Blog #223

 

A lot of people have told me that I should have my head examined!  So I did.  Twice!  The first time I had a CT scan on my brain, the official result was “Unremarkable”.  Unremarkable?  Are you kidding me?  After twenty-one years of schooling, 300,000 pages of obscure and arcane books and a thousand limericks – that’s all they can say about my brain?  Unremarkable?  I was insulted! 

 

Years later I had another brain scan, looking for a more complimentary opinion.  It came back “Normal”.  Normal?  Is reading Moby Dick five times normal?  Is listening to Alice’s Restaurant every night for a year normal?  Is reciting The Raven in your shorts every Monday morning with a brown-paper bag over your head while getting a tan normal?  Well, there shouldn’t be much disagreement on that one.

 

The Doctor could not have been cheerier

We viewed your brain in its interior

It’s normal said he

I said that can’t be

I always had thought it superior.

 

Hi there.  Are you normal?  I don’t think anybody who has suffered through my litany of looney-tune ramblings could possibly be called normal, so welcome back, my lovely basket of abnormals.  I hope you’re feeling great.

 

Weekly Word:  Litany is a tedious recital or repetitive series.  I do these Weekly Words because it is very important to understand the words spoken around you.  Just imagine the man who went to a doctor complaining of terrible constipation.  The doctor gave him a bottle of pills.  “Suppositories,” he said.  “Two every day; come back in three days.”  When the man returned three days later, the doctor asked if the capsules had worked.  “Worked?” said the man.  “I might as well have shoved them up my ass for all the good they did me!”   Like I said, it’s important to understand what words mean.

 

During Covid, I was the one who went grocery shopping.  Carol didn’t want to leave the house, but, due to some ingrained ignorance of mine, I was not afraid.  Plus, I can’t stay at home all day.  I need to get out.  So out I went to the land of milk and honey, of loaves and fishes, of ham and eggs.  Did I always get it right?  Not always.  Grocery shopping is not for the ill-informed.  Even armed with written descriptions of the product, color photographs and Martha Stewart, I would usually get something wrong.  Arriving home after braving the dreaded virus, masked butchers and the impossible calculus of determining the cheapest toilet paper per wipe – this is what I got: “I wanted Italian, not Creamy Italian.  And BBQ sauce without salt, but Soy Sauce with salt.  And you bought the cheap toilet paper!  Is that what you think of me?  But you did really well on the potatoes.  I asked for two and you got two. Good boy.”  I was always good at Math.

 

My marriage is a relationship in which one of us is always right and the other one is me.

 

I told you last week that my oldest grandson turned 20 years old.  I had a great story about his name, but it didn’t quite fit into last week’s issue, so I saved it for this week.  What, you don’t think I apply structural engineering and astute planning to these blogs?  Here’s the story.  My daughter named her first born Zachary because it was her favorite name.  The inconvenient fact that she had already named her cat Zach didn’t seem to affect her choice.  When my new grandson was a week old, this proud Grandpa called and asked, “How’s Zach doing?”  My daughter answered, “Oh, he’s fine.  He’s on the porch sleeping on the barbecue pit.”  “Not the cat,” I screeched.  “The boy!”  Obviously, an adjustment needed to be made.  They left Zach (the boy) to be named Zach and changed the name of Zach (the cat) to Zach the Cat, a name he carried until he went to feline heaven years later.  When my daughter bought her first chicken, I asked her if she was going to name it Zach the Chicken.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  By heaven, I love thee better than myself (Othello). What’s this about Feline Heaven?  I’m not going to hang around eternity with a bunch of prissy, nasty little cats.  I’m going wherever my Pops goes.  I hope it’s not too hot there.  Purr.

 

Not only did the new grandbaby need a name, but so did the grandparents.  My daughters called my parents Nana & Papa and Carol’s parents Grandma & Grandpa.  We had to decide what we wanted little Zachary to call us?  There were so many choices:  Nana & Papa, Grandma & Grandpa, Bubbee & Zaydee, Gigi & Gramps, Mimi & Pawpaw, Lucy & Desi.  We chose Nonnie & Poppy and respond gleefully to those names when any of our eight grandchildren find it unavoidable to talk to us.

 

I may not receive a lot of calls from my grandchildren, but I just received my fourth butt-call of the week, all from friends who had called me earlier.  I know my friends really well, and I’m pretty sure that some of them find it challenging to make a call with two eyes, a brain and all ten fingers.  How is it that they find it so easy to make a call with their rump?  And why me?  Is their phone programmed to call me when someone sits on it?  Is Apple trying to tell me something?

 

And speaking of grandchildren, Alyssa, my 15-year-old, is recovering from meniscus surgery and has a bottle of pain pills.  That’s fine for young people, but they need to rethink pain pills for older folks.  I’ve had a couple of surgeries, after which I was inclined to take a pain pill.  I reached for the bottle.  There I was -- old, weak, groggy, and needing relief that was packed in a container that, in his best days, Arnold Schwarzenegger couldn’t have opened with a jackhammer.  Do you know what a child-proof container is?  It’s a pill-bottle only a ten-year-old can open.

 

Alrighty-then, it’s time to go.  Stay well, count your blessings and Happy Father’s Day to all you Daddy-os out there and to all the women who make sure your socks match your belt.  See you next week.

 

Michael                          Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

Or, if you want to call me, just sit on your phone.  That seems to work.