You may not be able to tell by my expanding waistline, the piece of barbecue stuck in my beard or the Jimmy Dean sausage I keep in my back left pocket, but I’m one bucket of KFC away from becoming a vegetarian.
I blame this latest soon-to-be-failed attempt at personal revolution on my tofu-eating wife, who always seems to be a good person to take such heat. She doesn’t read my column much anymore and she rarely mixes with the three or four of faithful readers still out there -- my two grandmas’ neighbors included.
And maybe the best reason is that she is really to blame this time. It was only a couple of months ago that she returned from the grocery store with a box full of six little pieces of vacuum-sealed heaven the Boca company calls their meatless Italian sausage.
Prior to this fateful day, I subscribed to “The Tommy Boy Diet.” The main tenet is based on the classic Chris Farley comedy and says that the shrimp cocktail is okay if you can get it, but don’t forget about that Meat Lovers’ pizza in the trunk of car.
So everything was pork chops and pigs feet until we ran out of microwave corn dogs one night and I was forced to give these meatless sausages a shot. One minute and 30 seconds on full power later, our kitchen was filled with the distinct aroma of real Italian sausage.
“Okay, so their scientists had figured out how to copy the smell,” I thought as I slipped the sausage onto the bun. “That can go a long way in fooling less finicky eaters than I. When I bite into this thing and it tastes like a mustard-coated rubber ducky, I will really have something to complain about when my wife comes home.”
But guess what? It tastes fantastic. It tastes exactly like the real thing, only with a lot less fat and cholesterol. I had to eat two that night to make sure I was getting my daily allotment of fat and cholesterol, but still I was ahead of the game.
That sojourn in soy satisfaction has led me to try Boca’s other meatless products, most of which are extremely edible. Strangely enough, the bratwurst is the only clunker in the product line. Apparently something’s lost in the soy sausage translation from Italian to German.
This sudden realization that dead animals aren’t the only things that taste good couldn’t have come at a better time. With Bird Flu bound to makes its entry into the U.S. stowed away under the extra-crispy coating of some imported chicken product, I’ll be glad to stockpile all the tofu I can get my non-greasy little hands on.
I’ve also been traumatized for a long time by the mind-expanding thought of just how many chickens there are in this world at any given time, considering the vast number of chicken products that are consumed each day -- sandwiches, nuggets, wings, kung pao, noodle soup, legs and strips. I’m pretty sure more chickens are born each day than people than people, and for some reason that scares the cluckety-cluck out of me.
If I can avoid getting sick and killed by choosing the non-dairy, meatless microwave burrito over the cheesy chicken one, I’ll go with the bird-less one any day.If you carnivores want to laugh and call me a vegetarian, that’s fine with me. I’ll still have my Meat Lovers’ pizza in the trunk.
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
Monday, August 29, 2005
Toilet Fixings
Very few people know this about me, but I’m quite proficient around the toilet.
For a couple of weeks now, women who use the women’s restroom at The Chronicle have done so because I have made it possible. I’m very proud of this, but until now, I haven’t told anyone that I’m the reason they can flush. I’m humble that way.
It all started here on a Friday night. Everyone else had gone home for the weekend to be with their loved ones and to go to the bathroom in private. I was here, all by myself, working hard on one thing or another, when I heard the echo of toilet water falling and swishing off in the distance, like an old wheezing man.
I went to investigate and discovered what we had here was a running toilet. I’d seen it before. The water keeps rolling in, hissing and hissing until your water bill can’t take it anymore. I didn’t mind the water bill part so much. I don’t pay it, but I’ll be darned if I’m going to listen to that thing run while I’m trying to write.
So I stepped gingerly into the women’s bathroom with both hands over my eyes, just sort of peeking through the crack between my fingers. I knew I was the only one around, but you never know what you’re going to find in a women’s bathroom.
Courageously, I stared directly into the eye of the storm and found exactly what I expected. We had a running toilet on our hands.
