Blog #305                                         January 12, 2023

 

I started this edition more than a week ago and finished it last Sunday.  You see, I had a cornea transplant in my right eye this past Tuesday, and I figured I wouldn’t be able to write to you for a while after the surgery.  So I’m writing to you two days before the surgery and you’re reading it two days after the surgery.  I’m as confused as you are.  But I’m fine, or I guess I will be.  Anyway, the reason I sent last week’s blog out early was because I wasn’t seeing well and needed to make sure it got out properly.  This will be (or was) my 9^th eye surgery, and I just found out I will need another cornea transplant on my left eye in the coming months.  Well, I’m not going to sit around feeling sorry for myself?  I don’t have time for that.  I have to spend all my time feeling sorry for Meghan.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  ‘Tis the time’s plague when madmen lead the blind (King Lear).  I just caught Pops sitting on the floor talking to a bronze cat in the TV room.  He thought it was me.  The poor old fool is lost.  He needs cheering up.  I think I’ll write him a limerick:

 

                             My Pops is as blind as a bat

                             He just doesn’t know where he’s at

                             He can’t find his pants

                             And he’s talking to plants

                             And he thinks that old statue’s a cat.

 

I’ll go give him a bite to let him know who the real cat is.  Purr.

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling well and enjoying 2023.  Since I’m writing this early, I’ll just throw in a bunch of stuff – a smorgasbord, a hodgepodge, a mishmash, a veritable cornucopia of variegated flotsam that have been loitering in the remote recesses of my eerily unusual brain.  Wow, my tongue hurts from that sentence.  The translation is -- I’m going to unload a lot of shit on you.  Ouch, that furball just bit me.  And the Weekly Word is cornucopia: a great amount or source of something

 

I had a birthday last Saturday.  Seventy-seven, 77, LXXVII.  I feel like an old Roman.  I talked to all my children and grandchildren and friends.  Very nice.  And I treated myself to all the foods that are bad for me – hamburgers, French fries, Diet Cokes, chocolate cake.  By the time my daughters read this blog, it’ll be too late for them to yell at me.  I ate hot dogs and fast food and drank Coke all my life and look at me!  So there!  Maybe that was a bad example.  I should find an example who doesn’t have a pacemaker, an artificial hip and is as blind as Mr. Magoo. 

 

My birthday was the deadline for renewing my driver’s license.  My vision was terrible and I wasn’t driving, but I got it renewed anyway.  That goes to show you how our system works.  If I hadn’t gotten it renewed on time, when I got my eyes working again, my license would have expired and I would be required to take the driving part of the test.  If they saw me parallel park, they wouldn’t allow me to walk, let alone drive. I’m optimistic that soon after my surgery, I’ll be back to driving again.  You’ll be able to recognize me; I’ll be the one who just got off at the wrong exit. 

 

I received the new license already, and I took a good look at it.  It included my sex, height, weight, birthday, eye color and a new picture which makes me look as horrible as the last picture, only older. At my age, that’s not what I want on my primary identification card, the card the first responders will look at if I’m in an accident.  I want my ID Card to list three things -- the phone number of my cardiologist, the serial number of my pacemaker and directions to the nearest McDonald’s.

 

Carol and I visited the Geek Squad at Best Buy last week, where two very nice young men helped her with some iPad problems.  We were so innocent and clueless about electronics that we had them laughing.  “I’ll bet you get a lot of people like us,” I said.  Yes, they replied, but they said we were the most entertaining.  And then it hit me.  A Travelling Senility Show, like the old Royal American Freak Shows.  20 and 30-year-olds would come to see what their grandparents’ lives had been like.  We could show them Flash Gordon comic books and sing them some Patti Page songs and let them try talking on a phone that was attached to a wall.

 

You know I don’t like impersonal hi-tech commerce.  I like going to the bank and talking to the tellers.  I like buying the product at the store, not on-line.  And I certainly don’t like buying movie tickets on-line.  The last time I tried that, I wound up with two tickets at a theater in Poughkeepsie – and a service charge.

 

So Carol got in the car and drove to the theater.  My wife is an attractive woman who has spent a lifetime getting men to do anything she wanted.  Even now, when she is – let us say, older – she still has considerable face-to-face talents.  She arrived at the theater, ferreted out the manager and, by the time she was through with him, had gotten a refund for my purchase and free tickets and a coupon for free food and a booking on America’s Got Chutzpah. 

 

If you want something done, get out there and do it!  Marie Antoinette didn’t say “Let them shop on-line,” did she?  And Juliet never said, “Romeo, Romeo, let my Google Maps track your location.”  And Joan of Arc never said, “Alexa, turn down the temperature.”  (You want more?  Just one more and then I promise I’ll stop.)  And Lady Godiva never said, “The package of clothes I bought on Amazon hasn’t arrived yet.”  (Aw, c’mon, one more?)  And Dorothy never clicked her heels and said, “Hey Siri, directions to Kansas.”

 

And you won’t need to click your heels to find Limerick Oyster next week.  Just follow the laughing people.  I hope to be able to find you.  We’ll see.  Stay well and count your blessings.

 

Michael                                             Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com