Blog
#303 December 29,
2022
While walking from my car to
the Walmart entrance a few days ago, I saw a glove nestled against one of the
empty carts in the parking lot. It was
white and blue and dirty. On closer
approach I saw that it was a left glove made of white mesh with a blue
wristband. This glove must have a story,
I thought. Why was it there? Where was its partner? A mesh glove – not very practical in cold
weather. Maybe it was a golf glove; that
would explain the absence of a partner.
Maybe it was Michael Jackson’s.
Just a lonely, abandoned piece of flotsam in a lonely and disturbed
world. It was the stuff of a Chekov
story or a Poe novella or a Robert Frost poem.
Or a Limerick Oyster paragraph. The Weekly
Word is flotsam, which means something
worthless, rejected and discarded.
My
router stopped working. I have suffered
through episodes when my heart stopped working and episodes when my eyes stopped
working, and believe me, those were only slightly more traumatic than the
router. I mean what are you supposed to
do without Wi-Fi? The human race was
born, survived and evolved for several hundred-thousand years without the
Internet, but we have somehow arrived at a point in the history of our species
where we can no longer exist without instantaneous access to everything. I mean, how are we supposed to survive if we
can’t go on Amazon and buy something we don’t need and have it delivered two weeks
before we didn’t need it?
I remember the good old days when online was where
you hung your laundry. When spam
was a canned meat spread, cookies
were sweet and tweet was the sound a little bird made. Oh well, those days are gone, and now I’m sitting
at my desk surrounded by enough wires to reach Sweden and so many different
passwords I have to keep a printed list of them on my desk, which sort of
negates their usefulness.
I found a phone number for Linksys, the router
company, and prepared to call them for help, a feat of communication only slightly easier than contacting L. Ron
Hubbard. Surprisingly, however, it took
only thirty seconds to contact a helpful representative named Svetla who was
born in Serbia, lived in Belize and sounded like Bela Lugosi on Librium. We exchanged some information, pressed some
buttons, chose some passwords and twenty minutes later had accomplished nothing
except to find out that the weather in Belize was beautiful.
Vanna, what do we have as a Booby Prize for this pathetic loser? I
absorbed that failure and did what any rational seasoned citizen should
do. I called my daughter Abby and begged
her to fix it, which she did. I guess I
should have thought of that first, but I didn’t want to aggravate her with my
time-consuming, childish problems. But
then I thought -- Hey, I’m the guy who
changed her diapers and told her stories and sang her songs (even at her
wedding) and helped her with all her childhood problems. What
goes around comes around; do unto others; cast your bread upon the waters, and
all those other Golden Rulish phrases. The least she can do is repay the
effort. Except the diaper thing.
And speaking of songs, when my grandchildren were
little, I used to sing to them. I even
wrote two songs for them – There’s A
Dinosaur in My Diaper and A
Pirate Has Stolen My Cookie.
Where’s Casey Kasem when you need him?
And I told them stories I would make up on the fly. Naturally, I was their hero: Look, it’s Poppy Man
– faster than a rhyming dictionary; able to tell tall tales in a single
night. And who, disguised as a
mild-mannered Jewish husband with no closet, fights a never-ending battle for
fun, pirate stories and Scooby-Dooby-Doo.
Now my grandchildren are older, and they have no time
for stories. But I still have you. You like my stories, don’t you? I
guess you do, because this is Blog #303 and you’re still here. Hi there and welcome back. I hope you are feeling well and staying
warm. We had some major cold here last
week. It was so cold I saw a politician
with his hands in his own pocket. The news media, of course, were absolutely
euphoric with the dangerous cold spell, almost as much as a school-bus accident
or a lost puppy. They spent hours
telling us to stay indoors because the cold was so dangerous. Then they switched to one of their reporters
standing outside telling us how cold it was.
They got even more excited when someone actually died of the cold.
We
warned the poor schmuck it was cold
But
he didn’t do what he was told
He
collapsed and he froze
From
his head to his toes
He
was either too dumb or too old.
My oldest, Jennifer, came to visit us on Christmas
Eve, which reminded me of a Christmas Eve 13 years ago. I was visiting her that year in North
Carolina and using her house and hospitality to recover from bypass surgery,
when my heart started to behave as dysfunctionally as Southwest Airlines. At the emergency room, they shocked me back
to life which is why I always consider Christmas Eve as a second birthday. Thirteen years.
For a week, my house was graced with Carol and my
daughter and granddaughter Alyssa, all of whom are exercise freaks. Every morning, they’re running and stretching
and crawling and lifting and jumping and stomping. It’s like three generations of Richard
Simmons. It tires the hell out of me
just to watch.
Message from Shakespeare: He’s all my exercise, my mirth, my matter (Winter’s Tale) Those three women surely do
flop and bop and climb all over my house.
And they all look alike. The only exercises I do are
limping and hiding. I’m very good at
hiding. I don’t like anybody in my house
except my two pet people. Purr.
Time to go and also time for New Year’s
resolutions. If you resolve to come back
every week, I’ll resolve to keep up this lunacy. How’s that?
2022 is over now. I hope you have
a peaceful, healthy and happy 2023. Stay
well and count your blessings.
Michael Send
comments to mfox1746@gmail.com