The thing about a running toilet is that once you diagnosis the disease, you’ve got to go digging for the source of the problem.
In my 10-year history of solving toilet troubles, I’ve discovered a running toilet can be caused by any number of things.
You’ve got your suction-hatch thing around the hole part, which if it’s not sealing can cause your toilet to run.
Then there’s the floating rubber ball thing that measures how much water should go in the bowl, or out of the bowl, I’m not sure which exactly, but if that thing is messed up you’re in trouble.
The most common cause of a running toilet has to be the broken chain. For you casual, non-professional toilet mechanics, the chain is about 8-inches long and is made not from nylon rope or strong steel links, but those tiny little metallic balls. They’re exactly like the little pen-holding chains at banks.
These wonders of American engineering are designed to be connected directly to the flusher, that little thing outside the toilet that the human flusher uses to flush the toilet. Of course, if you haven’t figured this out by now, we’re talking strictly about analog toilets. I’m not sure how to fix those digital toilets that flush on their own.
If there’s a break somewhere on the chain of the analog flushers, you must reconnect. You really have to start being creative when it’s the chain itself that breaks. I’ve used everything from dental floss to a shoe lace to fix broken toilets, although I would caution against trying a piece of linguini.
Luckily for me, the flusher chain in The Chronicle’s women’s toilet was still intact. All I had to do was reconnect it to the flusher. The only difficult part in doing that is reaching into the cold murky water that resides under the hood.
It took until I was in college before I figured out that the water back there is relatively clean, but since then that knowledge served me well.
When college girls move off-campus they seem to gravitate toward quaint little places with suspect toilets. Once I fixed one, my nights were booked for the rest of my undergraduate years.
I still think the reason my beautiful wife decided to marry me was the way I fixed her toilet when she was in college. Even to this day, I get to leave the seat up whenever I feel like it because I’ve convinced her it’s better for the toilet that way.
Yes, toilet fixing has been good to me. It may have started as a cheap and easy way to meet girls, but I respect it so much more now. I see myself as a facilitator of the natural world. Humbly keeping our nation beautiful, one flush at a time.
For a couple of weeks now, women who use the women’s restroom at The Chronicle have done so because I have made it possible. I’m very proud of this, but until now, I haven’t told anyone that I’m the reason they can flush. I’m humble that way.
It all started here on a Friday night. Everyone else had gone home for the weekend to be with their loved ones and to go to the bathroom in private. I was here, all by myself, working hard on one thing or another, when I heard the echo of toilet water falling and swishing off in the distance, like an old wheezing man.
I went to investigate and discovered what we had here was a running toilet. I’d seen it before. The water keeps rolling in, hissing and hissing until your water bill can’t take it anymore. I didn’t mind the water bill part so much. I don’t pay it, but I’ll be darned if I’m going to listen to that thing run while I’m trying to write.
So I stepped gingerly into the women’s bathroom with both hands over my eyes, just sort of peeking through the crack between my fingers. I knew I was the only one around, but you never know what you’re going to find in a women’s bathroom.
Courageously, I stared directly into the eye of the storm and found exactly what I expected. We had a running toilet on our hands.
The thing about a running toilet is that once you diagnosis the disease, you’ve got to go digging for the source of the problem.
In my 10-year history of solving toilet troubles, I’ve discovered a running toilet can be caused by any number of things.
You’ve got your suction-hatch thing around the hole part, which if it’s not sealing can cause your toilet to run.
Then there’s the floating rubber ball thing that measures how much water should go in the bowl, or out of the bowl, I’m not sure which exactly, but if that thing is messed up you’re in trouble.
The most common cause of a running toilet has to be the broken chain. For you casual, non-professional toilet mechanics, the chain is about 8-inches long and is made not from nylon rope or strong steel links, but those tiny little metallic balls. They’re exactly like the little pen-holding chains at banks.
