Blog #68

The Fourth of July is coming up next week.  Independence Day celebrates the birth of the United States of America.  It celebrates our flag and our Constitution and our national Anthem.  Do you have a problem with any of that?  Well, some people do and they show it with protests and demonstrations.  But just like other things, protests just aren’t what they used to be.  In the 60s, we had real protests – fiery protests.   Feminists burned their bras, anti-war activists burned the flag, students burned the ROTC building, blacks burned Watts and the occasional Buddhist burned himself.  Those were the days!  Everybody had a Zippo and they knew how to use it.

Nowadays, people don’t burn anything on the Fourth except the burgers.  But be careful!  The golf, the fireworks, the barbecue -- they could all kill you, you know.  Especially golf!   I used to play golf twice a week.  I was never great.  I was never horrible.  But as the years go by and my back becomes more troublesome, I play less and worry less about my score.  My friends are the same.  Why worry about pars and birdies when you can worry about tripping over your putter and breaking a hip.  Or being thrown from a cart and gouging your leg.  Or driving into a lake and drowning.  Or having a heart attack from the heat.  It’s a par-72 jungle out there!

At golf today nobody died

And nobody fainted or cried

No back pain, no scars

No birdies or pars

So all that was hurt was our pride.

Another dangerous summer activity is boating.  Riding a boat is great fun and brings out, mostly in men, some instinct, ancient and genetic, that has come down to us from Ulysses and makes us believe we actually know how to tie a knot or steer a boat.  Of course I can’t do any of that.  I’m Jewish!  If Jews knew how to sail a boat, God would not have had to part the Red Sea.

When Moses thanked God for the Red Sea spectacular, God replied.  No problem, Moses.  Hey, you know those matzos you guys made?  Sensational!  Try them with a little manna.  I’ll send a few years’ supply down to you.  Have a nice wander and say hi to Zipporah for Me.  Tell her in a few thousand years I’m going to name the Zippo lighter after her.

Hi there and welcome back to my crazy blog.  I hope you’re doing well.  I get a lot of feedback from my readers.  I like the feedback.  I was at a golf-outing last week with about twenty people.  They all read my blog and are very, very nice people, all about my age.  We spent some time counting how many of us had pacemakers and comparing Lunesta and Ambien.  Then several wanted to know when I would mention them in the blog.  I get that a lot, and my stock answer is, “When you say something hilariously stupid.”  They never did, but I’ll say hello anyway.  Hi, Schleppers and thanks to our fabulous hosts S&H.

Hey, that reminds me of S&H Green Stamps and Eagle Stamps that we used to have back in those fuzzy years long ago.  We’d shop and the store would give us stamps.  We’d lick the stamps and paste them in a book and when the book was full we’d trade it in for a few dollars.  It was like Frequent Licker Mileage.  My Mom was an Olympic-Class Consumer, and she would give me all the stamps to lick.  The glue was probably poisonous, but who knew?

I just received an email from a high-school friend, a psychiatrist somewhere out east, Philadelphia, I think.  He told me he was writing a book about mental illness and wanted to use a poem I had written back in high-school.  Why he has saved one of my 55-year-old poems till now, I can’t say.  Maybe he had a crush on me.  I won’t bore you with the poem, but it was a 12-line rhyming version of the following joke:

A man took his wife to a faith-healer.  “Guru,” he said, “my wife is sick.”  The Guru looked into the woman’s tired and swollen eyes and touched her pallid, shrunken skin and said, “No, my friend, your wife is well.  She only thinks she’s sick.”  A week later the man saw the healer again.  “Well,” said the Guru, “is your wife better?”  “She’s worse,” said the man.  “She thinks she’s dead.”  It figures -- I finally get a poem published and it’s in a book about mental illness!

Did you notice I used the word till two paragraphs earlier?  The word is actually until.  For a while, I tried writing ‘til, the apostrophe being my sacrifice to the Grammar Gods, but I have decided to abandon my poor apostrophe and give in to the common usage of till.  I feel somehow dirty and weathered by that decision, but life goes on, the language changes and we old dinosaurs of diction must adapt or become extinct.

And speaking of words, a friend told me that some woman named Bee who was on the TV used a word with a C that was not rated G.  There’s a limerick there somewhere, but you only get one a week.  Yes, my friend said, she used the dreaded C-Word.  “What,” I exclaimed, “Constipation?”  Well, each generation has its own forbidden words.  When I was young, Hell, Damn and Bitch were forbidden in my house.  Lucy and Desi were not allowed to share a bed.  And “gay” meant lively and happy.  Things are certainly different today!  As the Wicked Witch of the West would say, “What a world!”  Besides constipation, there is another dreaded and forbidden word for those of the older generation.  It’s the F-Word – Fried Foods.

You know what else has changed?  Toilets.  Now, as I walk away from a public  urinal or seat, it flushes itself.  Then at the sink I just pass my hand under the soap dispenser and soap comes out.  I wave my hands under the faucet and water comes out.  I approach the towel dispenser and towels come out.  If they could just figure it out so that if we waved our hands behind us, crap would come out, then we wouldn’t have to eat navy beans and chick peas.

Ok, I’m talking about toilets again, and that means it’s time to leave.  Stay well and be careful.  Stay away from boats and self-immolating Buddhists, and be sure to count your blessings.  Have a great Fourth and come back next week.  Maybe I’ll mention your name.

Michael                          Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com