Blog #386                                         August 1, 2024

 

I have been working at the Zoo for ten years, and I love it.  I get to meet all kinds of people, answer all their questions and help them have a great experience.  Over those ten years, I have met thousands of people - all ages, sizes, colors.  A diverse and variegated amalgam of humanity!  But this week, I saw something unique and quite strange.  Two guys were walking toward me.  One was wearing a black shirt, black pants, unruly hair, overweight.  His companion had black shirt, black hat, black mid-length skirt, beard, carrying a pineapple.  The all-black look put him into the Not-Going-To-Be-My-Bestie category.  The combination of skirt and beard put him into the Well-Who-Am-I-To-Judge category.  But the pineapple?  Beam me up, Scotty.

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling well.  Are you watching the Olympics?  Nothing is the way it used to be.  Have you seen the list of Olympic events this year?  There is Artistic Swimming – never heard of that.  There is Flag Football.  Seriously?  And Break Dancing.  The Olympic Motto used to be Faster, Higher, Stronger.  Now I think the motto is The Best, the Worst and the Weirdest.  Thank you, Zip Rzeppa.  Oh, and Hoda Kotb just won a Gold Medal for saying “I just love her” 742 times in one day.  To me, she’s like an Egyptian cuckoo clock that keeps repeating the same things.

 

Then there’s the event where two guys on bicycles go as slowly as they can for two laps, then as fast as they can for one lap.  I’d rather watch fish die.  I mean, if they aren’t strong enough to pedal hard for three laps, they shouldn’t get a medal anyway.  I’m getting ready for the 2028 Olympics in the USA.  I’m entering the Chewing Gum While Reciting the Raven event.  I think I have a chance for a medal.

 

If you had the opportunity to come back as someone else in your next life, would you choose to come back as a sensational Olympic athlete?  A beautiful movie star?  Kristi Noem’s campaign manager?  To me, it’s an easy choice.

 

Reincarnation?  Well, gee

It’s obvious who I would be

For my second life

I’d come back as my wife

Then I could be married to me.

 

Trump and I have the same humility coach.

 

I certainly wouldn’t want to come back as a politician.  I am sitting here, looking at a 5” by 10” glossy piece of thick paper printed in color on both sides and mailed to me in an attempt to convince me to vote for the candidate whose picture appears thereon.  Wow, I can be awfully wordy, can’t I?  This glossy ad tells me that So-and-So will protect my family, secure the border, reduce my taxes, defeat China, lower the price of groceries and give me free Taylor Swift tickets.  I must have gotten a hundred of these things in the past few weeks.  What a waste of trees!  They ought to take all those useful idiots and make them plant more trees to make up for the junk mail.

 

Weekly Word:  Useful idiots is used to describe someone who thinks he is supporting and working for some worthwhile goal, but is actually being manipulated. 

 

I looked up that term (on the advice of my friend Don) while I was sitting on my favorite chair, my sweet Shakespeare purring on my lap.  It has always filled me with a sense of awe to be able to tame a wild creature.  Over the years I have tamed many – three children, eight grandchildren, dogs, cats, even a pet rat.  They’re all the same.  All creatures are selfish and want the same things:  feed me, make me warm, keep me safe, make me giggle, get me Taylor Swift tickets.  Cats do giggle; we call it purring.  Whether it’s child or pet, when they curl up on you and close their eyes and schnoogle their head on your chest, you know you have their ultimate trust.  It’s awesome!

 

Message from Shakespeare:  Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none (All’s Well That Ends Well).  Now what’s that wordy old fool talking about?  I think he’s a use-LESS idiot.  He can make the simplest thing into a whole book-load full of big words.  I’m a cat, he’s my human, we get along fine.  Ten words, pretty simple.  I don’t know why you all come back every week.  I guess you’re as foolish as he is.  Purr.

 

Well, Shakespeare may be able to say things in just a few words, but I cannot.  I am wordy.  I admit it.  I’ll share something with you.  I shouldn’t, because it makes me look childish, stubborn, silly and obsessive, which I am, so here it is.  When I started to write these blogs 386 weeks ago, I quickly came to the decision that a good length would be between 900 and 1100 words.  I reasoned it would be a mistake to have a short blog one week and a long one the next.  Besides, you have to stop somewhere.  My computer tells me how many words are in a document, so I would check that number each week and make sure to end up in the 900-1100 range.  One week, sometime in the first year or so, I checked the word count and saw it was 1,066 words.  That rang a bell, so I checked the blog from the previous week and noticed it was also 1,066 words.  Strange coincidence.  The next week, just for fun, I deleted or added whatever I needed to make it exactly 1,066 words too, and since then, every blog has been that magical 1,066 words.  A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.  I guess Ralph Waldo Emerson was thinking of me when he wrote that. 

 

And it’s time now for this little mind to say goodbye.  Whatever age you were when you started to read this blog, you’re now a few minutes older.  I hope you spent some of that time laughing.  Fredrik Backman said, “All grownups are angry; it’s just children and old people who laugh.”  Which one are you, a child or an old person?  Maybe you’re both.  I like to think I am.  Stay well, count your blessings and thanks for putting up with me.

 

Michael                                    Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com