Blog #73

We’re going out to dinner tonight.  I asked where we were going and my lovely bride said, “We’re going to Big Sky Cafe; be ready at 6:30.  Wear the khaki pants and the pink shirt.  You’re getting the side salad and the barbecue shrimp appetizer. And don’t slow down for any yellow lights.”  I’m wondering -- why exactly does she need me to go?  I bet if I dressed a mannequin in the khaki pants and the pink shirt, she wouldn’t even know the difference.  She’d probably just say, You acted like a dummy tonight.

Many of you send me comments from time to time, and I honestly love getting them, but I have noticed a trend lately.  Here’s a typical comment: Love your blog, keep talking about Carol, she’s just like me. Or sometimes I get: Love your blog, quit picking on Carol, you drive too slow.  I spend ten hours writing and re-writing and editing each one of these, strain and suffer with anxiety over what to say and how to say it, and after all that – my wife gets all the fan mail.  Well, she does have to put up with me, and that deserves some kind of award I suppose.

Let’s talk about something other than my wife, like Foreign Accent Syndrome.  Yes, there actually is such a thing.  Trust me.  Google it.  I just love Google.  The entire knowledge of Mankind is on Google.  Or should that be Womankind?  Personkind? Himandherkind?  Oh, who gives a rat’s Google?

Foreign Accent Syndrome (FAS) occurs when someone has a head injury and responds by talking with an unfamiliar foreign accent.  There have been cases with British, Chinese and Hungarian accents following blows to the head.  Honest!  I know this one is harder to accept than Stormy Daniels saying, I’m not in it for the money, but it’s true.

                            

There once was a fellow named Dennis

Who fell down one day playing tennis

The trauma and stress

Gave the guy FAS

Now he talks just like Jose Jimenez.

Hi there and welcome to Blog #73.  Man, these numbers are getting big.  Seventy-three weeks!  Where does the time go?  It feels like just yesterday I was picking out my own clothes and deciding what I wanted to eat for dinner.

Our 55^th High School Reunion is coming up this Fall.  I say our because Carol and I were in the same class.  Yes, high school sweethearts, isn’t that cute and so on.  Reunions are always interesting.  At the 50^th, I remember being stunned at how many old people there were.  There were a lot of beards and a lot of baldness – and that was just the women!  I’m joking, the women looked pretty good – a little shorter maybe, a little blonder.  Most of the men were getting grayer and fatter and everybody’s posture was taking a hit.  How did all this happen to us?

My junior high-school sweetheart, Judy, was there.  After fifty years she looked great.  I gave her a big hug and told her I’d see her in another fifty years.  I wonder if she reads the blog.  I wonder if she knows she was my junior high-school sweetheart.  Another female classmate was excited to see me.  “Oh,” she said, “you were so funny in High School.”  Carol looked her straight in the eye and said, “I think you have the wrong person.”  True story.

The other day, I caught my wife telling stories to our five-year-old on FaceTime.  The story was Cinderella, but she left out any reference to glass slippers.  Cinderella with no slippers?  Where does the woman come up with this garbage?  I asked her why she left out the slipper part, and she replied, “Nobody wears glass slippers.”  Hard to argue with, I suppose.  I have told her never to tell stories to the grandkids because she always seems to forget the facts.  Like when she told them a Little Red Riding Hood doesn’t go with brown boots.  Or that The Tortoise and the Hare was about a husband who drove too slowly.  Or that Beauty and the Beast was about a Princess named Melania. 

But her favorite story is Goldilocks and the Three Tables.  It’s about a girl who goes to a restaurant with a party of six and the mean old hostess wants to seat them at a rectangular table.  No, no, says Goldilocks, this table is tooooo square!  Then the mean old hostess tries to seat them at a table for eight.  No, no, says Goldilocks, this table is tooooo big. 

When we go to a restaurant now, I never sit down at the first table.  I know better.  I stand peacefully in a corner while Goldilocks and her cronies wander the entire establishment looking for a table that is juuuuust right. 

I have a land line.  I never answer it, but it’s bundled with my internet and cable.  When I tried to eliminate the land line, they told me it would cost me more to get rid of it than to keep it.  Is that ridiculous?  Anyway, I still have it.  It rang today and I was going to ignore it, but I happened to look at the display, and it read Int’l Hearing Aids.  Well, why not?  So I picked it up and said hello.  After a two-second delay a voice came on and said, Is this Michael?  And of course I said What?  And he repeated in a much louder voice, I’m looking for Michael.”  No, young man, I said, I don’t need a bicycle.  I’m way too old for such a contraption.  No, sir, I want to talk to you about a hearing aid. And I said What?  He repeated loudly, A Hear-Ing Aid.  And I said, I don’t need help in steering the cycle if I don’t have one, now do I, young man?  I started giggling so hard I had to stop.  I’m sorry, young man, I was just teasing you.  I apologize.  And do you know what he said?  He said What?  And hung up on me.

Now don’t you hang up on me, even though this turned out to be about Carol again.  And I’m sorry if it was tooooo long.  Promise me you’ll come back next week. I’ll see you then, and in the meanwhile, stay well and count your blessings.

Michael                          Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

                                       Even comments about Carol