Blog #196

 

My daughter Jennifer sent me a picture that captures the essence of 2020 perfectly.  It is a picture of a house and a front yard.  In the Christmas spirit, the homeowner had implanted in the yard three very large, plastic red letters spelling

 J  O  Y.  A lovely thought to be sure.  Sometime, during the night, a sudden wind had blown down one of the letters leaving this message on the lawn:

  O  Y.   That says it all for 2020, doesn’t it?

 

Thinking of signs with a letter missing reminds me of earlier this year when I was searching for a pet and drove by a large building with a sign that read Burlington Cat Factory.

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you are feeling hale and/or hearty.  What a horrible year this has been – disease, depression, boredom.  We actually had an outing this week, an expedition, a sally-forth.  Carol has left the building!  It was Senior Day at Walgreen’s and a Category Five Hurricane couldn’t keep my wife away.  We advanced in a lightning-like sortie, took the hill (and the lipstick) and withdrew with a 20% discount.  I apologize if I’ve gone a little stir-crazy here.  A slang term for prison is stir, and inmates who become mentally disturbed from confinement are called stir crazy.  I think it fits me perfectly.

 

You know, they’re still burning American flags in Iran after the assassination of one of its nuclear scientists.  I’ve never seen Americans burning Iranian flags, or any foreign flags for that matter.  I guess we’re too busy burning our own flag in protest of something or other.  I wonder if American flag companies make two versions, a flammable and an inflammable.  Well of course they don’t, because flammable and inflammable mean the same thing.  Like habitable and inhabitable or ravel and unravel or caregiver and caretaker.  Who invented this language – Homer Simpson?

 

And speaking of language, last week I was extoling the pleasure of enjoying an increased amount of propinquity with my wife due to the Covid shutdown.  In response, a few readers asked why I didn’t use propinquity as our Weekly Word.  So here it is: propinquity is the state of being close to someone or something.  A good synonym would be proximity.  It looks like Carol and I will be sharing a little more propinquity now that I have scheduled some eye surgery for early January.  I’m not sure which I’m dreading more, the eye surgery or my 75^th birthday.  The operation is on a Tuesday.  It’s take-out.  Is that what they call it?  Maybe out-patient.  Follow up appointment on Wednesday, birthday on Thursday.  For a while, Carol will have a three-legged cat and a one-eyed husband.  Isn’t that odd!  Get it?  Odd?  Three and one are odd numbers.  Never mind, I forgot you’re not good at math. 

 

Post-op, I will be wearing not only a Covid mask, but an eye-patch as well.  Can you picture that?  I’ll look like a Mr. Potato Head that got run over by a reindeer.  Carol, as ever, will be a kind and solicitous nurse.  The first thing she will do is give me a bell, so that I can ring when I need her – as long as it’s not during her on-line Mahjong game, her bridge game, her canasta game or Jeopardy.  And I will be a good patient.  It won’t be difficult getting along without my left eye for a while.  It might even be an improvement.

 

We all could have much better sight

If we shut our left eyes from the light

For without our left eyes

We would be twice as wise

‘Cause we only would see what is right.

 

Besides, as William Shakespeare said, The sun with one eye vieweth all the world (Henry VI, Part 1).  Okay, Shake ‘n Bake, that’s your cue.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  Pops can still watch bird videos with one eye, can’t he?  We do it every day, schnuggled up together in front of the screen.  I call that propinquity.  Pops calls it Close Encounters of the Bird Kind.  He thinks he’s funny.

 

It’s a great time to have an operation.  I have nowhere to go anyway.  I can’t go to restaurants or bars or movies.  Did you see that Warner Brothers is going to release its movies on HBO the same day they open in theaters?  Goodbye movie theaters.  They are on the way out along with bookstores and slide rules.  Slide rules? 

 

One thing I won’t miss about going to the movies is the Movie Watcher Reward.  The last time I got one of those, it was good for fifty cents off the purchase of a “combo”.  I went to the refreshment counter to see what a “combo” was and found it was a large popcorn, large soda, a 12-inch long Snickers bar, three pair of Levi’s Dockers and a Toyota mini-van.  If I bought all of those, I would get a fifty- cent discount. 

 

But my clever wife is taking things in her capable hands and ordering me a slew of movies to watch at home.  Yes, my 21^st Century Fox has put together a list of movies for old people including -- The World According to AARP, Rheumatism at the Top, To Kill an Early-Bird and, appropriately, Cataract on a Hot Tin Roof.

 

I have missed a lot of things during this pandemic – being with my family, traveling, my friends, movies, restaurants.  And you know what else I miss?  Seeing people smile.  When I’m out at the grocery store or a doctor visit, everybody is wearing a mask.  If they are smiling, I can’t see it.  What a shame!  My mask is a black background with a bunch of red and green smiley-faces, so at least people who see me get to see a cartoon smile.  Next time you’re wearing a mask, try a big, over-the-top smile.  Smile with your eyes and your ears and your forehead.  Try it now for me.  Go ahead.  That was great.  You have a nice smile, and I feel better.  Don’t you?

 

I’d better go now.  You-know-who wants to watch a bird video.  We’ll be back next week, and so will you.  You know you will, so stay well, count your blessings and practice up on that big smile.

 

Michael                Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com