Blog #228                                                             July 22, 2021

 

See you next week.  Stay well.  Count your blessings.  Wait, that’s what I say at the end of the blog, not the beginning.  I’m so confused.  I’m turned upside down, and it’s all because last Saturday was National Wrong Way Day.  Seriously.  Look it up.  Members of the National Wrong Way Society used to celebrate it by driving on the wrong side of the road, but they’re no longer with us.  Nowadays, it’s celebrated by grocery shopping from left to right.

 

I always go in the entrance on the right, near the produce.  I start at bananas and end with milk and that’s the way it’s been for thousands of years.  It all started because that’s how King Tut shopped 3,350 years ago at the local Yummy Mummy.  Actually, Mrs. Tut did all the shopping.  Her name was Ankhesenamun.  He called her Cupcake.  Anyway, Ankhe would start with bananas and work her way right to left and we’ve all been doing that for millennia.  Saturday, however, to show my support for Wrong Way Day, I started on the left side – eggs, cheese, milk. Well, you can imagine my disorientation.  I felt like an American trying to drive in London.  I felt like a breech baby.  I felt like the world was a tuxedo and I was a pair of brown shoes.  (Thank you, George Gobel.)  So, did I adapt?  Did I improvise?  Did I overcome?  No, I walked like an Egyptian down the length of the store and started at bananas.  You would have done the same thing.

 

All right, let’s get started on the 228^th adventure through the strange thing in my head that passes for a brain.  Do you realize what an exhaustive effort goes into writing these blogs?  Have you ever tried writing a thousand-word essay every week?  I know you can’t because you all lead very busy lives and have little time for frivolity.  Me too!  I have to throw out the trash and squeeze the last droplet out of my toothpaste tube and put all my unmatched socks in a pile, hoping they’ll mate.  And buy a peach. 

 

Do you know the ultimate gesture of love?  No, it isn’t a dozen roses or a big diamond.  It isn’t hiring an airplane to skywrite I LOVE YOU.  The most selfless gesture of love is buying your sweetheart a peach when you are haptodysphoric.  I’ll bet you guessed that, didn’t you?  If you didn’t, at least you guessed there’s a Weekly Word coming.  Haptodysphoria is an odd feeling felt by certain people when handling peaches or other fuzzy objects.  I have it, always have.  My loving, sweet and adorable daughters, when they were growing up, used to toss me a peach knowing I would reflexively catch it, utter a loud yecch and then drop it on the floor.  Miserable, evil little creatures!  But my Main Squeeze wanted a peach, not a diamond bracelet or a new car, just a juicy peach.  So today, at the Yummy Mummy, I held my breath, curled my toes, thought about bunnies and kittens and bought my wife a peach.  If that isn’t love, what is? 

 

Life has a lesson to teach

That nothing is quite out of reach

Though you can’t afford bling

You can make her heart sing

If you just buy your Honey a peach.

 

Awww!  And Yecch!

 

Message from Shakespeare:  Ay, there’s the rub (Hamlet).  He’d better not have any of that hapto-crap when he rubs me.  I’m fuzzy too.  Mostly, I like being rubbed on my left cheek because I don’t have a left paw to do it myself.  But a good rub anywhere is purrfect.  Purr.

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you are feeling well.  I’m feeling aggravated, actually, and I need to get this off my chest.  I have started wearing a mask again in Walmart and other stores.  Missouri is having a surge of Covid cases among people who have refused to get vaccinated, and it worries me.  Let me answer some of the excuses people have for not getting vaccinated.  Then I’ll shut up.

 

1.     It’s a free country and nobody can punish me for not getting vaccinated.  Wrong.  They can punish you for not wearing a seat-belt, can’t they?  Or a motorcycle helmet?

2.     The vaccines might have unhealthy side effects.  That didn’t stop you from smoking or drinking or sitting on the couch for 18 hours a day.

3.     Those scientists really don’t know that much about the disease.  Right, and they’re the same evil bastards who told you the world was round.

4.     I don’t know what’s in those vaccines.  Have you ever eaten bratwurst?  You don’t know what’s in that either.

 

Do yourself a favor, People.  Do the rest of us a favor.  Get vaccinated.  It doesn’t hurt.  I’ll hold your hand.

 

I was with a friend today who said he was feeling weak and listless.  I suggested he might have an electrolyte imbalance.  That’s what my Dad used to have, and he went from horrible to normal with just a little dose of magnesium or something.  “Go have a blood test and the doctor will fix you right up,” I said.  “If not, we’ll see you at the shiva.  But don’t make it on a Wednesday.  I work at the Zoo on Wednesdays.”  At least I got him to smile.

 

Everybody seems to be going into Space these days – Richard Virgin, Jeff Bezos.  Would you like to go up into Space?  When you’re weightless and step on a scale, it will show zero.  That would be good.  Maybe the weightlessness would make your back feel better.  And you could watch old Jetsons cartoons.  “Meet George Jetson, his boy Elroy, daughter Judy, Jane his wife.”  Or Star Trek episodes.  Space, the final frontier.  Now Amazon Prime has a new Space Channel with shows like:

 

Star 54, Where Are You

Married … with Asteroids

Name That Moon

Orange is the New Black Hole

How I met Uranus

 

Ok, enough uproarious laughter.  Let’s get back to strange days, like National Wrong Way Day.  Today is National Hammock Day – seriously!  So drop your butt right in there, relax, swing back and forth and count your blessings.  And stay well.  See you next week.

 

Michael                                             Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com