Blog #69

I’m throwing out a suggestion about the Fourth of July.  I think we should move it to the middle of December.  In December, we could start the fireworks at 5:00, eat some ribs and be in bed by 8:00.  In July, we don’t start until 9:00 and we get home way too late.  I need my beauty sleep.  Don’t you dare send me a snarky little response to that!

Hello and welcome back.  I love when you come back.  Are you still celebrating the Fourth?  I hope you didn’t get burned or drunk or fat, and that you’re feeling fine, but if you’ve recently been to a kid’s birthday party, I’m worried for you.  I was at my granddaughter’s birthday party, or as I like to call it, This Is Pus.  There were about 15 kids plus their parents all huddled in the basement sharing pizza, coughs, cupcakes, sneezes, air and bodily fluids.  It was great fun.  I had door duty and greeted the parents. 

Hi, glad you could come, how are you?  I’ve got 103 fever, cold sweats and I’ve been bleeding from the eyeballs, but I can stay for a little bit.  Hi, Little Joey looks a bit pale.  He’s been throwing up all night, but I think he’ll be all right.  Hi, I see your wife in the car. Is she coming in?  Well, she’s covered with black, pustulating buboes and smells like rotten chicken, but she can come in for a while.  Glad you could make it.

Thanks for your presents and sneezes

The sniffles, the coughs and the wheezes

We’re glad you could come

With your bacterium

And share your infectious diseases.

I guarantee you I am now a carrier of every spore, virus, bacterium and parasite known to modern medicine.  I have lime disease, bird flu, Zika, tapeworm and rickets.  I have bubonic plague, pneumonic plague, cholera, shingles and mad cow.  I’ve got African sleeping sickness, Japanese swine flu, Malaysian jungle rot and acne.  I’m not even sure you should read this blog without dousing your device with antiseptic. 

Naturally, my granddaughter got sick.  The doctor said it was Fifth Disease.  Have you ever heard of that?  Google has, so it must be real.  I wonder if there is a Fourth or a Sixth disease.  Hang on, I’ll be right back.  Shazam!  Google tells me that there is a sextet of numbered children’s diseases.  Here they are: First Disease – Rubeola; Second Disease – Scarlet Fever; Third Disease – Rubella; Fourth Disease – Filatov-Dukes’ disease; Fifth Disease – Erythema Infectiosum; and, Sixth Disease – Roseola.

Well, ‘Tis the Season.  Carol’s birthday season has begun.  She will get wined, dined, feted, gifted and lavishly entertained for at least the next nine months.  It’s gotten so outrageous that last night when she told me she was being taken out for her birthday, I replied, “This year’s or last year’s?”

Before she went out, she told me she had been trying to get a refund on something she bought and the woman on the phone had given her a hard time.  “You talk to her”, she said, “a man does better.”  She thinks I can get this woman to give in where she could not?  Me, who has been browbeaten, ordered around and basically enslaved by my wife and daughters for so long that the sight of a lipstick makes me shake more uncontrollably than the thought of wearing linen in October?  She thinks I can convince a female on the phone to do what I want?

But I will try – yes, this strong, persuasive epitome of dominant manhood will do exactly as his diminutive wife tells him to do.  And after that mean old woman on the phone tells me I can’t have my refund and my clothes don’t match, I’ll let my oldest daughter do it.  That phone lady’ll be in trouble then!

If a man speaks in a forest and there’s no-one there, is he still wrong?

 

I do get my way sometimes.  The last time was my birthday – in January.  Our friends were going to take me out and Carol said we could go anywhere I wanted.  After all, it was my birthday.  I said I really like XYZ.  “Well,” she said, “XYZ is noisy and doesn’t have a round table for ten, but ABC does.  You like that, don’t you?”  Well, sure, I said.  At least she was happy, and you know that our marriage is a success because we have the same goal in life – to make her happy.

I decided to take my two local grandsons to a movie, Jurassic Park XXXVII.  Go to the movie early, wait in line, buy the tickets, enjoy – right?  Not any more.  No, I had to go online, sign up for some kind of Dango something, pick my seats, the size of the screen and how many dimensions I wanted.  I had less options on the last car I bought. Then I had to come up with a password, give them a credit card, pay a service fee and tell them who my fifth-grade teacher was (Mr. Diamond).  I could have applied for citizenship to North Korea in less time.  By the time I was done, I no longer wanted to see the movie, or a computer, or my grandsons!  Why is everything so ridiculously complicated?  I want my world back.

In my world, we went to see two movies at once.  We sat in a seat with gum stuck to the bottom and ate popcorn with butter.  Today, the seats recline, heat our behinds, massage our feet, blow cold air on our hair, rub our necks.  In my world, there were places that did all that, but they didn’t show movies and not even my father was allowed to go there.  And now I can’t even get butter on my popcorn or the Cholesterol Police with tell my wife.  I want my world back.

And I want you back too, so make a note to come see me next week.  Or, if you’re such a hi-tech, modern smart-ass, put it on your Google Calendar.  However you do it, be back a week from today and see who I’m mad at then.  I hope it’s not you.  In the meantime, stay well and count your blessings.

Sorry to say we have one less blessing to count this week.  Our beautiful friend Diane has passed away.  A truly lovely and classy woman.  We will miss her.

Michael                          Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com