Click Clock

Unlike many graying creatures of the night my head must have mixed in 2 parts bat with the fat under my hat because as I get colder and older I seem to be hearing some sounds BETTER! No the television is still a mush of mumbles and breathless whispers but that is likely due more to my Pringle can amplified budget TV and the sorry state of  modern entertainment programming. Surprisingly now, high pitched clicks are becoming louder and yes, I drool even more uncontrollably at the sound of coins clacking together - which makes for some uncomfortable stares in Taco Bell’s all-tile echorest-room.

I’m not sure what’s changed but it seems now that all of the analog clocks in my house are screaming for their civil rights and ‘just want to be heard’.  Is this some kind of plot from the fancy new clock corporations to drive geezers to the brink and switch to their dinky blinky digital displays? If that’s the case, I’m determined to stand firm with my big noisy clocks, one finger in my ear and the other in a crass digital display of its own.

At Halloween I seem to hear perfectly fine, but oddly any other time of the year I have become almost completely deaf when anything else pounds on the drawbridge door asking for handouts. My wife handles my selective hearing by prefacing her requests with time-tested tricks to garner rapid attention. Drawing me in with comforting utterances beginning with ‘Ding Dong’ or ‘Pop Tart’ will get my most positive reaction, but if the wife’s pressed for time and wants me to fold-up and run like wet ink on a newspaper, she just happily snaps a 3-ring binder.

Other than the spouse, the good news is that most external distractions can be simply buried in the yard along with the bones of other telltale hearts and crafts of noisier times gone bye. But sadly when it comes to my OWN creaky joints and snapping flaps, they seem permanently attached to me so what do I do when skulking the stairs on an otherwise silent night. Clearly all I need to do is don’t whine and unwind those clickity clackity clocks and practice STOPPING time!

Charity’s Net Worth

Even though I have a reputation as a hard hearted miser, deep down I have soft side too, but that is mostly due to consuming so much doughy Wonder bread and starchy white rice. As I have gotten older I certainly have become more generous, though nobody seems to appreciate a free sneeze from a geeze or moldy whiff from an old stiff’s scent. Too bad though because I know if given the chance I have a lot more charity to give the world beyond communicable diseases, dandruff, death and taxes.

For example, just like ‘nice people’ I unload a bag of canned goods on my porch for the needy a couple of times a year, though the racoons have never mastered using a church key very well to open them. Don’t hate me just because my food supply tends toward dents and often consists of everyone’s cupboard staples - expired sardines and Vienna sausages. Yes sometimes I feel bad holding back all of the delightfully aged, bloated and ‘botulistic’ tins of Beluga for myself; but I know everyone has guilty pleasures of their own and I’ve particularly had a ‘tough ROE to hoe’.

Next to sleeping, I actually have become somewhat of an expert at sitting most of my life which makes me one of the most ‘CHAIR-itable’ people you’ll ever meet off your feet. Like many others I’m sure, I would work harder at volunteering a bit more if the government would just raise the minimum wage to motivate me to do so. Obviously given my mental faculties it’s a no-brainer to pass-on a little wisdom to those in need but if they want the most value for their EBT cards they’d be better off to buy somebody else’s Swiffer instead of my vacuum.

Out of sheer good will (and having nothing at all to do with taxes) by early April I try to give the shirt off my back to thrift stores but it’s too stained and holey so they only accept my barely abused and under-used household goods instead. Since I truly can’t live without all my Cabbage Patch collectibles I just donated, I urge my cockeye-wheeled shopping cart back to the thrift outlet after my stuff is tagged and bagged to buy it all over again. Not only does this do a lot of good for those billion dollar charities with 80% overhead who need my cash more than I, but I finally get to find out what my True net worth is too. 

ValenTIMES

As I have gotten older and have grown a bit wider than my white-ish diapers, I don’t embrace the Valentine’s day fervor like I once did as a younger chunky cherub. Part of the issue is I never have understood why getting SHOT in the heart by a nekkid winged bow-bound baby could ever be a good thing for romance or my health. Hey I listen to NPR you know – BOWS are for violins and when I want my wife’s attention I’ll just crawl into the cast iron bathtub NEXT to hers out in the woods like all contemporary coots.

I never envision my ValenTIMES all that romantic anyway since I routinely attract the WRONG kind of attention from the opposite sex when I’m out in public. Can I help it if nobody appreciates the fact that I run a little hot-blooded and chocolate melts in my hands instead of my mouth. Regardless of how often I try, few people other than my mother appreciate a good Hershey kiss and the resulting choco lip print I leave behind.

Also I sincerely love my family but c’mon $5 for a stupid pink greeting card with a red heart and insipid inscription on it? At least with those big boxed foil candy hearts I get one or two nasty waxy chocolate chews for that kind of costly cold cash. Funny too as pricey roses goes-es, the longer the stem - the better to pick noses, and ironically the more thorns to drive home the sincerity of my love.

