The Surety and Truth of Aging

Our dogs are aging with us and for some reason our pets live a long, long time relatively pain free. Oh yes, I know the reason: we’ve spent a big chunk of our life’s savings on vet bills, procedures, and medications. This is all okay with me because I love my babies, but I have some advice for people who work hard to help their pets live long lives: GET PET HEALTH INSURANCE! Our ever more frequent visits sometimes make me paranoid that the vet thinks I have Munchausens by Proxy for Pets, but I don’t. However, I won’t know the whole truth unless I catch myself on a video camera (hidden in my small puppet theater) doing something like slipping the dogs unhealthy table scraps. Which in some perfectly reasonable way brings me to the subject of ghosts. I’ve seen a few over my lifetime, but at my age, I’m in a tricky position. When I reported them as a child, my parents could just remark on my “vivid imagination.” Now, I could get myself into trouble in a she’s-an-aging-crazy-person-let’s-commit-her kind of way. So I just keep infrequent sightings to myself, for the most part, because with ghosts, one can never be sure. And speaking of being sure and the truth, the other day I unfortunately and purely by accident caught a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror before stepping into the shower. “I look like hell!” I opined, and for the first time in my entire life, I was sure that my observation was the truth.

I Prefer Dr. Seuss

I’ve always loved The Book of Knowledge set that was my dad’s when he was a child. Printed in 1933, they are full of duotones and articles like “How to Eat” explaining chewing and the stomach and ink etchings of Daniel Boone. However, they also contain copy that I can’t believe people used to read to their kids. Here’s a poem from a section called “Little Verses for Very Little People,” accompanied by a very frightening illustration:

The Poor Babes in the Wood

My dear, do you know,
How a long time ago,
Two poor little children,
Whose names I don’t know,
Were stolen away on a fine summer’s day,
And left in a wood, as I’ve heard people say?

And when it was night,
So sad was their plight,
The sun it went down,
And the moon gave no light.
They sobbed and they sighed, and they bitterly cried,
And the poor little things, they lay down and died.

And when they were dead,
The robins so red
Brought strawberry-leaves,
And over them spread. [Where were these robins when the babes needed them?]
And all the day long
They sung them this song:
“Poor babes in the wood! Poor babes in the wood!
And don’t you remember the babes in the wood?”

Okay Johnny and Susie. Goodnight and sweet dreams! Wow, this puts a whole new spin on the Great Depression.

The UNkindness of Strangers

I really need to break my habit of speaking to strangers especially since the South is now densely populated by people from those regions where they don’t appreciate the “kindness of strangers.” I was browsing around in a department store the other day and saw this little old lady with tight white hair trying to squash a Captain and Tennille sailor hat onto the top of her little-old-lady perm. I piped up, “You should buy that hat!” implying that it suited her. She turned around and snapped, “This IS my hat!”

“Oh well then good choice,” I replied and skulked away.

Destructive Living

Home alone with the dogs again. Everyone out of town. Sooo I decided to clean out our old oak desk. Fun. It’s full of forgotten pictures, cards, and stuff I don’t know why we just didn’t put in the garbage. Anyway, I found “Life’s Little Destruction Book—512 boorish, insensitive and socially obnoxious pointers for leading a simple, self-centered life.” NO, IT ISN’T MY GUIDEBOOK OR SOCIAL BIBLE, thank you very much! Nevertheless, it contains some really good pointers. Since I have nothing else to do except productive things that I don’t want to do, I decided to share some of the pointers with you. (The first one can be accomplished soon, if you’re willin’.)

*Call friends during the Super Bowl to talk out your problems.
*Tell people they have bad breath.
*Be unprepared for public appearances.
*Ask if a present is returnable.
*Crack the spines on good books.
*Comment on weight gain in others.
*Ask how people are but don’t wait for a response.
*Always be right.
*Tailgate the elderly.
*Take the biggest piece.
*Lie with statistics. [Love it.]
*Open gift checks at the wedding and announce the amount. [Diana/Michael, an opportunity.]
*Give distances in kilometers.
*Pinch your spouse’s love handles. [This one could be lethal!]
*Slap people on the back.
*Don’t know when to stop.

Umm, guess I should stop. But here’s one of my own, dedicated to my two brothers-in-law.

Ask for my recipes and then, even when I’m standing right there, tell people how it’s made like you made it. Then take it a step further and ask for my chicken recipe, make it at social and family gatherings and rename it MARK’S CHICKEN. Damnit!

WHO are you (or am I)?

When I realized that at least half of the people in the seminar I attended today looked and acted like inductees for Men in Black III, I must tell you, I was a BIT concerned.

Self-Motivation

I will tell you this--when left to my own devices . . . I'm really not that productive.

Commercial Value

I like the commercial that shows all of the Yuppies skiin', jumpin', and achievin'. Then they put their happy, chiseled faces up to the screen and assertively announce, "I'm the kind of person that doesn't like to be held back!"

Well, I'm the kind of person that LIKES to be held back!

Repressed Memories

I realize that in my youth, I was somewhat wild. So now when people describe something outrageous that someone has done, I say, “Wow, I’d never do that!” Then under my breath I add, “Again.”