These wonders of American engineering are designed to be connected directly to the flusher, that little thing outside the toilet that the human flusher uses to flush the toilet. Of course, if you haven’t figured this out by now, we’re talking strictly about analog toilets. I’m not sure how to fix those digital toilets that flush on their own.
If there’s a break somewhere on the chain of the analog flushers, you must reconnect. You really have to start being creative when it’s the chain itself that breaks. I’ve used everything from dental floss to a shoe lace to fix broken toilets, although I would caution against trying a piece of linguini.
Luckily for me, the flusher chain in The Chronicle’s women’s toilet was still intact. All I had to do was reconnect it to the flusher. The only difficult part in doing that is reaching into the cold murky water that resides under the hood.
It took until I was in college before I figured out that the water back there is relatively clean, but since then that knowledge served me well.
When college girls move off-campus they seem to gravitate toward quaint little places with suspect toilets. Once I fixed one, my nights were booked for the rest of my undergraduate years.
I still think the reason my beautiful wife decided to marry me was the way I fixed her toilet when she was in college. Even to this day, I get to leave the seat up whenever I feel like it because I’ve convinced her it’s better for the toilet that way.
Yes, toilet fixing has been good to me. It may have started as a cheap and easy way to meet girls, but I respect it so much more now. I see myself as a facilitator of the natural world. Humbly keeping our nation beautiful, one flush at a time.
Monday, August 15, 2005
Ollie North and Fawn Hall Hopped-Up On Goofballs.
In my 29 years on this earth, very rarely have I ever been in a position where I'd consider myself to be a victim.
Aside from having to fight off occasional unwanted advances from leggy dames, the only things I've really ever been a victim of are circumstance, slow feet on the basketball court and a double shot from above by a bird with bowel troubles.
All of that changed last month when I found myself swept up in a world of international crime after it was discovered that someone was having an all-expense paid fiesta in Mexico on me.
Our story begins on a quiet Wednesday night in Simpsonville. It wasn't raining, but it looked like it could.
I was home watching a Film Noir movie marathon. I was right in the middle of "Double Indemnity," the great film with Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck, when my cell phone started playing that funky little Verizon tune known simply as "Breakdown." I recognized the voice on the other end. It was my wife. She was as frantic as Tom DeLay in an ethics committee meeting. "I think someone is spending our money," she said.
My wife handles the bread and the money in our family. She's detail-oriented. I'm not, which is kind of a strange thing not to be when you're a news editor, but listen baby, enough about me. A crime was being committed and I had to do something about it.
A little quick detective work and some accurate record keeping by the wife led us to discover someone was withdrawing $4,000 pesos at a time from an ATM in a grocery store in Matamoros, Mexico. They also bought some groceries and had a few shots of tequila and dinner with 300 of their closet amigos in what I expect was a nice quiet, out-of-the-way place. I have never been to Matamoros, but I knew the type. Seedy. Like a rotten watermelon.
I was shaken. Stirred. Someone had to pay and it wasn't going to be me.
I phoned up our bank's automated, after-hours hotline and had our account frozen colder than the Atlanta Braves in the playoffs. That was all we could do for the night, meanwhile some punk was walking the beat with wallet full of my Benjamins, or Hidalgos as they say in Mexico.
I tried to sleep that night, but I couldn't. The dog was barking. I thought about how I would buy a muzzle for that beast when I got my money back.
I tried to retrace my steps. How could this happen?
My wife shreds our receipts faster than Oliver North and Fawn Hall hopped-up on goofballs. It can't be her fault. It's never her fault.
Did I do something wrong? In retrospect, it probably wasn't such a great idea to buy those manhood enhancement creams on-line with the debit card. You live and learn in this crazy world.
The next day we went to the bank. We proved we weren't in Matamoros making those purchases and the bank stooges said we'd get our money back. We did. I was impressed. Those bank stooges aren't so bad.
I thought about buying a one-way ticket to Matamoros and tracking down that street tough who took my money, but Hurricane Rita was heading that way, and I didn't want any part of that.
