Blog #245                                         November 18, 2021

 

Is math not your thing?  Have you always thought that Isaac Newton was famous for making cookies?  Do you have trouble counting up the number of Barbra Streisand’s Farewell Concerts?   Do you think a square root is a scalp condition?  Well, I graduated Washington University with a degree in Mathematics, so you would expect me to have a facility with numbers.  Last Sunday, Charley, my 8^th grade granddaughter, called me.  “Poppy, I have a test tomorrow on the different forms of writing an equation, and I need help.  I failed her!  I really didn’t remember this elementary part of Analytic Geometry and I was confused and unable to give her much help.  I felt terrible, old, obsolescent, antiquated, ancient, archaic, useless – and excessively wordy.  If you can’t trust your Poppy for help in math, what’s the world coming to?  I called her the next day after school.  She got a 99 on her test.  She takes after me.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  Good luck lies in odd numbers (Merry Wives of Windsor).  And I have lots of odd numbers – 9 lives, 3 legs and 1 Pops.  That’s all the good luck I need.  Purr.

 

As long as I’m talking about grandchildren, I was just thinking about a time ten years ago.  I know I talk about the past a lot, but for someone my age, there’s just so much of it.  Ten years ago, my wife was in California ushering in my youngest grandson (Parker).  I was alone, so Tyler, a St. Louis grandson who was six then, slept over to keep me company.  We had a wonderful time – movies, pancakes, games.  Back then, Tyler slept with a little blanket he called his Lovie.  When we climbed into bed, he asked me, “Poppy, where’s your Lovie?”  “In California,” I replied.

 

I really hate it when my wife is out of town.  The last time she left me alone, I decided to cook my own dinner, so I took a pizza out of the freezer.  That’s cooking, isn’t it?  I read the box:  Pre-heat to 450^o.  Ok, I located the oven, but there was no ON switch.  Fifteen buttons on the control panel, but not one that said ON. 

Why don’t they have an ON button?  After ten minutes of frustration, I called my oldest daughter.  She has a husband and children.  She must cook.  She answered the phone and, with her assistance, we executed the Herculean and highly technical task of turning on the oven.

 

When the inside reached 450^o, it chimed and I inserted the pizza.  So far so good.  After a while I went back to check on it, but I could not locate a LIGHT button and was reduced to shining a flashlight through the glass front.  It looked ready, so I took it out and went to turn the oven off.  I bet you could have told me that there would be no OFF button.  Why is there no ON/OFF or START/STOP or even HOT/NOT?  Using an oven should not be a Princeton entrance examination.  Push ON – it gets hot and cooks your food.  Push OFF – it stops and you eat.  I can see my epitaph now:

 

Poor soul, with his wife on vacation,

He met his Eternal Salvation

The ignorant schnook

Was too dumb to cook

And died on the floor of starvation.

 

They should teach you how to work an oven in Middle School, which my generation called Junior High.  It would certainly be more useful than Analytic Geometry.

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you are feeling well and getting ready for Thanksgiving.  It’s only a week away, and Carol and I will be celebrating in North Carolina.  This past week, we were in California.  Parker is ten now and his little sister, Lucy, is eight.  We had a lovely time with my daughter and her family, enjoying the nice weather and the beautiful scenery, but the food is always a challenge there.  In Missouri, we measure our food by taste and volume.  In California, they do it by looks and description.  In the Midwest, we get a big helping of delicious.  On the Coast, they get a small portion of wordy and beautiful.  I’ll take delicious.  Lucy and Parker are the only two grandchildren left who still like my stories.  I love telling stories, and I know you do too.  Here’s one:

 

Getting to and from California, or anywhere nowadays, is an adventure in itself.  I wound up with a window seat on the flight there.  Gazing from the window of a jet plane at night is spectacularly boring.  Although, there is a serious amount of awe in flying over the western states and looking down at basically no-one.  The emptiness is magnificent.  Then you’ll see a large, lonely, lambent glow that you think is Denver.  But who knows?  Maybe it’s Salt Lake City.

 

Carol and I did not sit in the same row.  I was not happy.  I always try to hold her hand when we take off or land.  I don’t mind dying in a crash as long as we do it together.  I’m fairly certain she does not share that vision of the future.  I think her vision includes living in a condo in Florida, playing canasta with the rest of the widows and dusting off an old picture of us on the mantel.  She’ll choose the picture of us where she looks the best.

 

The trip home was about 4½ hours in the air and a comparable time in the airports.  Waiting in the Denver airport is as much fun as root canal.  First, I bought a 4 oz. cup of Diet Coke for $3.95.  Immediately, the announcer told us our gate had changed from 30 to 49.  At gate 49, I went to throw my cup away.  There were three disposal-bins with pictures and instructions in English, Chinese, Spanish and Esperanto.  You need a graduate degree from Stanford to decide where to throw your garbage.  I tried to read the English version, but the mask fogged up my reading glasses.  Oops, the announcer is back.  We’ve been shifted to Gate 17.  Isn’t this fun?

 

Our Weekly Word is lambent, which means glowing or gleaming with a soft radiance.  And with that, our dance card is full:  new words, new stories, new laughs (I hope).  See you next week.  Stay well and count your blessings.

 

Michael                                    Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com