Blog #444                                September 11, 2025

 

I am an ordinary man.  I am not unique.  I am not special.  Yet, last Tuesday morning, something happened to me that will never happen to any of you or to 99.99% of the world’s people.  At about 8:45, as I sat reading with Shakespeare on my lap, I heard some chimes.  And they were coming from my chest!  It scared the Beelzebub out of me and my excited, but histrionic, reaction made the cat screech and run away.  The first thing I realized was that it must be my pacemaker giving me a warning.  And then it stopped, lasting perhaps 5 seconds.  Ok, but what kind of warning was it giving me and would it do it again?  I was pretty nervous, but also reasonably sure it was telling me that my battery needed replacement.  My Dr. Rhythm had told me the battery was about to run out, but what he forgot to tell me was that my heart would start singing a tune.  Anyway, I took some deep breaths to calm myself and called the office.  “What’s your name?  What’s your date of birth?  Oh yes, Mr. Fox, we got the notification this morning and someone will call you to schedule a battery replacement.”  I informed the lady that it would have been nice if they had warned me that my aorta was going to explode into Yankee Doodle Dandy without a heads up.  She told me it would warn me at the same time every morning until it was replaced.  Great.  See you tomorrow at 8:45.

 

It went off again, same time, same tune.  Couldn’t they at least have picked something more apropos of music originating from inside your body?  How about:

 

I left my heart in San Francisco

I left my spleen in Abilene

I left my kidney way down in Sydney

I lost a tooth in old Duluth.

 

Now that’s what I call Organ Music.

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling well.  Today is Nine-Eleven.  Can you believe it has been 24 years?  Twenty-four years since 9/11.  Fifty-eight years since we were married.  Thirty years since my last cigarette.  So many years!  But, we can still try to be young.  Carol and I and some of our friends try to stay young by having “fast-food” nights.  We pick a fast-food place, where mostly young people go, and go there for dinner.  This week it was Dave’s Hot Chicken.  As usual, we spent an hour and a half at this “fast” food place.  First of all, we have to read the menu, then we have to interrogate the staff to determine what options we have.  Special meals, different sauces, small fries or large, can I get the hamburger without salt, is there a coupon.  We’re a pain, but we always make the staff like us by pretending to be ignorant.  Then we wind up chatting with the manager and each other.  It fills up the night.

 

We liked the fast-food place a lot

The food was delicious and hot

We had laugh after laugh

For an hour and a half

Cause the food may be fast – but we’re not.

 

It was fun.  While we were finishing up, sitting outside, the manager came to ask how everything was and we all said it was great.  Then I said, what you need are some ice-cream desserts.  He said, “We have milk shakes.  Let me bring you some, on me.”  So we had free milk shakes.  Except for me, of course.  I don’t do milk, ice-cream, alcohol, nicotine, kale or peaches.  That’s just me.

 

Our Weekly Word is histrionic which means excessively emotional or dramatic.

 

The Zoo was delightful yesterday, but pretty empty.  I still find people to talk to – the few visitors, some of the staff and volunteers, even some animals.  I saw some flamingos, an alligator, some Galapagos tortoises, each the size of a Volvo, some prairie dogs inside their enclosure and a squirrel running free.  Before I went home, I got a soda and sat on the restaurant patio overlooking the lake and watched the pelicans.

 

A wonderful bird is the Pelican.
His beak can hold more than his belly can.
He can hold in his beak
Enough food for a week!
But I'll be darned if I know how the hellican?

 

No, I didn’t write that.  Even though I am the King of Limerick, that one was written by Dixon Lanier Merritt, who is famous for nothing else at all.  While I was so occupied, I felt something brushing against my legs.  I looked down and spotted about five ducks, each about the size of a baked potato, looking for some fallen bread or French fries.  Those are the animals I talked to.  I said, Hi Boys, but they didn’t respond.  They were so cute, but they soon became bored with me and left to search for better pickings.

 

Message from Shakespeare, the three-legged cat:  That, as a duck for life that dives, So up and down the poor ship drives (Pericles).  He’s talking to ducks now?  What kind of crazy nutso did I pick for a Pops?  Actually, he talks to me too and I like it.  I guess I’ll keep him.  Purr.

 

I have an old car.  I like it.  I know where everything is and what everything does.  If I want something to happen, I push the right button.  If I want something different, I use a different button.  I borrowed my daughter’s new car the other day and you know what I found?  A screen.  No buttons, just a screen.  And every time I tried to turn the radio on, I activated the seat warmer.  I couldn’t get the radio to work or the A/C or the fan, and I couldn’t find how to turn off the seat warmer.  By the time I got to McDonald’s, my tush was as warm and tender as a pot roast.  I basically know only two things about cars – the pedal on the right makes it go and the pedal on the left makes it stop.  Or is it the other way around?

 

Oops, my heart is singing again.  Must be 8:45. Time to send you the blog.  I hope you enjoy it and hope you stay well.  Count your blessings and be back next week.

