  Here were the four choices: The World According to AARP, Rheumatism at the Top, To Kill an Early Bird, Cataract on a Hot Tin Roof

I have tallied the responses and the winner is: (trumpets, drum roll, Vanna White) The World According to AARP.  But wait, that was only the first Semifinal Round.  This is exciting, isn’t it?  It’s like Let’s Make a Deal.  I’ll give a dollar to anyone with a Galician octopus in her purse.  Ok the second Semifinal Round is made up of these four Senior book titles:  send your pick to mfox1746@gmail.com  

A Clockwork Prune, A Tale of Two Colonoscopies, Atlas Limped, Into Thin Hair.

In St. Louis, we have two seasons – Winter and my wife’s birthday.  Starting in late June and ending in September, the birthday feting is continuous.  What are you doing tomorrow, Dear?  Oh, I’m getting taken out for my birthday –  for the 10^th time.  That woman gets taken out more than the trash.

And speaking of Carol, she got a call today from some marketing company that wanted to pay her $70 to participate in a 2-hour focus group on radio preferences.  She agreed, but when they found out her age, they booted her.  They don’t care what radio stations old people listen to.  Seniors probably just listen to NPR and Golden Oldies.  And anyway, who cares about old people in general?  They clog up the highways by driving slowly.  They waste our country’s medical resources by taking too long to die.  They pester their children about the simplest technological task.  Who needs these silly old people anyway?  Unless you’re a four-year-old or six or eight or ten, and you want a really cool bedtime story about dinosaurs and princesses and poopy old men who fall all over themselves and make you giggle and who never stop loving you no matter what.

It’s pretty much bedtime now, so goodnight Zachary and Zoey and Alyssa.  Goodnight Tyler and Charley and Austin.  Goodnight Parker and Lucy.  Sleep well, my darlings.  And to all my loyal readers, don’t get all jealous on me.  I’ve told you plenty of stories already, and I’m pretty sure some of them have put you to sleep.  So goodnight, Gracie, and stay well.

See you next week.         Don’t forget to enter your book title pick!

Michael                          Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

Blog #17

If John Milton were writing Paradise Lost today, I’m certain that his choice for the location of Hell would be the space underneath my desk.  There are enough wires down there to reach Mars and enough plugs to populate Howie Mandel’s head.  I’ll bet it looks just like that under your desk.  There are eight “things” plugged in.  There’s a router and a modem and a computer and a printer and a lamp and my iPod and two other things that could be nuclear warheads for all I know.  I am so technically hapless that I could screw up a nail file.  If it has a wire, I’m guaranteed to put it in the wrong place.  It amazes me that I have children!  But I had to plug my pacemaker monitor into the phone jack, which happens to be there.  Pacemaker?  Oh, maybe I haven’t told you about that.  Works like a charm, but every six months I have to transmit whatever it is doing to Dr. Pacemaker so he can see what’s ticking (literally).

I needed to plug the monitor in, but there wasn’t a plug available, which meant I had to unplug something.  After considerable thought, I chose the lamp, which was plugged into a surge protector.  I unplugged it.  And you know what – the lamp went off!  I could not have been more delighted if I had discovered fire, and with an unexpected surge of confidence, I plugged the pacemaker monitor in and everything immediately shut down.  Disaster!  By pushing in the prongs, I had pulled the surge protector out of its wall socket, so I put it back.  Too late – the internet was gone because the modem or router or nuclear warhead or whatever gismo that the internet comes out of had been unplugged.  By this time, I really didn’t care if my chest exploded -- at least it would end the ordeal.  I proceeded to plug the machine into the phone-jack and hold the mouse over my chest.  Lights flashed, bells rang, beepers beeped and all seemed to go as I had remembered.  So maybe it worked.  The counter on the nuclear warhead had stopped at 007.

