Blog #256                                         February 3, 2022

 

The Walt Disney Company is about to release its new remake called Snow White Privilege and the Seven People Whom We Cannot Describe Without Insulting Someone.  They were going to call it Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, but, well, you know how it is.  Hi-ho, Hi-ho; it’s off to Woke we go.  They have another film in the works called The Average-Sized Mermaid.   Everyone wants to increase mental health awareness these days, so you’d think the Snow White saga would be important.  What’s more revealing of mental health issues than a house full of seven men where only one of them is Happy?  Realizing their problems, the men hire a magic psychiatrist named Snow.  Remember, it’s a Fairy Tale.  The psychiatrist uses her magic powers to make the seven men smaller so she can fit them all into her office at one time.  And that is how the men became dwarves and why, to this day, psychiatrists are called shrinks.

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling well.  I am writing to you from somewhere in Florida.  I will not disclose my location in fear of being arrested for transporting bad humor across state lines.  Since Covid began two years ago, I have done most of the grocery shopping, and I’m beginning to notice the inflation that everyone is talking about.  Before we left, I bought Shakespeare a bag of cat food which used to sell for $8.00.  Now, it’s $9.39.  I told him he had to go on a diet.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  Four legs and two voices – a most delicate monster (The Tempest).  First of all, I have three legs, not four.  Second, I’m not fat and I’m not going on a diet.  Third, I tried to sneak into one of the suitcases, but they caught me and now they’ve gone to Florida and left me alone for two whole weeks.  Is that any way to treat your favorite pet?  Aunt Abby and all her kids will come every day to feed me and play with me, but I will miss that ungrateful old man.  And, as long as I’m being catty, what’s with this thing called Limerick Oyster?  It’s a bad name.  An oyster is just two ashtrays with some snot in the middle.  He should call it Limerick Cat.  Purr.

 

 

 

The light went out in the bathroom.  It’s one of those long tube-thing lights.  Is that too technical for you?  Carol was not home, so I was on my own, a position that usually leads to disaster.  But, somehow, I pried the plexiglass cover off, got the two tubes out and took them to the hardware store where I sheepishly asked for help.  I left with the two replacement tubes and then it hit me:  I had to get them home, install them and replace the Plexiglas sheet all by myself without breaking anything.  I considered that to have about the same likelihood as my getting hit by a falling cello.  Plus, my wife was gone.  I was alone!  I could fall off the stepladder, break both legs and die of starvation!  I could have a cardiac event and not be able to call 9-1-1!  I could get hit by a falling cello!

 

Well, I got home, took a deep breath and screwed up my courage.  I told myself that I was a capable and clever man and determined to do what any capable and clever man should – wait for his wife to come home.  When she did, I asked her to hold the stepladder.  She refused.  You see, she remembered too well when her father was replacing a lightbulb and her mother was holding the ladder.  They were probably about our age at the time.  Well, her father fell and broke a hip – not his hip, the mother’s hip.  So Carol said, “I’m not going to let you fall on me.  You’re on your own, Buster.”  And so I was, but then I remembered what the Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev said -- “If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin.”  I pressed forward and got it done with only two band-aids and a little crack in the plexiglass that you can hardly see. 

 

Do you ever have trouble with your cable?  Our cable and internet both went out one day between 11:30 and 3:00.  Carol was gone, so it didn’t affect her.  It didn’t affect me either.  I don’t watch television and I don’t use the internet very much except for emails.  It’s amazing what a Luddite and a troglodyte I am.  I’ve used troglodyte as the Weekly Word before, but I’ll just remind you it means caveman.   Luddite, therefore, will serve as our Weekly Word.  A Luddite is a person opposed to new technology or ways of working.

 

Gee, in one paragraph I called myself a Troglodyte and a Luddite.  That’s almost as many names as Biden called Trump in his last speech.  But I deserve the labels.  They come with old age.  As it says in Don Quixote, “the malignity of Time, the devourer and consumer of all things” has made me an old man.  You know you’re an old man if you spend more time shopping for deals on pills than on cars.  You know you’re an old man if your PSA score is more important than your golf score.  You know you’re an old man if sending a Bitmoji is the technological highlight of your day.  

 

Some say that to slow down the aging process, you have to act young, so when my granddaughter Charley asked Carol and me to do a TikTok, we both jumped at it.  We had no idea what TikTok was, but Charley showed us some dance moves and we all made a video.  I was so proud that even an old Luddite like me could TikTok.  We’ll remember the experience for the rest of our years:

 

When we are two old alter cockers 

Just sitting alone in our rockers

We’ll remember the day

We could stand up and say

That we were a pair of TikTokkers.

 

I presume you’ve had enough of me by now.  I’ve certainly had enough of me.  Stay well, stay warm, count your blessings and watch out for those falling cellos.  See you next week.

 

Grumpy                                   Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com