NOW ‘EAR’ THIS – Be responsible…but do it quietly!

Yeah you may ‘call me irresponsible’ (or even sing it) but I am not a fan of those disaster sirens or just about any noisemaking warning device. Isn’t there already enough barking, Aflac quacking, and ting-ding ringing going on in today’s society to drive most any Grinch over the edge? I’m all for safety but what genius government agency decided that a gentle nudge with a cattle prod was barbaric, but loud excessive auditory stimuli is humane?

What’s worse is now our emergency sirens have been upgraded so they can even TALK to me when frightened public servants decide I need a 3AM wake-up call. I mean c’mon crash somebody else’s REM sleep party - I’m already hosting a platoon of voices in my vacuous skull full of burping Tupperware, so who needs yet another one? Never once in my life have I seen an effective air raid over my hut or worse, a free-range ‘one-too-many’ tipsy Godzilla tearing down my town.

Also now when skulking around the ‘burbs’, every cross-walk I encounter seems to bark some kind of warning chirp & chime. Some even squawk a doomsday countdown clock if I haven’t blazed across 100 feet of tarry roadbed in 3 seconds or less? Geez I don’t even think that Jamaican ‘BOLT’ guy can run that fast much less a dragging leisure-geezer like myself? Believe me I’ve been married a long time so I don’t need a shrill harpy ‘ice-pick in the ear canal’ reminder to know when it’s time to clear out of the way – my wife has been defending our refrigerator for years.

So hey if you are dumb enough to park your bike directly behind a trash truck or semi no amount of high pitched peep-beeping from a ‘back-up alarm’ is going to save you from yourself anyway. I just can’t imagine Daniel Boone, the ‘Abe-inator’, or even those poker playing dogs memorialized in felt, requiring so much ‘hand-holding’ in their era. Unlike today, those folks let the chips 'clink' to the floor as they may and understood, THAT was their one and only auditory warning. Sometimes it's not fair but the tenets of self-reliance, responsibility and yes, even the possibility of death are significant tests in real life. But compared to our current needy and feckless populace, our ancestors just seemed readily able to grasp and MEET their challenges with a little more gusto - and with A LOT LESS NOISE!

Humbling Challenge

Since I have a couple of gunboats that have been apparently mistaken for feet, my wife has decided to kill me with her personal Bataan march towards a goal of one MILLION steps by mid December. While that might be fine if she had informed me a couple of years ago but she must not have noticed they are selling pumpkins in the stores now. So that leaves us with nary two months to complete 8,000 steps per day to help achieve her stupid foot-fungus goal.

Oh sure I applaud my wife’s healthy ambition to pound the pavement and carve off the kilos, but how did I get sucked up into this Dr. Scholl’s delight of daily drudgery? As long as I watch my salt intake and clean up after my slime trail, I kind of like being the resident slug anyway. Street walking in the shadows is fine if you’ve got the legs for the job but it’s my calloused feet and personality that rub people the wrong way. If only somebody could invent a machine to handle the burdens of BIpedal locomotion, I would get on that Midnight express train in a hurry and turn into a ‘BUY’ guy with bells on to seek freedom!

So low and behold at an estate sale last week, the ‘Big Wheel’ himself must have heard my incessant whining and prayed to shut me up. Yes, opportunity rolled over my toes that morning, in the form of a drop dead price on a stealthy, 2+2 on the floor, black electric wheelchair with a seatbelt and cool joystick to match. Now this is what I call living – why didn’t somebody tell us new-age upright primate gladiators about these horse-less chariots before? Once I clean the dirt off between all of its ‘moto-toes’, even I can glide through a million steps in the next couple of months. Better still as a bonus, with this ride I can circle the wagons and DO donuts in the parking lot while I eat glazed ones too!

I mean honestly, chasing the mail truck and the neighborhood wolf pack down the street has never been so much fun, though now climbing stairs and reaching for the choco peanuts on the top shelf is an unbelievably sweaty pain. Currently I’m perfectly healthy, but whenever I ROLL in that chair, my TOOTSIES literally look and feel powerless and it’s very humbling. Unlike the truly challenged who need these wheelies to move-on with their lives, when I tire of complaining about my insignificant toil, I can simply CHOOSE to get up whenever I want. So my choice now is to WALK HAPPILY with my wife, however long she needs, and wherever she wants to go while I still have the chance. Oh and don’t worry about my milk chocolate covered ‘Robo-Rolo’ - I promise we’ll find it a good home with a much less whiney and far more worthy CHAIRity in need!