 

Michael                                    Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

Blog #443                                September 4, 2025

 

If you are my age, or thereabouts, and have grandchildren, I’ll bet this happens to you.  We go to babysit for a few days while the parents go on a short vacation.  We get instructions – the school bus arrives at 7:38, put out the recyclables on Wednesday, Zoey has a piano practice Tuesday night, Austin has soccer games Saturday and Sunday, there’s baba ganoush in the fridge.  What?  I always thought baba ganoush was a weapon of mass destruction.  But, ok fine, we’ve got it.  Then they ask if we have any questions and we always have the same one: “How do you turn the television on?”  Am I right?  When did we lose control of the thing we used to call “television”?  Now it’s not even called that.  It’s cable or streaming or smart-TV.  And not only are the TVs smart, but there are smart phones, smart cars, smart houses, even smart toilets.  Every time I get near something that’s “smart”, I feel dumb. When did the world pass me by?  And which clicker do I use to change the channel?

 

Futzing around with the smart TV, I somehow found myself on a Saudi Arabian station.  Go figure!  They actually have some interesting and familiar sounding programs.  Here are a few:

 

Malcolm in the Middle East               Oil in the Family

America’s Got Taliban                       How I Bought Your Mother

Sonny and Sharia                               Jimmy Camel -- Live!

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling well.  We all rely on our doctors, but did you ever think you could rely on your doctor to be a matchmaker?  My wife has a new cardiologist, and she told me one of her friends, a widow, uses the same doctor and that he fixed her up with a couple of his male patients.  You know me well enough to guess how I reacted to that piece of information, don’t you?  There’s a limerick there!  I remember when my grandkids used to ride around with me searching for Pokémon characters.  Stop, Poppy, I think there’s a Pikachu.  You knew it was there, you just had to capture it.  Well, that’s what limericks are, little ephemeral wisps hiding out in a phrase or a thought.  You know it’s there.  You know you can find it. Oops, there it is --- almost --- ok, I’ve got you.  A cardiologist being the perfect matchmaker? 

 

Well now that I’ve looked at your chart

I can see you can use a fresh start

So I’ve found you a match

He’s a pretty good catch

And I know that he has a good heart.

 

I wonder if Taylor and Travis had a matchmaker.  Probably not, it was such a perfect fit -- a simple guy who likes his girls skinny and a wholesome girl who likes her ends tight.

 

How about ephemeral for our Weekly Word?  It means lasting a very short time.

 

This year, the Zoo has installed security scanners at both of the entrances.  They work very efficiently and cause very little delay.  As I was working, in the spirit of just having a friendly kibbitz, and also perhaps to find funny things to write about, I asked one of the security officers what was the weirdest encounter he had experienced.  The security officer changed twice during my shift, so I got to ask three different people.  Here were their “weirdest things”.

 

·        A “support” lizard on the guest’s shoulder.  Security politely asked him, and his reptile, to leave.  I guess they call that “reptile dysfunction”.

·        A dozen uncooked hotdogs and buns.  Can’t explain that one.

·        A lady guard refused to tell me her “weirdest”.  She said it was unmentionable.  I guess some more reptile dysfunction.  Always fun at the Zoo.

 

That evening, I was back at the Zoo for Volunteer Appreciation Night, an annual event including dinner, awards presentations and a sea-lion show.  The star of the show was a 600 lb. male sea-lion name Robby who could do more tricks than Houdini.  It was very enjoyable.

 

Message from Shakespeare, the three-legged cat:  He smells like a fish, a very ancient and fish-like smell (The Tempest).  Wait, a sea-lion?  Are you kidding?  C’mon, Pops, which would you rather have sitting on your lap – 600 pounds of wet, fish-smelling blubber or 8 pounds of soft, adorable fluffiness?  Besides, that blubber-belly was called Robby, which is a stupid dog name.  My name is Shakespeare.  I rest my purr.

 

Tuesday was the event of the month, Senior Day at Walgreen’s.  It was a bright and festive gathering, with crowds of giddy seniors limping in the aisles and toasting their cardiologists with glasses of Ensure.  The special of the month was a weight-loss treatment called Bystrictin.  It is risk-free (they’re all risk-free) and proven (sure).  Trust me, my friends, if the product says it is “risk-free” and “proven”, stay away from it like it was sarin gas.  Believe it or not, you drink this Bystrictin, whereupon it expands to 50 times its volume in your stomach, taking up all the room so that you cannot eat as much.  Please tell me there is not a person so gullible as to buy some liquid that is going to explode in his or her stomach.  Oops, sorry!  I didn’t know you used it.  You look great.

 

A mile has 5,280 feet.  My strides are not as long as they once were, and I estimate each step to be about two feet.  So, if my math is correct – hold it, my math is always correct.  I was a Math Major at Washington University in St. Louis and a math teacher at both the high-school and Junior College level.  Not to mention the County Prison.  So what’s with this “if my math is correct” business?  Anyway, 5,280 feet divided by two feet per step means I can walk a mile in 2,640 steps.  Round that to 2,500 steps in a mile and I need to walk four miles a day to get to my 10,000.  The problem is, if I do my four miles every day for a week, I’ll be 28 miles from home.  You were waiting for that one, weren’t you? 

 

And now I bet you’re waiting for the next blog.  Sorry, not til next Thursday.  Until then, stay well, count your blessings and hug your tight ends.

 

Michael                                    Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com