EVERYBODY'S SCAPEGOAT AND PATSY. EEEHAW!

Blog number 125                                               Oct. 26, 2007

We plan to leave for Teresa's physical rehab at 9:00 AM, but since we needed to get gas, we decided to change that time to 8:30 AM.  At 8:25, Teresa comes up to me and says, "I don't want to hang around here, let's leave now."  I say OK.  So we leave.

We get gassed and I drop Teresa off at rehab at 8:45 AM.  I go toolin' down Florence Blvd., on my way to Starbucks, a cup of coffee and a sugar coated apple-caramel pastry.  I have the windows down and the radio blaring out a Roy Orbitson tune I don't recall ever hearing before. I'm as happy as a politician with enough votes than I can afford to trade some of them for a new Lincoln Continental. 

My cell phone suddenly starts playing a tune.  I answer.

"Hello?"

"You dropped me off forty-five minutes early!  Now I'll have to sit here for forty-five minutes!"

"Want me to come back and get you?"

"No.  I don't know why you felt you had to drop me off so early."

"Wait a minute.  I thought it was a joint agreement.  Besides, YOU were the one that wanted to leave at 8:25."

"What ever."

Jeeze!

I get to Starbucks.  I get my paper, my pastry and my coffee.  I sit down in one of four easy chairs in a little private cubbyhole away from the wooden tables and chairs out in the main room.  This is my sanctuary.  My reading room.  My thinking room.

I always choose the chair by the window if no one is already sitting there.  I would not dream of asking anyone to move so that I could sit there. It would never enter my mind.  I can't imagine anyone asking anyone to move from there so that they could sit down.  In civilized circles, such an affront is just not done. 

The light comes in from the window over the left shoulder, making it a perfect light for reading.  The other chairs do not sit at such an advantageous position, two of them face the light coming in and one sits in a dark corner with only a dim light for illumination.

I am eating my pastry, drinking my coffee, writing a  synopsis of my interlude with Teresa as described above, when an old man asks me if I would move so that he could sit there because his wife ... and here his voice trails off and he motions towards her carelessly with his left hand.  Meant to imply, I am sure, that he and his wife wish to sit close together in order to converse about intimate things.

I say sure and start to gather up my coffee, my book, my newspaper, my writing materials so that I can move to one of the other chairs.  I drop my pen and he graciously attempts to pick it up for me, but I beat him to it.  Both of them thank me effusively.

I finish my note taking, begin to read my paper and later my book.  I notice that the old man and woman converse for about a minute and then both pull out paperback books and proceed to read for the rest of the time I am there.

I am amazed that they did not seem to feel any shame, nor embarrassment, nor any sort of human connection.  I like to think that old people have put themselves a little more distant from such childish selfishness, but I guess that's a little too much to ask.

I am going to watch for them.  Next time that couple comes in and asks me to move, I'll smile sweetly and say, "Oh, that's so gracious of you, and I thank you for your kind thought, but I'll have to decline.  But thanks anyhow."

P.S. One week later I am again in Starbucks, I leave to get Teresa, I pick her up and she wants to go back to Starbucks, so we do.  When we arrive, I see the couple sitting exactly where they were the last time.  I missed them by about fifteen minutes, I surmise. 

Teresa and I sit in the other chairs and I pass a note to Teresa that says, "That's the couple I was telling you about," and she says out loud, "I thought it was,"

"I'll keep a lookout for them, you betchum Red Ryder.  I'll get them," I ruminate while rubbing my hands together mumbling, "Excellent." A la Mr. Burns.  I can't wait.

                                                                           

MONEY FOR NUTHIN', CHICKS FOR FUN

Blog number 124                                               Oct. 21, 2007

So I'm in the pita place, buying a pita for Teresa and my lovely granddaughter, Tara, and the total comes to $12.48.  I give the girl six two dollar bills and a fifty cent piece.  She puts the bills in the drawer and looks at the fifty cent piece.  Finally she holds it up to me and asks, "What's this?"

I told her it was fifty cents and then I ask her how old she was.  She says, "Sixteen." 

I ask her if she's never seen a fifty cent piece before and she says, "Yes, but not like this."  Puzzled, I ask her what they looked like and she reaches into the cash drawer, draws out two quarters, each held by a thumb and two fingers in each hand in and says, "Like this."

Babies you can talk with, that's what they are.

I LOVE, I ABSOLUTELY LOVE, TELEVISION

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BLAST FROM THE PAST

Blog number 122                                               Oct. 10, 2007

When I was about eight or nine, Bill, John and I (older brother, younger brother, and me) worked as roustabouts for Barnum and Bailey's three ring circus.  I am pretty sure that all we did was to pull on ropes along with a bunch of other people - mostly adults, which raised the three huge tents of the circus.  This is the same circus where my uncle was tried for killing elephants and found not guilty.

When we finished, we were given tickets to the circus.  For some reason Pat (my younger sister) was dropped off to stay with us at this time.

We handed our tickets to the ticket taker and he let Pat in even though she didn't have a ticket.  She must have been three or four years old.  Notice here that there were four very young children, alone with no supervision, wandering around the grounds of a traveling circus at twilight in a big city.

It was a different time.

We went down the side of the tents, looking at all the animals we had already been looking at all day, and left.  The ticket taker said something to us as we left, something about leaving, but it didn't register with any of us. I don't really remember for sure, but using logic, we must have walked home.

When we got home, my mother asked us in surprise, "You didn't stay for the show?"  We told her we saw the animals.  It was only when I was older that I realized we had missed the trapeze artists, the bareback lady horse rider, the clowns, the lion tamer, the whole damn circus!  Worked all day for nothing.  Well, not for nothing.  I got a story to tell in my old age out of it.

