Blog #33

This morning I went to McDonalds as I do each morning.  As I was filling my Diet Coke at the drink bar, a little Korean boy walked to the bar.  He was about 3-foot-7 and could not reach the straws.  He stood there with his hand stretched up as far as it could, but there was no chance.  I guess most people would have said, “Hi there, little boy.  Do you need a straw?  Would you like me to get you a straw?  What’s your name?  There you go; can you say thank you?”  I, being a highly trained handler of small children, said not a word.  I plucked a straw from the container and handed it down to the little Kim Jong Short.  He accepted the straw, looked me right in the eye, gave me a 3-foot 7-inch smile and walked back to his Daddy.  I smiled too and walked to my car.  A Chinese proverb says, “A child’s life is like a piece of paper on which every person leaves a mark.”  Maybe I left a pleasant one.

Is math not your thing?  Have you always thought that Isaac Newton was famous for making cookies?  Do you have trouble counting up the number of Barbra Streisand’s Farewell Concerts?  Then you may want to skip this next exercise.  Carol and I went shopping at a store like Belk’s or Kohl’s.  You know the drill – everything is 30% off at the register, but the rack that had the top she wanted, which was marked $62.00, had a sign that said Everything 40% Off.  That makes it $37.20 until you get to the register and they take off the 30% which makes it $26.04.  Got it?  No you don’t, because she also had a coupon that says if you buy $75.00 worth you can subtract $15.00.  So she found a sweater marked $210.00 under a sign that says 1/3 Off which, after both discounts, makes it $98.00, which, when added to the top comes up to $124.04 minus the $15 coupon for a total of $109.04 for the two garments. With me so far?  No you’re not, because she actually had two of those $15 coupons, so she added a sweatshirt tagged $49.00 which was 20% off plus the 30% off which got her up to $151.48 minus the two $15 coupons or a total of $121.48.   Ok?  Want another cookie?

Well, it wasn’t ok because each $15.00 coupon had to be used with its own $75.00 purchase, so she had to buy . . . well, most people would have given up by then, but not Carol, because she had the perfect instrument for navigating this Alice in Wonderland exercise in higher math – me.  I calculated everything in my head and was so proud when we walked out with the top, a sweatshirt and two sweaters marked $441.00 for $177.48.  Wait, all she wanted was the $26 top.  Now I want a cookie.

Being a husband is challenging.  Besides the shopping thing, there’s the language thing.  I have been married fifty years and I still don’t completely understand Wife-Speak.  I think I have a few phrases figured out.  For instance,

When she says: Are you hot?  she means -  I’m hot, turn on the air conditioner.

When she says: Are you going out like that?  she means - If you are, it’s not with me.

When she says: You look tired.  she means -  Take me home; I’m tired.

When she says: My hair looks horrible! she means - You have three seconds to compliment my hair. Three, two, …

When she says: I like when you go shopping with me. she means - Drop me off at the door, Hop Sing, then come inside and hold my packages.

Anyone who thinks that a man can control a woman – is a bachelor.

We all watch Jeopardy, don’t we?  It’s fun!  We get to see how much we know and how awfully much we don’t know.  I think there should be a Senior Jeopardy.  I have some ideas along that line.  First, we have to get rid of that little clicker thing they use.  Mechanical devices confuse us and we have arthritis in our fingers.  And which button controls the volume?  Second, we need more time to answer.  Who can think that fast?  And, of course, the questions have to be senior-friendly, like “What is Miralax for?”  This is stuff we know about.  I have a whole new Double Jeopardy category for you called Who’s the Dummy?  Here are the answers; you pick the ventriloquist’s dummy.

$200           Charlie McCarthy or Edgar Burgen

$400           Meatloaf or Lambchop

$600           Jerry Lewis or Jerry Mahoney

$800           Topo Gigio or Charo

$1000          Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton

How’d you do?  Did you get them all right?  The real dummies are Charlie McCarthy (held by Edgar Burgen), Lambchop (Shari Lewis), Jerry Mahoney (Paul Winchell), Topo Gigio (Ed Sullivan show) and – no, no, I’m not going there. Now you can try the Final Senior Jeopardy Answer: “She was the Indian princess on Howdy Doody.”

One year, for my wife’s birthday, I surprised her by hiring a ventriloquist to give her a lesson, something she said she always wanted to try.  So we and a few friends gathered at my daughter’s house where The Amazing Mario showed her how to use his dummy, which looked like a little boy.  Carol tried and everybody laughed.  Then it was my turn and he placed the dummy on my lap.  My little granddaughter, Charley, was about 15 months old then and was sitting in a corner enjoying the show.  But when she saw the little boy on her Poppy’s lap, she roused into action.  She calmly walked up to me, picked up the dummy, gently placed him in the corner, came back and crawled onto my lap, a lap she did not intend to share with some creepy little boy.