It’s been seventeen weeks. Seventeen blogs.  By now you’re beginning to know me pretty well.  You know that I go to McDonald’s every morning.  You know that I write limericks and that I like books.  I’m thinking about writing a book just for Seniors.  I really don’t have a plot or a plan or a serious idea – but I have a bunch of titles.  So, let’s take a poll.  I’ll give you the choices for the title of my new book.  Then you email your favorite title to me at mfox1746@gmail.com and I will tell you the results of the poll next week.  Ok, titles for the book about Seniors:

The World According to AARP

Rheumatism at the Top

To Kill an Early Bird

Cataract on a Hot Tin Roof      

I’m serious – send me your pick.

My lovely wife and I have just celebrated our 50^th wedding anniversary.  Awww!  I’m a very lucky man indeed.  We celebrated at my daughter Abby’s house.  Abby’s a great cook, and she prepared a wonderful meal which perfectly epitomized the spirit of our fifty-year partnership.  She made everything my wife liked.  Abby called her mother, asked what she should cook for the celebratory meal, and Carol rattled off all her favorites.  “Don’t worry about Hop Sing; he doesn’t care what he eats.”  That’s ok; I know my place.  It was delicious, and besides, I don’t care what I eat.

Speaking of food, whenever we travel to Jen in North Carolina or Steph in California or Mama Doc in Naples or Aunt Linda in West Palm – in short, whenever we mooch on our friends and relatives, they always ask us what kind of food they should have in the house for us.  Our answer is “nothing”.  I bring my own tea and that’s all we require.  We’re easy.  But when my Jenola comes to town for two days, she requires organic peppers, raw pumpkin seeds, unsweetened coconut water and, of course, kale.  How can anyone get through the day without kale?  I think the Queen of England would be an easier guest.  All she needs is a place to hang her purse.  But it’s ok; my Jennifer is worth every organic pepper.

I am considering coming out of retirement to become a Marriage Counsellor.  You see, I have a unique ability to view a domestic conflict from both sides.  Three years ago, I had a cornea transplant and the donor was a 62-year-old woman from Kansas City.  Thus, my left eye is female.  My right eye, therefore, gives me the male perspective while my left sees things from the feminine point of view.  Hence, the marriage counselling gig.  “Yes, I can see with my right eye that you are a dedicated and caring husband.  But with my left eye I see that you always get lost and wear linen in November.”  The first candidate for the transplant was a 50-year-old man who had died of a heart attack.  They told me that was great because the guy was healthy.  Healthy? I asked.  How long had he been healthy before he died of a heart attack?  We switched to the lady from Kansas City.

The eye surgery was performed by a local physician named Dr. Blinder.  Seriously!  Now what perverse sense of fate would lead someone with that name to that profession?  Why couldn’t he have become an airplane pilot instead?  Well, maybe not.  I have mentioned the odd coincidence to friends and have been rewarded with other doctors who maybe should have chosen a different specialty.  Apparently, there is a dentist named Dr. Payne and a surgeon named Dr. Butcher.  Someone told me that in Florida resides a plastic surgeon named Dr. Pricey.  In Texas, there is a urologist named Dr. Dickey and an OB-GYN named Dr. Fingers. Unless my friends are fibbing to me, these are all real.

I don’t want to complain.  The world has an over-abundant supply of self-pity and   I really don’t need to add to it, but the truth is that we seniors have plenty to complain about.  Taxes, Social Security, health care, aching backs, salt – but what can we do about it, riot?  Can you just picture a bunch of old people marching the streets chanting:  WHAT DO WE WANT?  WE FORGOT.  WHEN DO WE WANT IT?  WE FORGOT THAT TOO.

We’d loot and we’d burn and we’d riot

Except we are too old to try it.

If the Cops told us Halt

Well we couldn’t assault --

‘Cause we’re on a no-assault diet.

Ain’t it the truth!  Well, I have to go dig out my old “IMPEACH GARFIELD” sign for the march.  Come back next week.  I’m counting on you.  Stay well and send me your favorite book title.

Michael

Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com