Blind Friendship

I recently attended a business meeting as the newest member of the team. One of the attendees looked at the person who had been good enough to introduce me to the group and said, “Oh, this is your friend, Gail.” I immediately thought, Well, does she really think of me as a friend? I certainly see her as a friend, but I don’t want unwanted labels pertaining to me forced on others. (Yes, I think too much about ridiculous things—yada, yada, yada.)

Anyway, this occurrence started me thinking about the concept of friends. Most people throw the word around loosely, but actually limitless friend-type categories exist, along with multiple combinations thereof. Here are a few broad ones from my experience:

Friends you talk to over e-mail or phone almost every day, and if you don’t, you imagine that they are angry or hurt. (The best thing about these friends is that you can call and ask them.)

Friends you can have a huge political debate with even to the point of yelling and then go have a drink together.

Friends who only want to talk about their political opinions but don’t want to hear yours. (These people can be good company if you avoid politics and hold conversations to much-ado-about-nothing subjects, because if you can’t express your own political views as well, then what’s the point--demagoguery?)

Friends you can argue with, and then both concede the errors of your ways and move forward. (These are the best!)

Friends you can’t argue with because they’ve never done anything wrong and can’t even conceive how any of their actions could be offensive. (Very annoying, so avoid confrontation of any kind.)

Friends you only know through work or shared professions. (Very valuable, especially for grousing together, and these can also grow into other friend categories.)

Friends who make you laugh and vice versa. (Top of the line!)

And then there’s my great Aunt Curtis (now departed), a true old maid if there ever was one, probably doomed from the onset with that name, and the fact that even in her childhood photos she resembled an angry Pitiful Pearl doll. Her one boyfriend, according to her, was tragically killed in WWII, but no one could ever confirm this story and she spent the rest of her life as a nurse. At holiday dinners she insisted on telling the most horrific details of cases involving bodily fluids so that usually foods such as sweet potato casserole began to elicit the gag reflex. Thank God I never cared for cranberry sauce!

Anyway, as the years passed and she almost set her apartment and herself aflame on several occasions, she had to be moved to a nursing home. On one of our visits, a frail and ancient old blind woman mistakenly wandered into the room and Aunt Curtis began to bellow like an old grizzly, “Get outta heah! Go on get outta heah! This isn’t your room, get OUT, OUT!” We were trying to counter with “No, it’s okay.” “Can we help you?” and so on as this poor soul tapped her way out with her blind stick like the bassets had been sicced on her.

As we turned to Aunt Curtis with looks of horror and admonishment she smiled broadly and without an ounce of irony or introspection declared proudly, “I’m the only friend she’s got!”

This of course falls into the category of “With friends like that…”

Happy New Year!

I hate New Year’s Eve, because it is the precursor to the end of Christmas celebration and the beginning of the two sorriest months of the next year. True, my birthday is in February. Need I say more? However, somehow, a few good friends finagled a party at my house and it really went pretty well. Jack was very happy until the next day when he realized that he and our friend Ray, with not quite as much help from friend Mike, had consumed an entire bottle of Sake chased with beer and champagne. Luckily, it was the finest of Sake, sent to him from his co-worker in Japan, but even the best of something that potent can kill you the next day. (And it almost did according to Jack who hardly drinks at all, so certainly shouldn’t overdo with that hardcore choice.)

Anyway, friend Jill decided to make some Brandy Alexanders, the equivalent of a milkshake with alcohol, which probably saved the women a bit because it prepared our stomach linings for the wine, and so on that we consumed later. She wanted a certain size of glass so I opened up my cabinets to reveal the results of a very strange story – at least 35 to 40 leaded crystal bar glasses of various sizes along with our other assorted glassware. She knew the story but when she first saw them had asked, “Why do you have so many glasses?” Even then she said, “I still can’t believe that story.”

Here it is. A few years ago, before the country drive perpendicular to our residence wasn’t a suicide mission for pedestrians, Jack and I walked along its grassy pathway every few days in an attempt to be “healthy.” One day, I spotted one of these glasses in the grass, picked it up and said, “Wow, that’s a nice glass for someone to throw out of a car.” Jack agreed and, pack rat that he is, told me that a dishwasher would sanitize it. I wasn’t convinced, but he brought it home.

Next weekend, we found its mate, and because it was a bit strange to have done so, Jack brought it home too. The next week, we found four of the unblemished and high quality glasses. Jack put them in his coat pockets. We showed our son that we had found half a dozen of the set and he replied, “What are we, hobos?!” Now we competed to spot one of the treasures and we were also mystery solvers. For example, we surmised that it must be a bartender who hated his/her boss, took a highball when leaving work (sometimes with friends) then threw the glass (or glasses) out on the way home. We had all sorts of theories. By the end of the summer, we owned a collection of about four dozen really nice bar glasses. I painted golden Christmas trees on a set of four for each of my family members, and labeled them “Roadware” from Jack & Gail.

The glassware disappeared just as quickly as it had appeared. We never figured it out, but Jill decided that they were the perfect size for her Brandy Alexanders. Just goes to show you that the smallest of incidences can carry good memories--something for even us curmudgeons to keep in mind.

Happy New Year to all!