In all my life I have lived in seven different homes, yet I have never lived more than 12 miles from the place I was born.  Twelve miles in 71 years!  Doesn’t seem like much, does it?  Raccoons move around more than that.  Twelve miles!  I haven’t retired to sunny Naples or glorious Scottsdale or the fabulous Frisco Bay.  I didn’t go away to college. Twelve miles.  It never occurred to me that St. Louis was a great place to live, but now with all the disasters around us, I’m rethinking.  Hurricanes in Florida, shootings in Nevada, earthquakes in Mexico, flooding in Texas, fires in California, Joy Behar in New York.  Maybe our little town, even with its civil unrest, is doing just fine.

To live in St. Louis is heaven

On a scale of ten, it’s eleven

The Cards and the Blues

The Zoo and Ted Drewes

And the riots don’t start until seven.

Did you think I had forgotten this week’s limerick?  I’m not that forgetful, and you’re not that lucky.  I will not forget to come back next week with another limerick, so please stay well and I’ll see you then.

Princess Summerfallwinterspring       Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com 

Blog #32

On September 15th, the spacecraft Cassini, after a twenty-year mission, ended its exploration of Saturn by burning itself up in that planet’s atmosphere.  The project engineers scheduled the burning in order to avoid any part of the spacecraft contaminating possible life on Saturn.  It’s fascinating how much our species thrills in ecstasy over the possibility of life on Mars or Saturn, while at the same time destroying life on Earth with abandon.  We pollute the environments of our own plants and animals, cut down their forests, poison their rivers and lakes, eat them or just shoot them for fun.  We would spend a trillion dollars to preserve a Martian amoeba and comparatively nothing to save the magnificent life of this planet.  We have destroyed everything we touch, except the sun, moon and the starry skies which God in His wisdom has hung beyond our reach.  At least until now.

Welcome back, you magnificent life forms.  Glad you could make it.  I hope you all are well and not bored.  Sometimes I fear that my rambling thoughts can be boring, even though some of our nation’s other magnificent life forms seem to prefer it that way.

My Limerick Oyster creation

Is wanted all over the nation

But mostly by bears

‘Cause each of them swears

The blog will bring on hibernation.

Stay awake!  And speaking of staying awake, let’s talk about anesthesia.  (See, that’s called a transition, a segue – oh, never mind.)  I went to Dr. Tooth to have a cavity filled.  Yuck!  I hate shots in my mouth.  But, I went and I sat and Dr. Tooth came in and asked, “Do you want an anesthetic?”  What?  He was giving me a choice?  If he was giving me a choice, that meant I didn’t absolutely need the shots in my mouth.  His question somehow struck me as unnecessary, kind of like:

·        “Madame Antoinette, would you rather have a carriage ride to Switzerland?”

·        “Take your pick, Wicked Witch of the West, the bucket of water on the head or tickets to Hamilton.”

·        “Cinderella, who are you going to The Ball with – Prince Charming or Harvey Weinstein?”

Of course, I chose the no-anesthetic option and the procedure was over in ten minutes with zero discomfort.  Good choice.  “Oh, Abe, how about we go bowling tonight and skip the play?”

And now, from anesthetics that make you drowsy and loopy to marijuana – which makes you drowsy and loopy.  (There’s another one of those rascally transitions.)  Trends indicate that the legal sale of marijuana is sweeping the nation, and soon it will be legal to buy pot in every state.  I can clearly envision McDonald’s adjusting their menu to add a Really Happy Meal which will include fries and a Diet-Toke.  They’re already training their staff to say, “Would you like highs with that?”

Of course, we’re going to see national chains created just to sell pot, so we need to come up with appropriate names.  I am up to the challenge.  Unfortunately, the perfect name for a national pot chain is already taken – Quik Trip.  But I have some alternative suggestions:

Pot-Belly’s            Toke-O-Bell          Grass Pro Shops

H & R Pot            Bed, Bath and Way Beyond

And if the whole pot thing works out well, then I’m sure they will quickly move all of us up to the harder substances.  A new drive-through chain for heavy drugs is already in the works.  It’s called Crack-In-The-Box. 

A few years ago, I was driving my grandson to Pre-School.  We would always arrive early.  Punctuality is the Politeness of Kings.  That was actually the quip under my picture in the High School Yearbook.  Can you believe that?  After three years, they did not have one nice thing to say about me except, “Ya, well, the bastard was on time.”  But am I bitter after 55 years?  Does a bear hibernate?   Stay awake!