Rita -- there never was a better name for a femme fatale -- would hopefully take back all of the goods bought on our dime. And that would be payback enough for me.
Aside from having to fight off occasional unwanted advances from leggy dames, the only things I've really ever been a victim of are circumstance, slow feet on the basketball court and a double shot from above by a bird with bowel troubles.
All of that changed last month when I found myself swept up in a world of international crime after it was discovered that someone was having an all-expense paid fiesta in Mexico on me.
Our story begins on a quiet Wednesday night in Simpsonville. It wasn't raining, but it looked like it could.
I was home watching a Film Noir movie marathon. I was right in the middle of "Double Indemnity," the great film with Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck, when my cell phone started playing that funky little Verizon tune known simply as "Breakdown." I recognized the voice on the other end. It was my wife. She was as frantic as Tom DeLay in an ethics committee meeting. "I think someone is spending our money," she said.
My wife handles the bread and the money in our family. She's detail-oriented. I'm not, which is kind of a strange thing not to be when you're a news editor, but listen baby, enough about me. A crime was being committed and I had to do something about it.
A little quick detective work and some accurate record keeping by the wife led us to discover someone was withdrawing $4,000 pesos at a time from an ATM in a grocery store in Matamoros, Mexico. They also bought some groceries and had a few shots of tequila and dinner with 300 of their closet amigos in what I expect was a nice quiet, out-of-the-way place. I have never been to Matamoros, but I knew the type. Seedy. Like a rotten watermelon.
I was shaken. Stirred. Someone had to pay and it wasn't going to be me.
I phoned up our bank's automated, after-hours hotline and had our account frozen colder than the Atlanta Braves in the playoffs. That was all we could do for the night, meanwhile some punk was walking the beat with wallet full of my Benjamins, or Hidalgos as they say in Mexico.
I tried to sleep that night, but I couldn't. The dog was barking. I thought about how I would buy a muzzle for that beast when I got my money back.
I tried to retrace my steps. How could this happen?
My wife shreds our receipts faster than Oliver North and Fawn Hall hopped-up on goofballs. It can't be her fault. It's never her fault.
Did I do something wrong? In retrospect, it probably wasn't such a great idea to buy those manhood enhancement creams on-line with the debit card. You live and learn in this crazy world.
The next day we went to the bank. We proved we weren't in Matamoros making those purchases and the bank stooges said we'd get our money back. We did. I was impressed. Those bank stooges aren't so bad.
I thought about buying a one-way ticket to Matamoros and tracking down that street tough who took my money, but Hurricane Rita was heading that way, and I didn't want any part of that.
Rita -- there never was a better name for a femme fatale -- would hopefully take back all of the goods bought on our dime. And that would be payback enough for me.
Friday, July 8, 2005
Pank, Bald Peanuts
It took a room full of Peruvians playing Pictionary on the Fourth of July to make me realize I'm starting to develop a Southern accent.
Carolina, my loving Peruvian-born fiancée, and I drove up north to Indiana to visit her family over the holiday weekend, and now three weeks later, I fear I may never be the same. The trip started out great. Carolina had secured some doggie sedatives from the veterinarian to help Tony -- our super-hyper, high-flying mutt -- relax over the nine hour car ride. For the first time in his life he managed to make it through the curvy ups and downs of Dolly Parton's Tennessee mountains without throwing up.
With a clean pet carrier we arrived at Carolina's parents' house ready to celebrate Independence Day. My future mother-in-law, a former beauty queen who also happens to be a great cook, whipped up the traditional Fourth of July fare: steaks, hamburgers, hot dogs and papas a la Huancaina. After dinner, Carolina's 12-year-old sister, Natalie, and I (the only U.S. born citizens in attendance) danced around the driveway with low-budget sparklers while the neighbors launched show-worthy fireworks from their backyard. When the Bobby Knight mosquitoes started to attack, we went inside to play Pictionary -- the mad-capped drawing game from Milton Bradley that's fun for the whole family.
