Blog #53

Some of my grandkids were over and we were watching a bit of children’s television.  Wouldn’t it be nice if the real world was like the world of children’s TV?  Everyone would be kind to others and eat organic foods and exercise every day.  Everyone could spell in both English and Spanish and no-one would be constipated.  And everyone would have a nice singing voice.  No bullying, no fertilizer, no guns, no Joy Behar.  And old men would never be allowed out wearing shorts and black socks. 

Yesterday was π Day.  You know:  March 14^th, 3/14, 3.14?  Anyway, I wrote about it a few weeks ago and I got a note from my friend Bruce in Sandy Springs, Georgia.  He told me he celebrates π Day by running around in circles.  I wish I had thought of that.

Did you know that citizens of Missouri have the right to carry a gun, open or concealed, into most public places – movie theaters, weddings, even grocery stores.  Our local grocery chain is called Schnucks.  The name is ridiculous, but the fresh baked donuts are to-die-for!  But be careful.  That guy rifling through the fresh fruit?  Or the woman looking for the special on Smith & Wesson Oil?  You never know -- they could be packing an automatic weapon.  And be sure to stay away from the Cheerios section.

Bananas, some chips and a Miller?

Just going to Schnucks is a thriller

But try not to shop

Near Snap-Crackle-Pop

You might meet a cereal-killer.

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you are staying well.  As we get older, it gets harder to stay well.  Too many of my friends have medical issues, and every day I have to ask Carol for the health news.  Of course, she knows all the scoop about everyone who has been medicated, irradiated, ablated, defibrillated or sedated.  I hope you are not one of them.  But if you are, get well fast.

Hey, I have a question for you.  Do you lie?  Of course you don’t.  I would never suggest that you lie.  But do you exaggerate – maybe a little?  I have made a study of the most common topics of exaggeration.

First Exaggeration: Have you seen my grandson hit a golf ball?  Yesterday, on the 11^th hole, my Jacob hit a ball, I guarantee it was 300 yards if it was a nickel.

Truth:  Jacob is seven and the farthest he has ever hit a ball is 42 yards – into a hot-dog cart.

Second Exaggeration:  My daughter’s boyfriend just got a new job.  He’s the CFO of a new start-up that’s all over the world.  I can’t tell you exactly what they do, but they’re huge.  He’s doing very well. 

Truth:  He quit his job as a Bar-Mitzvah disc jockey and is selling a line of pizza ovens in Rapid City.

Third Exaggeration:  I’m going to a new neurologist.  He’s one of the top doctors.  He’s the foremost expert in the world on the kind of disease I have.  He graduated first in his class.

Truth:  Dr. Patel Rajmiri was the only one in his class at the Karachi School of Incantations and Pita Making.  His office is in the back of a Lebanese deli.

Fourth Exaggeration: I’ve got a great new sleeping thing for you.  You place a rotten apple under your pillow.  It works great.

Truth: I haven’t slept since the Bush administration.  No, the old one.  And I have tried every pill, powder, lotion, potion, salve, inhaler, concoction and Haitian Voodoo ritual known to man or beast.  The rotten apple doesn’t work either and smells like crap.

You absolutely know someone who is guilty of one or all of the above.  Maybe even you.

I was visiting friends in Florida, and one night eleven of us were sitting in a rented condo with an unfamiliar TV and two remotes.  The ensuing hour was funny enough to be its own sit-com.  We’ll call it My Friend Clicka or something.  Can you just imagine eleven old people trying to figure out something that the best Japanese engineers have devoted their entire careers to making complicated?  It is their revenge for Hiroshima, you know.  What goes around comes around.  “You vaporized two of our cities, so now each year we’ll cause 50,000 of you to die of apoplexy trying to record Jeopardy and Dancing with the Stars while watching The View all at the same time.”  At one point we actually got a Saudi Arabian sit-com on the TV.  It was called Oil in the Family.  A few minutes later I got the GUIDE button on one of the remotes to open the door on the microwave oven.  And Carol rigged one remote up to fire AA batteries like an AK-47.  It was hilarious.  Did we ever get to watch television?  No, but we had fun picking up the batteries.

I parked today in a restaurant parking lot and, as I got out of the car, I noticed a shiny reflection of some coins on the ground.  So I began to calculate the threshold of how much money it would take for me to bend down and risk injuring my back, my legs, my pelvis or my pride.  What’s your limit for bending like a pauper and scraping virus-coated change off a filthy pavement?  I looked a little closer and discovered there were two quarters and two dimes.  That was definitely above my threshold.  I could buy a greeting card with that at the Dollar Store!

I used to think I could write greeting cards.  It can’t be that hard.  Let’s try one:

Roses sure are red when they come out each day to greet us

Sugar may be sweet but it can give you diabetes

Violets attract the bugs, but certainly they’re blue

And you are still a royal pain, but Honey, I love you.

Like it?  Wait, I hear the phone ringing.  It might be someone from Hallmark.

I’m reading Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck, a record of a road-trip which he took in 1960.  He took along as source material several dictionaries, a set of encyclopedias and other reference books.  How the world has changed!  Do you own an encyclopedia?  Do you even have a dictionary?  Reference books?  Of course not. The Encyclopedia Britannica sure used to look nice in the bookshelf. But now you just have Google in your pocket and that’s all you need.

And all you need now is a rest, so I’ll stop.  But not for long.  I’ll be back next week.  Stay well until then.   

 Michael                                            Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com