  

Nope keep that little rosy flying seraph’s spell far away from me ‘cause V-Day is really just a chance to stock up on devil’s forks and fresh tiny pink hearts in case my bloated Cajun blackened one needs a spare. Don’t worry I’ll get in the Valentine spirit as soon as I open a bag of those ‘conversation hearts’ and have a sexy talk with my sweat-shop silkworms on why I cotton to silky skivvies. All I need to do is embarrass them just enough so that they will spin me some REDDENED twill and a slippery ‘G-string’ thing – which if I’m lucky I might get to strum some with ol’ Cupie’s Pernambuco BOW! 

They call me ‘Hairy WEARwithal’

Even though my hide prefers to hide in my hovel, once in a blue moon my spouse expects me to shake off and run a scum-sponge over my sag-sack before she’ll be seen with me in a fully lit room. As a not too bright troglodyte I try to comply as best as I can, but good grooming is not my strong un-rumpled suit. Anyway proper ablutions to my grill, gills, and undercarriage (of which I’m not fond), requires a full roll of quarters at the self-help car wash and usually at least one intrusive round with the de-greasing wand. 

Since I am thrifty, invariably worn-out grooming tools don’t always work as well as they should or worse, fail in mid-makeover leaving both halves of my speckless Jekyll and dirty Hyde to fight it out in public.  My razor in particular is literally a pain in the grain as it buzzes along happily UNTIL it runs into actual face-fiber, prickles, n’ quills. Yeah I’m a flexy-face-fleshed grizzled geezer so my mug-stubble dodges deftly like an NBA star to avoid abrasion, but I thought at least one of those THREE big rotary razor heads might actually be able to cut my tiny ONE on occasion.

It’s not that it just takes some strong voodoo to make me sparkle, but all that stuff to do the job has to be able to resist my autoimmune system to make my bone-bag pleasingly pink, stink, and kink-free. Can I help it if my birth-sharpened vampire incisors shred floss just as fast as they strip fleeing chickens and ribs from an all you can eat buffet? Is it really my fault that the Jello-hardened keratin in my digits dulls dog-paw clippers so much that I have resorted to just cleaving off every other fingernail, and only the toe-jammed tootsies on red-letter days.

Don’t get me wrong I’m not all that distressed about my sloppy state of dress, or those social expectations which rest with people pleasers and wide-eyed tidy types who are whisker-less. Oh sure I squeal about leaving my porky pen at times and wish I was a leaner, cleaner pretty prized pig instead of dried-up disheveled dust-deviled balut of a coot. But I figure if my wife didn’t crave my half-baked bacon-laced brain as it IS and wished me malice, then she would have married some hairless Latin rat named Alopecia Universalis.

Self-Absorbed Cheapskate

It may not surprise anyone that I am a cheapskate especially when it comes to expendables like paper towels, tissues, and toilet paper. That stuff is going to end up all wet, abused and thrown away (like my dreams) anyway so who cares if I foul the foremost or stock the shelves in name-brand nose-blow boxes. The problem is that I also tend to quibble when quality is lacking so therein lies my quandary – the delicate dance between the pocketbook and perfection.

Yes when I wolf down a Subway ‘sammie’ while getting coated in crumbs n’ goo is hard on you, I guarantee it’s a lot worse for me with their skimpy single-ply lack-napkin policy. Even if I try to wipe my grizzled n’ chiseled chin to please, any shadow left from my shaver will shred those folded flimsy rags with ease. I can’t afford the famous lumberjack-backed paper towels which are apparently tough and made of real wood to last forever; so I’m stuck with those wimpy prints that melt at the first sight of moisture in my feed trough or behind my ears. 

I don’t want to brag or anything but when my bodily fluids start to flow, absorbency in my arsenal of paper products is a real plus especially if I can save mo’ dough. I just wish God would try tough-talking to the Angel Soft TP crew to induce cost-cutting cues, so when I produce I can confidently sit on a pew or loo without shame, blame or need for a flame.  Now even my Band-Aids need to be triple thick when I ask for ‘em, since my cereal taste like sticks and is teeming with minerals and 12 essential aspirin. 

While the minimalist impact world’s all abuzz about going ‘Green’ with intent to environmentally appease, apparently someone forgot to remind the Kleenex folks THAT’s NOT a good thing when spewing a sneeze. Some say I’m ‘self-absorbed’ but both my skin n’ sleeve do deny, if it’s not blotted the ‘eww-glue’ will crawl off onto you too, like a soggy pet peeve to die. Hey when it comes to the stuff that I want to share, I prefer to do it in writing rather than ON person so keep my paper goods strong and the size of a sheet but more importantly to me - keep ‘em CHEAP!