Blog #76

Every year, I get a physical from my doctor.  I’m sure you do too.  One of the first things they do is get your weight and height.  The English language is so bizarre that weight and height are spelled the same but pronounced differently. Weight, for most of us, goes up or down, but height is an alarming one-way street, an inexorable shrinkage leading eventually to your grandchildren calling you Ant Man.

After they tell you that you are half an inch closer to the carpeting than you were last year, they give you a battery of questionnaires, one of which is to determine if you are depressed.  Of course I’m depressed!  Who wouldn’t be depressed after learning that their new friends are Happy, Sleepy, Dopey and Doc?  During the physical, I told Dr. Primary that I was having some problem with my vision.  He told me to see an eye doctor.  I said, “If I could see an eye doctor, I wouldn’t need to see an eye doctor.”  Geesh!

I have told you many times that I know nothing about cars or anything else mechanical.  I only know about useless stuff – like Edgar Allen Poe or chemistry.  Here’s some chemistry:  Two hydrogen atoms meet. One says, 'I've lost my electron.' The other says 'Are you sure?' The first replies, 'Yes, I'm positive.'  See?  Useless!

Carol and I have been vacillating between buying some cemetery plots or doing the cremation thing.  There is a plot for me next to my parents and I’m pretty sure Carol has one next to her parents, but it just seems like we should be buried next to each other, doesn’t it?

You know, of course, that Carol and I have been married for 51 years.  I’ve told you that, haven’t I?  Fifty-one years is a long, long time.  I'm fatter now than I was fifty-one years ago, but she’s still the same weight.  I'm shorter now than I was fifty-one years ago, but she’s still the same height.  I'm much older-looking now than I was fifty-one years ago, but she still looks the same.  Fifty-one years ago I loved her with all my heart.  Well some things never change.

Anyway, it just seems right somehow that after sleeping next to each other for 50 or 60 or 70 years, we should be buried next to each other.  I don’t know, maybe not.  Maybe she can just use her plot and put a little footnote on the headstone for me.  Just a little note in the lower corner that says, “Oh, and there’s him.  He didn’t get a closet, so why should he get a plot?”

And, of course, there’s the cremation option.  There’s a company called Celestis Memorial Spaceflights that, for a few thousand dollars, will take your ashes into space on a rocket and let them fall to Earth, burning in an atmospheric fireworks display.  It’s absolutely true! Now the phrase for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return could actually mean interstellar dust.

I don’t think the cremation fireworks idea has caught on yet.  In fact, it’s been about as popular as asbestos cookies.  But that’s because the company just hasn’t come up with the right flair, the right panache.  I’m thinking about going for it -- if they can do it the way I want.

I’ll pay you a few thousand cash

To light my remains with a flash

But when it’s my turn

For a re-entry burn

I want it to spell KISS MY ASH?

And I think I’ll ask them to throw in a quarter-pound of bacon when they fry me up.  I’d like my remains to smell like bacon.  Wouldn’t it be galactically spectacular if my atoms (there’s that pesky chemistry again) could be recycled into new plants and viruses and violin players and cabbages and kings?  Just a thought.  It probably won’t happen – too expensive.  So my second choice is to scatter my ashes in the Petite section of Nordstrom’s.  That way I’ll get to see my wife once in a while, but I’ll probably have to leave the bacon smell out.

I’ll bet you think I make up these stories just so I can insert a limerick.  It’s just the opposite.  I find a weird, but true, fact or occurrence first, and for one reason or another it stimulates my wacky brain to wax poetic.  I’ve got one picked out for you next week that you’ll like.  Don’t let me forget.

By the way, if you ever think that I have died but you’re not 100% sure, just place my body in front of a TV playing Dancing With The Stars and if there’s any life in me at all, I will get up and walk out.  I’d rather be water-boarded. 

The other night, Carol had the Dancing thing on the TV, and, because the washing machine was going as well, she had the volume way up.  I cannot tolerate uncontrolled cacophony, so I headed for the bedroom, closed the door, plumped my little pillow and began to read.  I had not finished a page and a half before the TV Monster invaded my peace and instantly turned on Dancing With The Stars in the bedroom.  I was horrified!  Where could I escape?  I decided to shower.  I left the bedroom, holding my ears, and traipsed to the shower, turned on the faucet, took off my clothes and stepped in to the warm rush of soothing water.  The beads of moisture had barely begun to form on my skin when the Noise Fairy followed me like some psychopathic Pac Man creature and turned on the bathroom TV to its loudest setting to overcome the pleasant sound of running water.  “Can you turn that down,” I pleaded.  “What?” she said.  I washed, rinsed, dried and ran out of there like a fat turkey on Thanksgiving morning.  And tonight -- it's America’s Got Talent night!  

Ok, I’ve complained about doctors, the television, getting buried and shrinking.  Thanks for putting up with me, but now I need to go.  I have to get my pants shortened.  Stay well, count your blessings and study your chemistry.  Oh, and don’t forget to come back next week.

Michael                          Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com