LIMERICK    OYSTER

Blog #268                                April 28, 2022

 

One night, when we were in Florida, there were eleven of us sitting in a rented condo with an unfamiliar television and two remotes.  The ensuing hour was funny enough to be its own sit-com.  We’ll call it My Friend Clicka or something.  Can you just imagine eleven old people trying to figure out something that the best Japanese engineers have devoted their entire careers to making complicated?  It is their revenge for Hiroshima, you know.  What goes around comes around.  “You vaporized two of our cities, so now each year we’ll cause thousands of your senior citizens to suffer attacks of apoplexy trying to record Jeopardy and Dancing with the Stars at the same time.”  At one point we actually got a Saudi Arabian sit-com on the TV.  It was called Oil in the Family.  We also got an actual 1996 episode of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air with Chris Rock as a guest star.  Maybe that’s where the fractious relationship between Will Smith and Chris Rock originated.  You never know.  Lillian Hellman famously said, “Nothing, of course, begins at the time you think it did.”

 

Still playing with the remotes, I got the GUIDE button on one to open the door on the microwave oven.  And Carol rigged one to fire AA batteries like an AK-47.  It was hilarious.  Did we ever get to watch television?  No, but we had fun picking up the batteries.

 

Tuesday was my cat Shakespeare’s birthday.  He was 3.  We’re not sure of the exact day, since he was dropped off at the shelter with a mangled leg and no history, but I chose April 26^th because that’s William Shakespeare’s birthday.  Will is 458.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  I would not wish any companion in the world but you (The Tempest).  I think I’ll write Pops a limerick. 

 

I think that old man is the tops

He buys me cute toys when he shops

I just have to say

That if I had my way

I’d spend all nine lives with my Pops.

 

That counts as my missing limerick.  Get it?  Limb-erick?  Missing limb?  I guess I’m not as clever as the old man.  And don’t tell him I wrote something nice about him.  Purr.

 

Carol must have been watching some program about oligarchs.  She would and often does watch anything and everything on the air.  She would watch snakes molt if it had Hoda Kotb in it.  Anyway, she just came in and said, “I want to grow up to be an Oligarch.”  I wonder what you call a female oligarch.  You know, a female who is wise, powerful and domineering?  An Oligarchess?  An Oligarchette?  I’m pretty sure they would just call her A Jewish Wife?  Ogden Nash said, “The phrase weaker sex was coined by some woman to disarm some man she was preparing to overwhelm.”  I’ll settle for being the Oligarch’s personal grocery shopper.

 

And speaking of groceries – I often use these stupid little segues, don’t I?  I guess I think it makes your job of reading a little easier.  So, speaking of groceries, there was a big push a while back to put salad bars in all public schools.  I think it’s a great idea.  Our children should be encouraged to eat a balanced and healthy diet, but I would make one adjustment.  If you make a C or worse, you eat at the salad bar.  If you make As or Bs you get a burger with fries and if you are in the top 10% of your class – cupcakes!  C’mon!  What did you give your toddlers when they pooped on the potty, kale?  No, you gave them a Hershey’s Kiss.  Your students can’t possibly respond to some faint dream of a better job fifteen years from now if they study hard.  If you want kids to take school seriously and work hard, give them something they want right now.  And use some catchy little phrases, like “Stop grazing on curds; chow down with the nerds.”  Or, “Get an A in French if you want French fries.”  I promise you, it will work.

 

I’m sorry if that was fractious which, as our Weekly Word, means quarrelsome, unruly or difficult to control.

 

And speaking of school children (there he goes again!), I was showing one of my granddaughters a song I had written some years back making fun of fancy salads.  Here’s one stanza:

 

Big gobs of radicchio, endives even bigger

Out back in the yard they go; they’re for Trigger.

 

She said, “Poppy, I like the song, but who’s Trigger?”  Who’s Trigger?  I realize that there is and always has been a generational divide between young and old.  They don’t know Peggy Lee; I don’t know Dr. Dre.  I don’t know what to do with TikTok; they wouldn’t know what to do with a phone that’s attached to the wall.  I think I’m a “father”.  They think I’m a “non-birthing parent”.

 

But some things are universal.  How could you not know Trigger, Roy Roger’s golden palomino and the smartest horse in the world?  Trigger was one of the biggest movie stars of the 1940’s and 1950’s.  I love children, but I am obviously most comfortable with someone who has the same background, the same references, the same milieu as myself, someone smart and with a good sense of humor.  And cute.  Luckily, I married her.  She knows who Trigger is.  Sometimes she even slaps me on the rump with a whip when she wants me to move faster.  I like it!

 

How many famous horses do you know?  I can think of a few.  Trigger, Black Beauty, Flicka, Silver, Scout, Pegasus and, of course, Rosinante.  That was Don Quixote’s horse.  Yes, I’m still reading Don Quixote, four pages a day.  It is brutally boring.  I’ll be finished in October.

 

Another thing my grandchildren don’t know about are the great old songs of the 50s and 60s, songs like Shake a Tail Feather, The Five Du-Tones (1963).

 

I’m sorry, I have to stop now.  I can’t write while I’m shakin’ my tail feather.  I love that song.  Please stay well, count your blessings and let’s all shake our tail feathers together.  Shake it, shake it, shake it, shake it Baby.  C’mon, you can still do it.  Don’t hurt yourself.  See you next week.  Rock n Roll!

 

Cousin Brucie                                    Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com