Blog #499                                         October 1, 2026

 

In the course of a normal week, I take 103 pills.  Ok, I’ll pause here to give you time to calculate how many you take.  . . . . . . .  Finished?  Ok.  One of the pills I take every day is a large, white, oblong-shaped calcium pill.  It’s so big that every once in a while, it gets stuck in my throat.  I’ve tried cutting it in half, but then the halves are uneven and sharp at the edges and harder to swallow than the whole one.  Yesterday, it got stuck in my throat.  I tried coughing, then swallowed two glasses of water trying to dislodge it, but nothing worked.  So I went to the World’s Greatest Urgent Care – my wife, Urgent Carol.  “Honey, I need you,” I said.  She must have recognized my distress, because she immediately turned off the Today Show, put down her iPad on which she was playing bridge and turned down the volume of her cell phone that was playing Dolly Parton music.  “What?” she asked.  I described my problem.  “Go eat something,” she suggested.  What?  There’s a pill lodged in my throat.  Dumping some food on top of it will just clog up my throat even more.  “Eat a cookie,” she insisted.  No, I said.  “Eat a cookie or I’ll turn on The View and frighten the damn thing out of you!”  I grabbed a cookie and began to eat.  I hadn’t finished half of it before the pill dislodged and slid right down.  “Thank you,” I said.  “Now you can go back to the six or seven things you were doing.”  How does she do that?  I can’t even walk and swallow a pill at the same time.

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling terrific and ready for Winter.  It’s October already and Winter is not far behind.  Let’s see what’s going on.  In the news, China will be sending Ping Ping and Fu Shuang to Atlanta.  No, that’s not a take-out order, it’s a shipment of two pandas to the Atlanta Zoo.  Here’s what I don’t get – if a pregnant Chinese woman and her husband visit America, and she delivers her baby here, the baby is automatically an American citizen.  But if Ping Ping and Fu Shuang have a baby panda at the Atlanta Zoo, it belongs to China.  Does that seem right to you?

 

Message from Shakespeare:  Exit, pursued by a bear (The Winter’s Tale).  What?  Now he’s talking about bears?  Panda bears are too big.  They wouldn’t fit on his lap like I do.  Silly old man!  You have the best pet there is.  You don’t need an ugly, smelly bear.  Purr.

 

In the English class I used to teach, I had several Chinese students, and one morning we were talking about the animals of the Chinese Zodiac.  This year is the Year of the Horse.  Why should you care?  Well, there are one billion, four hundred million Chinese on your doorstep trying to take over the world.  It might be worth your while to learn a bit about them.  The Chinese rotate their years through a menagerie of twelve animals: Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, Pig.  Hey, Chinese folk, I love your egg rolls, but your choice of animals is a bit bizarre.  I like Tiger – fierce, strong, unchallenged.  And Horse – fast, beautiful, useful.  Even Rabbit – cute, soft. But Snakes and Pigs and Rats?  Who do you have choosing your animals – General Tsao and his Chickens? 

 

And speaking of animals, last week at the Zoo, a boy asked me, “Where’s the werewolf?”  Then a little girl asked me, “Are unicorns real?”  Sure, I said.  Well, aren’t they?  Then she said, “Do you have any here?”  No, I replied, but we have green alligators and long-necked geese, some humpty backed camels and some chimpanzees.  She looked at me like I was Mork from Ork, but her Grandma smiled.

 

When little kids come to the Zoo

They want to see Winnie the Pooh

And a dragon with horns

And some pink unicorns.

That’s cool – I believe in them too.

 

I was at Walgreens recently and picked up a box of assorted sized flesh-colored Band Aids.  When I got home, Carol noticed the bag.  She notices everything.  She knows what I eat, what I wear and what the second half of each of my sentences is going to be.

 

What’s in the bag? She asked.

Oh, I replied, I just needed some . . .

flesh-colored Band-Aids, she said.

How did you . . .

Know?  I just did.  But they’re really not flesh-colored Band-Aids.

Well, I said, yes they . . .

No they’re not.  Read the box.

 

I did and discovered two things.  First, it did not say “Flesh Colored”.  In today’s world the term flesh-colored is invidious.  What color is flesh-colored anyway?  Perhaps it should be labeled “Flesh of White Americans of European Descent Colored”.  Or just “Jew-Colored”.  It occurs to me now that white people are not People of Color.   But do not be alarmed.  There is a brand called Tru-Colour Adhesive Bandages – Diversity in Healing which are the color of – well, people of color.

 

And second, (there was a first somewhere in the last paragraph, so now here’s the second) they weren’t Band-Aids.  They were Walgreen’s Adhesive Bandages.  So Carol was right.  She always is.  Just ask her.  But you can understand my mistake.  Band-Aids have been such a familiar commodity in our lives for so many decades that we presume it’s just the name of the commodity itself, not a brand name.

 

There are lots more like that.  The most familiar brand names that have become synonymous for the generic product are Kleenex, Scotch Tape and Coke.  But there are lots of others.  Aspirin, for instance, is a brand name as are Jell-O, Chapstick, Bubble Wrap, Q-Tips, Crock-Pot and Frisbee.  And now Google just means to look something up on any old search engine, just like Xeroxing used to mean making a copy.  Oh, did I tell you Carol was right about the Band-Aids?  She wanted to make sure you knew.

 

Weekly Word:  Invidious means of an unpleasant or objectionable nature.  I hope you didn’t find this blog invidious.  It’s time to go.  Stay well and count your blessings.

 

Michael                                    Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com