Blog #279                                July 14, 2022

 

When my daughters were in town a few weeks ago, we were all rummaging through a box of old pictures.

 

·        Oh, look at my hair, my wife screeched with glee.

·         I still have that shirt, I confessed. 

·        Who are those people? my girls would ask.

 

It was great fun.  We came across a few nostalgic pictures of my brother and sister.  There are two kinds of crazy people.  I grew up with one of each.  The first kind knows he’s crazy, the second thinks everybody else is crazy.  My brother (Richard, 1940-2001) was the first kind.  Everything about him was weird, bizarre and amusing.  He restricted himself to having one Diet Coke a week, so each Monday, he would go to 7-Eleven and buy a large Diet Coke and put it in the freezer.  Then each morning for a week, he would remove the frozen Coke, slice off a seventh portion, let it melt, and drink it.  I could give you dozens of other examples, but in sum, he was harmless, lovable and entertaining.  He knew what he was and how he was perceived, and he enjoyed the part.  He was truly a “character”, and I miss him a lot.

 

My sister (Nancy, 1939-2002) was the second kind.  She was sad and psychotic and believed she was the smartest and sanest person in the world.  She was hapless and helpless and unbearable and delusional, regularly stating that she had spoken to the United Nations or the Pope.  I do not miss her one bit.

 

The only humorous thing I remember about my sister was the time she discovered a dead bird in our back yard on Groby Road.  She was probably thirteen; I was 6.  She, in her surreal belief that she could save the world, decided to start by resurrecting this bird.  It was deader than Prohibition, but she thought she could warm it back to life.  Get a shoebox, fill it with cotton, insert bird and a hairdryer.  Place the shoebox on the ping-pong table and plug in the hairdryer.  When the firemen arrived, the ping-pong table was in flames.  Luckily, no-one was hurt – except the poor, dead bird which had been fricasseed.

 

Alright, so much for our little trip to the Addams Family I grew up in.  Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re well and making your way through this crazy world.  It’s getting so bad that truckloads of Americans are now sneaking into Mexico.  Did you go last Monday to a 7-Eleven store?  It was July 11, aka 7/11, so on their eponymous day, they gave all their customers a free Slushy or Slurpee or Slimy or whatever they call it?  Did you get yours? 

 

I’ll tell you how nuts it is out there. Today I saw a guy with a parrot!  Yes, a parrot.  I got up this morning at 7:15 and headed out to McDonald’s accompanied by my Wordle and my Balzac.  Why is it that every time I say Balzac, I think of Hermione Gingold?  Honoré de Balzac was a nineteenth century French author that I have never read, so I decided to give him a try.  I like him.

 

After that, I needed to go to Best Buy, but Best Buy operates under the rude presumption that all of its customers sleep late, and does not open until 11:00.  I went home, spent a while writing some pithy paragraphs for you and then went to Best Buy. 

 

As I was waiting in the checkout line, I noticed the parrot, a small but extremely beautiful and colorful creature, perched upon the shoulder of a customer as he walked through the store.  Is there such a thing as a Support Parrot?  If so, that was it.  I looked it up when I got home and discovered that service parrots are not uncommon and can provide emotional support by mimicking comforting words.  There you go.  Instantly, the bizarre mind that I apparently share with my siblings, Lurch and Morticia, screamed “limerick”, and 45 seconds later, I had this:

 

I tend to be quite melancholy

Whenever I’m not with my Polly

She smiles and she preens

While I feed her Saltines

And her voice keeps me stable and jolly.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  Come, come you paraquito, answer me directly (Henry IV, Part 1).  A support bird?  I’ll support that bird on the ends of my nails.  Who could give more support than a soft, loving, adorable cat?  Feed me that stupid parrot!  Put it in a shoebox with a hairdryer.  Meow.

 

Years ago, before Covid, I used to tutor at the County Jail, and I would always come up with these weird ideas.  You may have noticed that I am overflowing with weird ideas.  These involved the inmates participating in an exhibition of their talents.  No, not breaking and entering -- singing and dancing.  There must be a lot of talent among the prison population.  We could have a show and call it Broadway Felonies or something.  Or maybe a game show like Let’s Make a Plea Deal or You Bet Your Life Sentence.  Or maybe we’ll just do a talent show.  We’ll call it So You Think You Can Sing Sing.

 

Our Weekly Word is pithy, which means concise and forcefully expressive.  Here’s a pithy saying: The world is an assemblage of fools and knaves.  Balzac

said that.  I told you I liked him.  I’d tell you that I look these weekly words up in a dictionary, but that’s no longer true.  I recently read Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck, a record of a road-trip which he took in 1960 with Charley, his Standard French Poodle.  He took along as source material several dictionaries, a set of encyclopedias and other reference books.  How the world has changed!  Do you own an encyclopedia?  Do you even have a dictionary?  Reference books?  Of course not.  The Encyclopedia Britannica used to look nice in the bookshelf, but now you just have Google in your pocket and me every Thursday.  That’s all you need.

 

And what you need now is a rest, so I’ll stop.  But not for long.  Shakespeare and I will be back next week with more humorous stories, silly puns, pithy comments and a new word to learn.  Stay well until then and count your blessings.

 

Michael                          Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com