By this time Carolina's older brother Jim and sister Alejandra had joined the party and it felt good to be there playing games and laughing with all of my new family.
"Sure we're different," I thought. "They all speak Spanish and are a different color than I am -- but we're all family here. This is what America and the Fourth of July is all about -- a big melting pot."
The Pictionary game picked up with the arrival of Alejandra's boyfriend Raul, a Venezuelan artist who makes his living drawing and painting. While I struggled to make stick figures, Raul was creating mini-masterpieces that will probably sell for thousands of dollars some day. I was getting a little frustrated that Raul's team was catching up on the color-coded board. I rolled the dice and hit a six. We were moving forward, but to what color and what category?
"What category is that, pank?" I asked out loud to my new family. Every one of their non-native English-speaking heads turned my way. "What did you say? Pank?"
"Pink," I said.
"No, you said, 'pank'." I might as well have exposed myself. I was turning a bit pank in the face.
"Cuello rojo," laughed Carolina's dad. Directly translated that means "Redneck."
For about a year now I've tried to deny that I've picked up a bit of a twang. I called my brother in Chicago last year and after talking for a bit he said, "Boy, you've got an accent."
He should know. He lived in Mississippi for several years and developed a real rebel accent there. I used to make fun of him, especially after the time I overheard him ask someone on the phone, "Y'all got pro-payne down there?"
Since that conversation, I've noticed little words here and there that seem to be missing their precise Midwestern pronouncements and I blame you folks down here in Clinton. I live in Greenville and nobody has an accent there because they're not from 'round these parts.
No, it's my days spent working here in Clinnon that are to blame. Never before could I imagine myself saying I "might-could" do something or using "'preciate it" in place of thank you. Don't get me wrong. I'm not ashamed of my new accent. I actually wear it like a badge of honor. A real Southern accent is quite dignified, but it gets a bad reputation because most Yankees think a Kentucky accent is a Southern accent. And I do declare that nobody should sound like they're from Kentucky.
Dagnabit, I came to the South three years ago to experience something different and that's what I've got. I'll take the accent and vigorously defend its virtues, but you can keep your hash and bald peanuts.
Carolina, my loving Peruvian-born fiancée, and I drove up north to Indiana to visit her family over the holiday weekend, and now three weeks later, I fear I may never be the same. The trip started out great. Carolina had secured some doggie sedatives from the veterinarian to help Tony -- our super-hyper, high-flying mutt -- relax over the nine hour car ride. For the first time in his life he managed to make it through the curvy ups and downs of Dolly Parton's Tennessee mountains without throwing up.
With a clean pet carrier we arrived at Carolina's parents' house ready to celebrate Independence Day. My future mother-in-law, a former beauty queen who also happens to be a great cook, whipped up the traditional Fourth of July fare: steaks, hamburgers, hot dogs and papas a la Huancaina. After dinner, Carolina's 12-year-old sister, Natalie, and I (the only U.S. born citizens in attendance) danced around the driveway with low-budget sparklers while the neighbors launched show-worthy fireworks from their backyard. When the Bobby Knight mosquitoes started to attack, we went inside to play Pictionary -- the mad-capped drawing game from Milton Bradley that's fun for the whole family.
By this time Carolina's older brother Jim and sister Alejandra had joined the party and it felt good to be there playing games and laughing with all of my new family.
"Sure we're different," I thought. "They all speak Spanish and are a different color than I am -- but we're all family here. This is what America and the Fourth of July is all about -- a big melting pot."
The Pictionary game picked up with the arrival of Alejandra's boyfriend Raul, a Venezuelan artist who makes his living drawing and painting. While I struggled to make stick figures, Raul was creating mini-masterpieces that will probably sell for thousands of dollars some day. I was getting a little frustrated that Raul's team was catching up on the color-coded board. I rolled the dice and hit a six. We were moving forward, but to what color and what category?