So, since we were early, my grandson and I would play in the car.  He was a Jedi and used a soda straw as his light saber to slice up the evil Darth Vader (that was me).  I put a small, round, orange sticker on my nose to show where he wounded me and I howled in mock pain.  Great fun.  From there, I went to the cable company to talk about my bill, Walmart to buy some things, the Post Office to mail a package and the bookstore to browse.  I bought a small book and, as I was checking out, the clerk said, “You know you have a sticker on your nose?”  I presume that the previous three people with whom I had had close dealings did not think it odd for an old man to be wearing an orange dot on his nose. Or perhaps they thought I was a Hindu woman with bad aim.  Was I mortified?  Not a bit.  Blessed are they that can laugh at themselves, for they will never cease to be amused.

The reason I brought this up was because at dinner the other night, I saw Carol examining her face in the reflection on a butter knife.  Yes, a butter knife!  Who does that?  A butter knife!  You see, a woman never goes more than two minutes without examining her reflection in a wall mirror, compact, rear-view mirror, puddle, store window or, failing any of those, the nearby cutlery.  It is unimaginable that a woman could visit four stores not knowing that there was an orange sticker on her nose.  Or that she was wearing one brown shoe and one black shoe.  I confess to that one too.  Well, it was dark that morning.

I may not notice when my shoes don’t match, but I notice everything else.  That’s why I never run out of things to say.  I notice bumper stickers, for instance.  There are an infinite number of clever bumper stickers, and I saw a good one today:

MY GERMAN SHEPHERD IS SMARTER THAN YOUR HONOR STUDENT.  That ranks up there with: STAY BACK, MY LAWYER’S IN THE TRUNK and MY SON IS THE INMATE OF THE MONTH.

I bought a suit the other day and Carol accompanied me.  We were waited on by Gilbert who was tall, slender, young and dapper.  After dealing with the suit, my wife picked out a “cool” shirt and I tried it on.   I looked in the mirror, but well, I am what I am.  “I will never be – Gilbert,” I said.  This would have been a perfect time for a compensating compliment by my loving partner of fifty years. Something like, “No, but you look pretty damn good just as you are” would have been lovely, but no, that’s not what I got.  What I got from my sweet Silver Sneaker was, “No, you will definitely never be Gilbert.”  I didn’t buy the shirt.

Well, we’ve come to the end of another adventure. I’m proud of you for staying awake for the whole thing.  I hope you enjoyed.  Stay well and come back next week.  And don’t be late.  Remember, Punctuality is the Politeness of Kings.

Michael                          Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com  

Blog #31

Every morning I throw out the trash.  This consists of tying off the trash bag which has remained in the kitchen since the morning before and now contains the junk mail, banana peels, old strings, avocado husks, empty Honey-Nut Cheerio boxes and other sundry detritus of the previous twenty-four hours.  I tie a knot, carry the bag down the hall, open the trash chute and drop it in.  The bag drops down into something and then someone takes it somewhere.  They must care; they must have it under control, for I never see it again.  How simple.  How easy to dispose of all the physical trash and to start the new day fresh and free.  If only we could cleanse the mental garbage as effortlessly as the physical.  Just toss out the medical problems, the money worries, the anxiety for those we love, the disorientation and useless feelings of old age – throw them all in a large, recyclable, renewable, free-range, gluten-free bag and toss them down the same chute.  Let them mix with the banana peels and go wherever the empty avocados go.  And start the new day fresh and free.  

 

Recently we were in California and we took 007 and 008 to a museum for kids.  Oh, did I tell you I’ve given up on my grandchildren’s names and substituted numbers instead?  It’s like the British Secret Service – 007:  Licensed to Adore.  On second thought, maybe the number system won’t work.  

Each granddaughter, every grandson

Is loving and special and fun

They make my life great

And although there are eight

To me they are all #1.

Back to the museum which we shall call the Yummy Museum.  Here was the sign on the wall; I am not making this up!

Diversity Statement:

Yummy Museum is a community resource where all families raising young children are welcome. You are included without regard to race, age, gender, physical ability, sexual orientation, family structure, citizenship, or socioeconomic background.

