Blog #213

 

My wife and I are both 75 years old, and we look like a 150-year-old couple.  She looks 45 and I look 105.  Hey, mirrors don’t lie.  I just wish mine would stop laughing.  Carol’s big birthday was last summer, but Covid prevented her friends from celebrating and treating her to a ceremonial “Big Birthday” dinner.  This week, however, they decided it was safe enough to spend lots of money on a lavish meal, and while they were out hotsy-totsying with wine and oysters, I went to a sandwich joint with some boyfriends.  By the way, here’s some advice.  Don’t ever ask your grandsons about their boyfriends or your granddaughters about their girlfriends.  To their generation, if a boy has a boyfriend, they’re obviously gay.  Same for girls.  It’s part of the reason our grandchildren look at us as if we were the original cast of the Bible.

 

Anyway, I got home about 90 minutes before she did.  The silence hit me like a religious epiphany!  There was no television, no phone calls, no bridge games or canasta games or mahjong games online.  I was alone with no noise or distraction.  It was as quiet as an Andrew Cuomo re-election rally.

 

Tonight I was home on my own

No Netflix, no iPad, no phone

Though I love my sweet wife,

(She’s the light of my life)

Sometimes I like being alone.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  I myself am best when least in company (Twelfth Night).  Alone?  He was alone?  What am I, a toilet seat?  I was loyally waiting by the front door when he came in.  He gave me a nice scratching and called me his sweet baby.  He’s such a juvenile.  And now he says he was alone?  Let’s see how alone he feels when I bite one of his fingers off.  Purr.

 

Carol has rarely gone out without me in the past year, so I took advantage of the peaceful silence and decided to finish the book I was reading, my 57^th Stephen King book.  When she came home, I asked her when it would be my turn to be feted for my 75^th.  She explained to me the calculus by which, among our friends, women are taken out for their birthdays ending in zero or five, but men are treated only on the zero birthdays.  I would have to wait for my special dinner till my 80^th.  I might be pretty hungry by then.

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling well.  Our Weekly Word is fete which means to honor or entertain someone lavishly. Let’s see if I can entertain you lavishly for the next six or seven hundred words.  Have you gotten your vaccinations yet?  You really should because the shots will protect you from getting the virus, not to mention that proof of vaccination may be required for flying or entrance to concerts or even restaurants.  NO SHIRT, NO SHOTS, NO SERVICE!  Get ready for it.

 

I used to have a poker game every Friday.  Nine or ten old men, two decks of cards, some poker chips.  The yelling and confusion and the screaming and the cursing – we all love it!  But we haven’t played in over a year – until this week.  All the players have been vaccinated, and we decided to resume the poker wars.  Everyone looked good and the game was as raucous as ever.

 

Plus, Carol and I played golf this week.  Oy, the yelling and confusion and the screaming and the cursing.  What fun!

 

Besides the mirror and the aching back after playing golf, there are other nagging little reminders that I have passed my prime.  The main one is that I can’t even remember my prime.  When we were in North Carolina recently, I took my wife to the store to shop. Shopping for clothes is an activity I rate one step below watching C-SPAN and one step above having a tooth pulled without Novocain.  Luckily, I had a volume of short stories by Rudyard Kipling (does that even surprise you by now?) and I went to find a seat.  There were no seats for patient husbands, but near the door were two soft, comfy-looking wheelchairs.  So I picked one, relaxed and opened my Rudyard.  Not a minute later, a woman carefully led her shuffling and drowsy mother to the other chair and left her.  And there we were --   the ancient and nearly-comatose woman and me sitting in our wheelchairs.  You don’t have to say it – I know.  But I bet she doesn’t have a blog.

 

Whenever we visit my daughter and her family in North Carolina, I often visit her chickens.  They are very attractive birds and they live in a coop that, if it were listed on Priceline, would cost you $129.00 a night.  It has everything but cable TV.  I told Jen she should install cable and let the little cluckers watch some movies.  And what movies, you ask, would I recommend?  Well, Chick Flicks of course.  You know I like silly lists and I know you do too, so here are my favorite Chick Flicks. 

 

A Few Good Hens

The Maltese Chicken

A Flock-Work Orange

Some Like It Fried

Pulp Chicken

 

And speaking of food, (don’t tell my daughter I used food and her chickens in the same thought), this week, Carol and I visited a local donut shop that actually serves donuts with bourbon, amaretto and other alcoholic flavorings inside.  They call it Daylight Donuts.   Why didn’t they call it Drunken Donuts or even Tipsy Kreme?  They needed some Smart Alec like me to come up with a catchy name. I’m still available to name the individual offerings.  Johnny Walker Red Velvet and Beer Belly Jelly Donuts come to mind.

 

Smart Alec is an interesting phrase.  It comes from a man named Alec Hoag, a pimp in New York City in the 1840s, who used to take the cash from the pockets of the male customers while they were enjoying the feminine company they had paid for.  Now, it just means an obnoxiously conceited person who thinks he’s clever – like me!  But I know you love me anyway, so stay well, count your blessings and come back next week.

 

Alec                                         Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com