LIMERICK    OYSTER

Blog #430                                         June 5, 2025

 

I remember when arcade video games came out.  We got an Atari in 1975 or so, and I remember two games I liked – Pong and Breakout.  That was a long time ago.  Now, kids are obsessed with all the games on Nintendo or a million different phone aps.  My granddaughter, Charley, dragged me down in her basement the other day to show me her Wii.  “Look Poppy,” she said, and showed me a new game character she had created.  It was called Poppy and wore a yellow shirt (my favorite color) and had gray hair.  It also had an excessive collection of wrinkles.  I turned to Charley and asked if all those wrinkles were necessary.  She examined my face closely, smiled and said, “Yes.”  That’s ok, a grandfather is someone with silver in his hair and gold in his heart.  I watched her play a game with the new character.  There he was, wrinkles and all, limping around the course and taking all the wrong exits.  Go, Poppy! 

 

I’ve figured out why I love working at the Zoo.  It’s the only place I’m not lost.  Most everywhere else, on the highways, local roads, just walking around – in all those places, I’m basically a maladroit wandering moron.  I should be quarantined.

 

But at the Zoo, people actually listen to what I have to say.  This week I found a kindergarten class sitting on the ground, each child studying the brightly-colored Zoo map.  I asked the teachers what they wanted to see and two little girls screamed “flamingos”.  So I gave them directions to our lovely pink birds, then asked, “Do you want to hear a story about flamingos?”  I instantly had 14 cherubic little faces staring up at me and I proceeded to tell them my flamingo story, which, although possibly apocryphal, is cute.  The brief version is that when pink flamingos were first brought to the Zoo, they were fed fish and grain and normal bird stuff and after a while they turned white.  Nobody wanted to see a white flamingo and the zoo people were puzzled.  Finally, they discovered that flamingos are pink because they eat shrimp and absorb the red coloring from the shrimp shells.  When they don’t eat shrimp, they turn white, and sure enough, when their diet was changed to shrimp, they turned pink and beautiful and everybody was happy, except the shrimp.  I finished the story and the little girl closest to me stuck her smiling gap-toothed face two inches from mine and said, “Can we just stay with you?”  I guess I just have a knack.

 

I have had many readers ask me where I get all the humorous stories I share with you.  Well, life is funny.  Plenty of humorous things happen around you all the time.  You just need someone to point out a different way of looking at them.  Henry David Thoreau said, “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling well and looking forward to summer – swimming, vacationing, warm weather.  Bugs, heatwaves, pollen.  Well, every rose has its thorns.  How about maladroit as our Weekly Word?  It means unskillful, awkward and bungling.  Did I use that to describe myself?

 

Message from Shakespeare:  Twere to consider too curiously, to consider so (Hamlet).  Cats are very curious.  If Pops puts a box on the floor, I will jump into it to see what’s there.  He’ll just trip over it.  Purr.

 

The other day, I noticed that my son-in-law has his Siri voice set as a British male voice.  I like the idea of talking to an English butler.  Carson, call my daughter in California.  “Yes, Sir, I will make that connection expeditiously.”  Wouldn’t that be great?   I love that old style English.  That’s why I have read all of Dickens’ books.  Instead of saying, “I like writing to you,” Dickens would say, “If my readers have derived but half the pleasure and interest from its perusal, which its composition has afforded me, I have ample reason to be gratified.”   Ooo, talk British to me!

 

I know that Dickens is hard to read because the language has changed so much since the 1840s.  Heck, the language constantly changes.  The way we spoke in the 1950s isn’t the same as it is now.  There are new phrases and meanings and usages.  Some are great, but there are some of them I don’t like, like “like”.  Teens seem to use the word “like” as every third word of their vocabulary.  Give me like Dickens like any time.  Like.

 

Have you ever seen Madame Butterfly?  People in my generation know that’s an opera.  My grandchildren think it’s a monster movie.  My friend Larry loves opera, and I have been to seven operas with him.  I have hated every single minute of every one.  I must be a philistine, because opera is just not for me, but I like Larry and I go just to keep him company.  The last one we saw was La Donna del Lago by Rossini and consisted of five really good singers spending four hours telling us (in Italian) how miserable they were and how each one wanted to die.  Would that I could have helped them!  About midway through the second act, one of them thankfully succeeded in dying, whereupon the other four became instantaneously jubilant and took about 40 minutes to tell us so.  And that was it.  The story took place in Scotland amid warring Scottish clans, and I did learn a lot about the Scots: 

 

The Scots ride the hills on a stallion

And fish the cold seas in a galleon

They learn when they’re young

The pure English tongue

But sing all their songs in Italian.

 

Stop your groaning!  You go find two words that rhyme with Italian!

 

I have room enough for a quote.  W. C. Fields, one of the best known and most audacious movie personalities of the early 20^th century, was known to drink a bit.  One night at a party, a matronly woman said, “Mr. Fields, you are disgustingly drunk.”  “Yes, Madam,” he replied, “I am disgustingly drunk and you are disgustingly ugly.  But tomorrow I shall be sober.”

 

It’s time to say goodbye.  Stay well, count your blessings.  I’ll see you next Thursday.

 

Michael                                    Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com