Wow, it must have taken them a long time to decide which kinds of people they will not discriminate against.  I did not see a category for People who read Moby Dick or People who drink Diet Cokes on the list.  Why do we have to make an endless list of differences for which we will not discriminate? Why can’t we just say everybody is welcome?  Or, in Yummy’s case, everybody is welcome if you have $5.00 admission and no nuts. (It’s a peanut-allergy thing. You have a filthy mind.)  Really, a simple “Everyone Is Welcome” sign in 47 languages and Esperanto would be just fine.  And what’s with the family structure item?  Do they think we expect to be rejected because our family has two fathers, six mothers, a crazy uncle and a camel?  C’mon Yummy, lose the guilt of the world and just say everybody’s welcome. 

It seems like the more tolerant our society purports to be, the more we tend to cubbyhole everyone into racial, religious and sexual corners.  But what do I know?  I’m just an elderly, Jewish, third generation Russian-American, carnivorous, Midwestern, average height, Caucasian, married, straight, male United States citizen who can recite The Raven.  You can call me Poppy.

In any event, we had a wonderful time at the museum and by the time we left, 007 and 008 were happy and sleepy.  I guess that makes me Dopey and Grumpy.  And as Snow White used to say to all the dwarfs, “I do not discriminate on the basis of height or silly names.  But no nuts.”  Snow had a filthy mind too.

Welcome back to Limerick Oyster where everyone is welcome, even you people with filthy minds.  And speaking of your minds, do you remember the three words I asked you to remember last week?  If your next thought is, “What is this Bozo talking about”, you failed.  They were apple, penny and table.  Did you do it?

I hope you are well today.  What shall we talk about?  It seems we have already talked of many things, so let’s just talk about stuff.  I have three daughters, each with a passel of children and some pets.  I adore them all, even the pets, but I have come to the conclusion that a house with children can never be truly tidy.  It’s not that the children are messy or the parents are messy; it’s just that there’s so much stuff.

·        Stuff that the older one grew out of and they’re waiting for the younger one to grow into

·        Stuff that the younger one grew out of and they should have given away three years ago

·        Stuff that their spouses brought home and lost interest in before the week was out

·        Stuff that the cat used to play with

·        Stuff that – aw, that was my grandmother’s

·        Stuff that – well, I might need that sometime

·        Stuff that – hey, that’s not even mine

Speaking of old stuff, I was at McDonald’s today, reading a book, when a lady my age came up to me.  “Oh,” she said, “I love old books and that looks like an old one.”  It was a nature book I got from the library, published in 1960, so indeed it was an old book – 57 years.  The sobering and depressing conclusion to that thought is that I was 14 when it was published.  How did I get this old?  There’s a lesson to be learned here -- never use an old book as a chick-magnet.  It only attracts old chicks.  Come to think of it, I like old chicks.  I’m married to one.  I think I’ll stick with the old books, the old chicks, the old songs and all that old stuff that clutters up my closet.  And if that makes all the young people think I’m “old” – well, that’s about the only thing they got right.

I like to look at other people’s books.  I can learn a lot by the books somebody reads.  I can tell what they like, whether we have similarities in taste, what interests them.  I can start conversations with a person just by looking at the book he’s reading.  But now people have “devices”.  I can’t tell what they’re reading on a device.  I don’t have a device; I have a book.  I like to smell it, feel it, hold it --   and fight off all the old chicks it attracts.

I just heard a terrifying news broadcast on the radio that went like this:  Avalanche destroys Detroit; Flames burn Vancouver; Hurricanes rip through Florida; Lightning decimates Philadelphia.  My God, I thought, has the world come to an end?  I was relieved when I learned it was just the hockey scores.

It's time to take out the trash, so I’ll end it here.  Stay well and come back next week.  And bring your friends.  Everyone is welcome here at Limerick Oyster.  No admission fee.  Bring your own nuts.

Grumpy                         Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com  

Blog #30

See you next week.  Stay well.  Wait, that’s what I say at the end of the blog, not the beginning.  I’m so confused.  I’m turned upside down, and it’s all because of my grocery store.  I always go in the entrance on the right, near the produce.  I start at bananas and end with bread and that’s the way it’s been for thousands of years.  It all started because that’s the way King Tut shopped 3,350 years ago at the local Yummy Mummy.  Well, Mrs. Tut probably did the shopping.  Her name was Ankhesenamun.  He called her Cupcake.  Anyway, Ankhe would start with bananas and work her way right to left and we’ve all been doing that for millennia.  But today they were doing some construction and the right-side entrance was closed.  I had to enter on the left side.  Well, you can imagine my disorientation.  I felt like an American trying to drive in London.  I felt like a breech baby.  I felt like the world was a tuxedo and I was a pair of brown shoes.  (Thank you, George Gobel.)  So, did I adapt?  Did I improvise?  Did I overcome?  No, I walked like an Egyptian down the length of the store and started at bananas.  You would have done the same.