"What category is that, pank?" I asked out loud to my new family. Every one of their non-native English-speaking heads turned my way. "What did you say? Pank?"
"Pink," I said.
"No, you said, 'pank'." I might as well have exposed myself. I was turning a bit pank in the face.
"Cuello rojo," laughed Carolina's dad. Directly translated that means "Redneck."
For about a year now I've tried to deny that I've picked up a bit of a twang. I called my brother in Chicago last year and after talking for a bit he said, "Boy, you've got an accent."
He should know. He lived in Mississippi for several years and developed a real rebel accent there. I used to make fun of him, especially after the time I overheard him ask someone on the phone, "Y'all got pro-payne down there?"
Since that conversation, I've noticed little words here and there that seem to be missing their precise Midwestern pronouncements and I blame you folks down here in Clinton. I live in Greenville and nobody has an accent there because they're not from 'round these parts.
No, it's my days spent working here in Clinnon that are to blame. Never before could I imagine myself saying I "might-could" do something or using "'preciate it" in place of thank you. Don't get me wrong. I'm not ashamed of my new accent. I actually wear it like a badge of honor. A real Southern accent is quite dignified, but it gets a bad reputation because most Yankees think a Kentucky accent is a Southern accent. And I do declare that nobody should sound like they're from Kentucky.
Dagnabit, I came to the South three years ago to experience something different and that's what I've got. I'll take the accent and vigorously defend its virtues, but you can keep your hash and bald peanuts.
Wednesday, January 26, 2005
Going to Get Baby Alejandro
Tomorrow, when I pause briefly with a Little Debbie Snack Cake to celebrate my 29th birthday, it will mark what I believe to be the first day of the last year of my youth.
I tell you this not because I’m hoping for a wave of presents, happy birthday spankings or pinches to grow some inches, but because talking to the faceless masses can sometimes be cathartic and I have a lot of catharting to do.
The problem of my aging came to light days before the start of 2005 when a group of my best friends from high school came for a visit.
There is an unwritten law that says when four guys from Indiana get together, a basketball game must commence within three hours or you might as well stay home and listen to Clay Aiken sing show tunes.
So we pumped up the basketball that had been stuffed in a closet behind the 1992 Chicago Bulls poster my wife won’t let me put up and headed out to the court.
We all remarked about the warm South Carolina temperatures and how it would have been difficult to play outside back in Middlebury, Ind., where the Amish buggies (actual buggies, not shopping carts) were plowing their way through the snow to get to Wal-Mart.
It was a beautiful day to be alive and on the basketball court, but after 30 minutes of 2-on-2, I wondered how much longer I’d be around to enjoy it. I was out of shape for sure, but it was much more than that.
None of us got off the ground like we did even just a couple of years ago when we met for three days of basketball in Minneapolis. We still hustled for loose balls, it just took a lot longer to finally track them down.
The only thing that seemed to remain from our glory days was our collective sense of humor, which was still firmly planted in high school hilarity.
After what seemed like four hours of non-stop basketball action, we headed home where my wife informed us it had been more like an hour and a half. Before I could hit the showers to ease my aching joints, that same wife grabbed my head for what I thought would be some sort of conciliatory kiss. Instead she pulled my head down far enough to stare directly at the crown, grabbed a hair and pulled.
“Ouch. What was that for?”
“You had a gray hair.”
Ouch.
I inspected that thing as close as I could without a microscope, and at best it was clear, not gray. Like some of the hairs that have sprouted recently in my unkempt beard, this was simply a case of a hair that had not yet made its way through the natural coloring process. It was a premature hair, not an old gray one ready for retirement.
I might stand a little firmer behind that claim if it weren’t for all the others signs of aging I’ve noticed recently.
I used to take great pleasure when just a couple of years ago I would have to show my driver’s license to get into an “R” rated movie, but now its like the high school kids working behind the ticket counter can sense my growing un-coolness and then taunt me by adding a “thank you, sir,” after I hand over my $8.25.
