Blog #285                                August 25, 2022

 

Shakespeare and I have developed an afternoon routine.  I sit in my favorite reading chair, put a blanket on my lap and begin to read.  Within five minutes, he finds me, jumps up onto my lap and starts to purr while I scratch his cheeks and his neck.  After ten minutes, he begins to clean his fur and I get back to reading.  He falls asleep.  I fall asleep.  It’s all very Norman Rockwell.

 

Hey, is Shakespeare the best cat in the world?  He’s missing a leg; he scratches the furniture once in a while and, every so often, he bites.  But he sits on my lap and purrs and waits for me at the door when I’m gone.  And he lets me take care of him and love him, something in the world I can keep safe.  “Fathers must always be giving if they would be happy themselves,” said Balzac.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  It is a wise father that knows his own child (The Merchant of Venice).  What a sentimental old fool he is, but I wouldn’t trade him for anything.  The chair he’s talking about is a rocking chair on my porch.  It’s old and broken.  Neither beast nor man rock well upon it.  I guess that’s what he meant by Norman Rockwell.  Purr. 

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling well and enjoying the last few weeks of Summer.  Have you noticed that on every corner, they’re building a new Senior Citizens Residence Center?  Do you know who they’re building them for?  All those people who rode bikes without a helmet when they were kids.  All those people who drank water from a hose, played outside without sunscreen, put butter on their popcorn and rode with nine other kids in the back of the station wagon with no seatbelts.  All those people who played with dirt and acorns and bugs, ate hotdogs every day and swam in the creek.  And all those people who stared for hours at Howdy Doody and Lash Larue while double-dipping their spoon in the Peter Pan jar.  I wonder how we all made it this far.

 

But we did, even though we ignored the things they warned us would truncate our lives.  And by “they”, I mean the ever-increasing accumulation of supercilious busybodies who think they know how to run my life.  Well, I have a bulletin for them – there is only one person who knows how to run my life.  Carol.   And she does not need your help!

 

Back in those old days, we had Elvis.  I recently had dinner with some friends, originally from Memphis, and she actually insisted that Elvis Presley was Jewish.  I of course found that impossible to believe, but doing some follow-up research has convinced me there may be some truth to her assertion.  You can tell by some of his early recordings:

 

·        Jailhouse Schlock

·        Don’t Be Shul

·        All Schnook Up

·        Heartburn Hotel

·        Blue Suede Jews

 

Back then we also had Geritol.  That was the 1950s product advertised to cure iron-poor blood.  It was 12% alcohol, so it really didn’t matter whether it cured anything or not.  I haven’t heard of that since I was a kid.  There was also SERUTAN, which is Natures spelled backwards.  I think it was a laxative, but I was ten then and didn’t care about such things.  Little did I know!  But I did like the backwards-spelling idea.  They should have named Viagra NODRAH.

 

In this week’s letter to my daughters. I mentioned that now that we were home from our vacation, everything was getting back to normal.  But actually, life is never normal.  Life is an ante-room where you wait for the next disaster or wonder to enter.  As we age, disaster seems the more likely, and when I ask someone, “What’s new?” I usually get a report of all the troubling medical issues in their lives.  Now, the best answer I could hope for when I ask someone what’s new is – nothing.

 

“Good morning and how do you do?

So tell me what’s happ’ning with you.”

And now that we’re old

I like to be told

“Oh thank you, but nothing is new.”

 

 

Here’s something new – another story.  You probably can tell that I love telling stories.  I told a lot of my stories to my grandchildren.  Thornton Wilder said, “The basis of the education of the very young is the expansion of the sense of wonder”.  Stories are full of wonder.  Tyler used to sit on my lap and say, “Poppy, say a onceuponatime.”   He’s sixteen now and drives, but he still likes my stories.   Over the years, I have tried telling stories to my wife, but it never really works.  She’s always busy doing something else, but still finds time to butt in and ruin my stories with comments like:

 

·        Who would name a kid Rumpelstiltskin? 

·        Glass slippers are out!

·        The tortoise beats the hare?  That’s stupid.  The damned tortoise is too slow.  Gotta go now.  Thanks for the story.  Next time talk faster.

 

How about a onceuponatime for you?  It’s an old story, twenty years old to be exact, and it’s about a sister and a brother who hadn’t gotten along for – well, maybe ever.  He thought she was a delusional psychotic.  She thought he was an insensitive capitalist.  They hadn’t spoken for years, and then she got cancer.  Someone told him that she was in the hospital, and he went to see.  No one named Nancy Fox.  No one named Nancy Krueger, her married name.  No one named Nancy Joyce, her pen name for all the books she never finished.  Is there anyone named Nancy?  There was a Nancy Chipprin. That was her name until she was five-years-old and her mother re-married.  She was dying and couldn’t talk because of a breathing tube.  He held her hand.  She held his.  Over the next few days, he gave her back rubs and then she died.  Sometimes, need and pity and common decency dissolve the animosities and the toxic histories.

 

Our Weekly Word is truncate which means to shorten or cut off, and I hate to truncate our morning together, but it’s time to go.  If you’re good little boys and girls and come back next week, I may say another onceuponatime.  Until then, stay well and count all your blessings.

 

Michael                                    Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com