Blog #333                                July 27, 2023

 

Have you been to a Pharmacy lately?  I still call them drugstores.  We used to have Kranson’s and Glaser’s and Gallant’s Drug Store -- small and friendly with maybe a soda fountain.  Now we have Walgreens and CVS – big and unfriendly and loaded with security cameras.  To get a package of razor blades, you have to move a plastic cover device that triggers a camera.  Cigarettes are behind the counter because they have to check your ID.  That’s also where the cold medicines are because they can be used to make meth.  And over-the-counter eye drops are not over the counter anymore.  They are locked up as well to avoid those friendly neighborhood shoplifters.  In the old days, the only items behind the counter were condoms.  Now that’s the only thing that’s not locked up.

 

Like we always say, “those were the days”.  It seems to me that twenty, forty, fifty years have just gone by in a snap.  I remember the first time I saw my wife.  It was 60 years ago in the High School cafeteria.  Sixty years, but I can still see her standing there and still remember the love at first sight feeling.  I wonder who said that first.  Probably Kim Kardashian the first time she saw a camera.  Or Donald Trump the first time he learned how to tweet. 

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling well and staying cool.  The whole country is blazing in a heat wave.  I guess it’s Global Warming.  Although the phrase Global Warming has morphed into Climate Change and now, more recently, to Man-made Climate Change.  Man-made?  I don’t see the gender-inclusive crowd pushing their way into that phrase. 

 

Austin, my 13-year-old Grandchild #6, loves science.  We read Origin of Species together some years back.  You know -- Darwin?  Evolution?  You remember Evolution, don’t you?  Evolution explains how we all came from apes. 

 

Maybe all of us haven’t fully evolved from the chimpanzees.  I’m talking about myself here.  I’m very knowledgeable about evolution and physics and chemistry.  I have an undergraduate degree in Mathematics and a Law degree.  I’ve taught High School Math and Jail House Math and English.  And yet, today at the grocery store, I had to ask for help to open the cellophane produce bag for my tomato.  No, not Carol, a real tomato.  Wait, that doesn’t sound right.  My wife is a real “tomato”, but . . . oh, you know what I mean.  The bag – not Carol, the cellophane bag -- even has an arrow on one end so you know that’s the place to pull or push or rub or – well, I couldn’t do it.  So I asked a nice young woman who was stacking Ambrosia apples if she could help me.  Was I embarrassed?  Not in the slightest.  You see, age gives you a plausible excuse for not being able to do things like downloading an app or Facetiming or changing a light bulb.  Or opening the simplest little cellophane bag.  The young woman smiled, opened it on the first try and said “magic”.

 

Did you know there are 7,500 different varieties of apples and that 100 varieties are grown commercially in the United States?  Now you do.

 

Ok, back to Origin of Species.  Austin will always remember his Poppy teaching him Evolution.  He’s very lucky.  But I am also profoundly lucky that at my age I have a loving, curious, happy and smart little boy who actually wants to listen to this old man rant on about science.  It’s wonderful!  I hope he doesn’t want to know how to open a cellophane bag.  At lunch the other day, he said, “You know, Poppy, when I think of all the best times of my life, you’re in almost all of them.”  C’mon now.  Can I cry?

 

I’m actually thinking about writing a science book about the variety and effects of laxatives.  I’m calling it The Origin of Feces.  You should read it; it’s got all the latest poop.  Sorry about that!

 

Speaking of books, I finished a book last night, a history book about the explorations and competitions surrounding the discovery of the source of the Nile River.  I read about some of these adventurers and explorers who went traipsing all over the world hundreds of years ago and compare their exciting, unorthodox and dangerous lives to my conservative, safe, mainstream existence.  I am not jealous.  I do not feel any regret.  I like my conservative, safe mediocrity, but I also love the vicarious thrill of reading about the derring-do of explorers and adventurers.

 

 Derring-do, our Weekly Word, means actions of heroic courage.  The only adventure I had this week was Hotdog Day at the Zoo.  Once a year, the Zoo treats all of its employees and volunteers to a hotdog lunch in appreciation for our services.  They treat us well, and on Hotdog Day, I eat like a mosquito at a nudist convention.  Those dogs might be my favorite things at the Zoo. 

 

The polar bear really is fun

And the lions are still Number One

But the best at the Zoo

Just between me and you

Is a sizzling dog on a bun.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  Mine eyes smell onions; I shall weep anon (All’s Well That Ends Well).  They name a lot of food after dogs, don’t they?  Hotdogs and chili dogs.  Poodles Romanov and German Shepherd’s Pie and even Collie Flower.  Well, that’s all those smelly, clumsy dogs are good for anyway.  The only food named after an animal that I want is Chocolate Mouse.  Or is it moose?  Purr

 

Movie Review:  Oppenheimer.  I’m sorry, folks, but I thought it was a bomb.  If you were expecting to learn about the making of the atomic bomb, that part was disjointed and confusing.  If you were looking to learn about Robert Oppenheimer, you could have read the book in less time.  It was way too long!  We should have seen Barbie.

 

In Fairytale News today, Snow White, in a cost-saving move, has laid off Happy and Grumpy and replaced them with a single manic-depressive dwarf.  Plus, Sleeping Beauty is still at the film developer waiting for her prints to come.  You have surely had enough of me by now.  Stay well, count your blessings and y’all come back now, ya hear?

 

Michael                                    Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com