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re happy and well.  Let’s get started.  What is all this hullaballoo about Russia?  Who cares what they hacked into?  And who cares if X, Y and Z colluded with Й, Щ and Э?  I don’t get it.  I’ve been to Russia and they have nothing to offer but a bunch of palaces built by cruel and horrible despots who killed their own people and stole all their money.  As I left Russia, I turned around, looked at their sterile, ugly and decrepit apartment blocks and their sullen, overdressed and impolite border officials and told them how I felt.

I’ve read about all of your Czars

I’ve tasted your strange caviars

I’ve taken your tours

And I’ve seen what is yours

And I really prefer what is ours.

Take that, Vladimir!

Yesterday I woke up feeling crummy (or is it crumby?).  The only reason I didn’t go to a doctor is that I didn’t know which one to go to.  Everything hurt – my back, my stomach, my side, my heart, my lungs, my ankle, my fingernails.  I was going to go to Dr. Primary and tell him I had dizziness, weakness, shortness of breath, chest pains, back pains, side pains and I needed a haircut – but the man is only a doctor, not a prophet.  So I figured I’d wait until my variety of symptoms localized itself a bit, but today I woke up feeling better.  How about that?  Because I was patient, I wasn’t a patient.

I get a physical exam every year with Dr. Primary, and of course they take my blood pressure. Wouldn’t it be great if Carol and I could just average our blood pressure?  Can you guess which one of us has high versus low pressure?  Isn’t it obvious?  Carol runs on so much energy, we used to call her Ethel, and I am so passive that last week I was reading at the library and somebody put lilies in my lap.  After the blood pressure, the nurse always gives me some kind of cognitive test.  What day is it?  Who’s the President?  Who’s your Daddy?  Who’s the leader of the club that’s made for you and me?  Then she asks me to write any sentence, and I always write, “I hate needles!”  Then she asks me to memorize three words.  The first time she did that, the words were – apple, penny, table.  Ok, I passed.  A year later I was back and she was back and the questions were the same.  When she said, “I have three words for you to memorize, I immediately said, “You mean apple, penny, table?”  She looked at me, then looked at her paper and said, “I guess you pass.”  I’ve been wondering a little about your cognitive ability, so I want you to remember Apple-Penny-Table.  Can you do it?  I’ll ask you again next week.

And speaking of cognitive tests, can you say 60 words in 60 seconds without ever repeating a word twice or using a word that has the letter “a”?  Ready? Go!

Hurricane Irma was disastrous, and I hope you and all the people you know came through it unharmed.  It was horrible, treacherous and exhausting – and so was the CNN coverage.  For days we heard every news-anchor screaming: “Leave Florida, get away, don’t play games – this is the worst storm ever in the history of the Earth and you will die.  Do not go outside, you will die.  Do not open a window, you will die.  Anyone who goes outside is stupid, crazy and suicidal.  Now to Chris Cuomo who is standing in the middle of the street with 200 mph winds hurling tree trunks at his face.  Chris, how’s it going out there?” 

The Zoo has a new attraction that is exotic, attractive, harmless-looking and instantly poisonous.  No, it’s not a venomous desert scorpion from the Insectarium or an African black mamba from the Herpetarium.  It’s much more sinister and deadly:  a Deep-Fried Twinkie Sundae.  Why don’t they just have a booth with a sign that says:  For $4.95, we will shoot you.  A lady came in today with a child in a wheelchair.  She asked me, “Is there a particular day that the Zoo has for special-needs children.”  “Every day,” I replied.  “We have many special-needs people every day, and everyone is accommodating.  I’m sure there will not be a problem.”  We do have many, many special-needs of all ages every day at the Zoo.  I have never seen a problem or any response that was anything other than helpful.  It’s kind of a nice place.

We have two sinks in our bathroom, and when we moved in, after some weeks of intensive study and energetic debate, we decided that Carol should have one and I should have one.  Each is of pearly white porcelain.  I have noticed however that mine is sometimes marked with little black pieces of something or other.  Here’s what I think is the cause.  Carol likes her sink to be clean, so whenever she has to use eye-liner or eye-shadow or whatever eye-schmutz she uses, she moves over to my sink and gets it dirty instead of hers.  Her sink is as white and brilliant as Beyoncé’s teeth, whereas mine looks like the nesting place of a family of Canadian geese.   It’s fine; her eyes look great.

Ok, the sixty words in sixty seconds – just count from one to sixty.  Each word is different and none contains an “a”.  That’s about it for this week.  Stay well and stay away from the Deep-Fried Twinkie Sundae.  And keep your sink clean.  See you next week.

Michael                                    Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com