ANYHOW, I GOTS ANOTHER ONE

Blog number 121                                               Oct. 07, 2007

I was sitting with David - my oldest son, in a coffee house in downtown Sacramento.  When I got up to leave, my chair tipped over and I felt an excruciating pain. It was so bad that it kinda put me in a very confused state of mind.  I remember David kept asking me if I had hit my head and I never did answer him because I really didn't know whether I did or not.  I felt pain, but I couldn't determine where it originated. Turned out I had torn a rotator cuff.

The reason for the tipped chair I later found out, was because one leg was on a little ledge against the wall.  When I got up to get out, the chair leg floating in the air went to the floor and dumped me.

I went to Kaiser - an HMO, got into an argument with the doctor who didn't want to OK an operation, and frustrated, told me that he was "the foremost shoulder expert with Kaiser in Northern California."  Big fish in little pond, I guess.

He asked me what I wanted done with it, and I told him I wanted it fixed.  In an amazed stance with voice to go with it, he yelled, "FIX IT?  FIX IT?"  I told him that I KNEW that football players got rotator cuff injuries operated on, contrary to his insistence that nothing could be done.  He snarled at me, "Well...are YOU a football player?"  That's a pretty good for-instance of the type of arguments he was giving me.

He apologized to me later, but I could tell his heart really wasn't in it.

A few weeks later, because I had this vision of faces staring at me, I asked David if people were looking at me at the time and he said, "Well, Dad.  You WERE lying on the floor."  I never knew that.  Ain't that weird?

Because of that injury, I now throw like a girl and I can't throw farther than ten or fifteen feet.

But I eat good and I got a cat.

SCREW YOU, JACK

Blog number 120                                               Oct. 5, 2007

It might be that I have never noticed it before, but I don't think so.  I am talking about the ubiquitous phenomena of honking drivers warning backing-out drivers that they are coming though. 

Let me explain.

Here is Casa Grande there seems to be an awful lot of parking lots that are very crowded.  Consequently, when backing out of a space, one frequently hears a, "Honk!  Honk!" from an approaching auto, with the subtext, "You idiot, can't you see I'm driving here?"

When this happens to me, I think, "Why in hell can't you stop and wait for me to back out and then proceed on to your important mission, huh?"

"Idiot."

An alternative way of handling this lies totally with the pre-honking driver - the one coming up on a driver who is trying to leave a parking space.  All that driver has to do when he sees backup lights and/or movement of the driver trying to leave, is to simply stop and leave all hands off the horn.  The result?  No noise pollution and two happy and satisfied drivers.  The backing up driver feels good due to the graciousness of a helpful human, while the driver coming up on the backup driver feels good from having served a fellow survivor.   From having placed another in front of one's self.  Win win.

I have not noticed this honking problem in other cities, and like I say, maybe it was there but I just never noticed.  But I think I can say without fear of contradiction, that Casa Grande's parking lots contain more automobiles than other cities, percentage-wise.  This could be because nobody walks - the heat, you know.  Whatever the reason, why do so many people have to be so selfish and narcissistic?  I imagine these are the same people that litter from automobiles, flirt with cashiers while holding up a long line, and leave shopping carts in parking  spaces.  "No one exists except my important self."

Tsk Tsk Tsk.

I AIN'T ALWAYS

Blog number 119                                               Oct. 1, 2007

Coming down Cottonwood Avenue this afternoon at rush hour, I spied a man pushing another man in a wheelchair.  They were caught in a passing lane by onrushing traffic, two lanes on each side, one hundred feet from a traffic lighted crosswalk.  What's up with that?

Last March when my loving wife was in the hospital for knee surgery, I accidentally locked myself out of the house.  I went around looking for unlocked windows and doors, finding none.  I didn't have access to any of my tools, so I couldn't break into a door.  The only thing I could think of to do was to break a window and then clean the whole mess up before Teresa saw it.  I could think of no other way to solve the problem.

I took a brick from the pile in the backyard and hit the family room window.  It didn't break.  I wrapped the brick in a rag I had on the verandah and gave the window a smart smack.  Nothing.  OK, I gotta get this done.  I stepped back about ten feet, took the towel off the brick and threw it as hard as I could at the window.  It bounced off the window and landed about six feet away.  Whaaaaa?

I left the brick where it landed to show to my youngest son when he came over, because I was very impressed with the glass being used nowadays.  Funny that no mention was made of this glass when we bought the house.  Seems like something like that has bragging rights.

But I still had to get in.  I was done trying to break a window.  My next great idea was to go next door and borrow a wood chisel and cut a hole in the front door and get in that way.

While the lady next door looked for a chisel, she happened to ask me why I didn't call a locksmith.  I guess she thought I had some neurotic aversion to them, but to tell you the truth, it never crossed my mind.  Did I feel silly!

If I remember right, the locksmith cost me forty-six dollars and he was all done a half hour after I called him.  Simple.  Cheap.

I told my youngest son about my adventure, showed him where the brick had landed after bouncing off the window, I showed him the mark on the window where the brick had hit, and I swore him to secrecy because I didn't want the lovely Teresa to know anything about it.

About a week later her and I were out front and the next door lady drove by and yelled out asking about the locksmith.  Teresa asked me what that was all about, so I told her about locking myself out of the house, but I didn't tell her about throwing the brick at our window.  Not then I didn't.

Even later that month I was talking to a guy at Starbucks and we got to talking about buying new houses and I got excited and told him about the magnificently strong windows being made now, AND about bouncing a brick off our window.  Teresa was right there listening.  Stupid!