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.
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