And since when did movie tickets cost $8.25? Back in my day, a movie cost four dollars and two bits.
The other day, I caught myself telling a youngster that I used to have to walk a quarter mile to the bus stop in 2 feet of snow when I was his age. It was a true story, but man, oh, man, did I sound like an old man.
Then there’s my hearing. The other day, that gray-hair-pulling wife of mine said, “We should make a Republican adopt a kid.”
It was a strange thing to just bring up in the middle of dinner, but I agreed. Republicans, Democrats and Independents should all adopt kids, if they have the means and a good heart.
Turns out that what she actually said was that we should go to the Dominican Republic and adopt a kid. A minor mistake, but one that could have severely hampered my plan to hold on to my youth as long as possible if we actually made that trip to Santo Domingo to pick up little baby Alejandro.
I tell you this not because I’m hoping for a wave of presents, happy birthday spankings or pinches to grow some inches, but because talking to the faceless masses can sometimes be cathartic and I have a lot of catharting to do.
The problem of my aging came to light days before the start of 2005 when a group of my best friends from high school came for a visit.
There is an unwritten law that says when four guys from Indiana get together, a basketball game must commence within three hours or you might as well stay home and listen to Clay Aiken sing show tunes.
So we pumped up the basketball that had been stuffed in a closet behind the 1992 Chicago Bulls poster my wife won’t let me put up and headed out to the court.
We all remarked about the warm South Carolina temperatures and how it would have been difficult to play outside back in Middlebury, Ind., where the Amish buggies (actual buggies, not shopping carts) were plowing their way through the snow to get to Wal-Mart.
It was a beautiful day to be alive and on the basketball court, but after 30 minutes of 2-on-2, I wondered how much longer I’d be around to enjoy it. I was out of shape for sure, but it was much more than that.
None of us got off the ground like we did even just a couple of years ago when we met for three days of basketball in Minneapolis. We still hustled for loose balls, it just took a lot longer to finally track them down.
The only thing that seemed to remain from our glory days was our collective sense of humor, which was still firmly planted in high school hilarity.
After what seemed like four hours of non-stop basketball action, we headed home where my wife informed us it had been more like an hour and a half. Before I could hit the showers to ease my aching joints, that same wife grabbed my head for what I thought would be some sort of conciliatory kiss. Instead she pulled my head down far enough to stare directly at the crown, grabbed a hair and pulled.
“Ouch. What was that for?”
“You had a gray hair.”
Ouch.
I inspected that thing as close as I could without a microscope, and at best it was clear, not gray. Like some of the hairs that have sprouted recently in my unkempt beard, this was simply a case of a hair that had not yet made its way through the natural coloring process. It was a premature hair, not an old gray one ready for retirement.
I might stand a little firmer behind that claim if it weren’t for all the others signs of aging I’ve noticed recently.
I used to take great pleasure when just a couple of years ago I would have to show my driver’s license to get into an “R” rated movie, but now its like the high school kids working behind the ticket counter can sense my growing un-coolness and then taunt me by adding a “thank you, sir,” after I hand over my $8.25.
And since when did movie tickets cost $8.25? Back in my day, a movie cost four dollars and two bits.
The other day, I caught myself telling a youngster that I used to have to walk a quarter mile to the bus stop in 2 feet of snow when I was his age. It was a true story, but man, oh, man, did I sound like an old man.
Then there’s my hearing. The other day, that gray-hair-pulling wife of mine said, “We should make a Republican adopt a kid.”
It was a strange thing to just bring up in the middle of dinner, but I agreed. Republicans, Democrats and Independents should all adopt kids, if they have the means and a good heart.
Turns out that what she actually said was that we should go to the Dominican Republic and adopt a kid. A minor mistake, but one that could have severely hampered my plan to hold on to my youth as long as possible if we actually made that trip to Santo Domingo to pick up little baby Alejandro.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