Everybody ‘NOSE’ it’S NOT syrup

Rarely I wake up in the morning without a jump start from licking a 9 volt battery, but even then I don’t spring to life with limitless pink-bunny energy. Like most loony baboons, I ‘doo’ what I have to do, but little else so I won’t unduly embarrass myself in front of the troop and my homeless alley-mates. Of course I brush, blow, & baste like all good zombies, but I should not be expected to be witty, scratch-free, or even understand ‘Ghoul-ean algebra’ until at least 15 minutes after sunrise.

So the last thing I have energy for in the first of the morning, is to fend off a thick gelatinous ring of gooey ‘Food Boogies’ from the sticky snout of my syrup ‘ba-ba’! Oh don’t act so uppity - yeah I said it and how many times must I warn you not to read my tripe while eating anyway? I can’t help it if your gag reflex has not yet been battle-hardened to the horrors of a seeping head-wound from Aunt Jemima’s nasty noz-noggin.

Yes, around here, we seem to have a growing epidemic of coagulated condiments in that handy-dandy ‘flexi-squeeze’ packaging. I mean who doesn’t relish the fun in popping a top on a ‘gunkified’ ketchup bottle or fondling a dilated and crowning upside-down squirter, with a crusty mustard-pustule tip of Grey Poupon? The only thing worse for me then hanging those scabby ‘goo-cocoons’ over my burgers n’ brats is having to clean and blow-free their snotty little spouts into a wet-nap-wipey without weeping woefully.

I don’t know when those ‘easy to knife’ cavernous jars with lids suddenly became so out of fashion? My ‘wide-mouth’ still seems to be working just fine and has remained relatively paste-less and tasteless, even after shoving salsa pablum in and out of it for a half century now. Oh sure the sinuses suffer and that spicy stuff can make my rosy nose-y unruly and occasionally ‘run away’ by my flagrant use of abrasive Puff-less off-brand Kleenix. But never fear I’m a mystified ‘drip’ with a nasal irrigation plan ‘cause my nose knows just what it needs – an easy-squeezy sinus-schnozzle!

Rocky Road Recipe

Despite the advent of those little GPS travel boxes, I still love the romance of maps. I can stare at them for hours and run my fingers along roads, rivers, and CREASES imagining the countless places I can go when people tell me to ‘Get Lost’. I love seeing rare oddities in mirrors and discovering unusual places like a ‘full serve’ GAS station or a Polish hot dog shop, which apparently in some communities, is the exact SAME PLACE!

I have no need for my usual ‘puddy tat’ toys, fancy entertainment or complex puzzles whenever a map needs re-folding. I can literally spend hours trying to get a 4 X 5 foot map back into its flattened glove-box ready state. More often than not, un-folded maps will never again escape the size equivalency of a crumpled basketball and therefore are more suited to be recycled as a lumbar support, or for those really long road trips – ultra absorbent seat pads.

For some odd reason the street signs in the Midwest U.S. all have the same standard street names like First, State, and Main. The only difference is that each sign will have a varied suffix tacked on the end of the name like Road, Circle, Drive, or Way, though I always seem to end up in COURT? To make matters worse, even neighboring communities in short proximity to different U.S. States will have the EXACT SAME named cities in addition to those common stock street names as well. What is the problem - along with steel, cars, and VCR’s, are we now so lazy and incapable that we can’t even invent original names for our own streets and cities either?

Now this map clap-trap is clearly an untenable recipe for taxi hacks, street-people and perpetually confused kettle-heads like myself. Why is it so hard to mix up a few random Romanic letters with a dash of hyphen and add some flavorful expressions to make-up an easily memorable, half-baked yet original street name? My family happily looks forward to the day when I will be able to sanely drive my pickled brain to the intersection of ‘FIRST light’ & ‘STATE-of-mind’ without the need for a wrinkled map or a straight jacket. The goal of course is to eventually navigate, and hopefully legally parallel park, with NORMAL people, along a very busy but narrow ROCKY road called ‘MAINstream’.

Airhead

I am lucky enough to be born in an era where airplane travel has replaced buses as more of the norm than the exception. Unlike most people I won’t thumb my nose at a good airport scan & squeeze now and again, as long as those TSA folks keep the rest of their rubber-covered digits to themselves. The only person I want poking around in my cavities is the dentist and even he has to pony up with a soothing gum-rub, 5 minutes of Nitrous ‘me time’, and a double-cup of spit water.

In general, I don’t mind most of the airport / airplane process except for the waiting. You see I have never been a good ‘WAITER’ and only a marginal cook. Since time ‘flies’ at the speed of light I want to fly that fast too. Oh sure it is fun to pass the time and look down at the little houses and cars but I already get that thrill from lording over a good game of Monopoly with my in-bred fam-clan. Nope, once you seal me up in a pressurized sardine can I want to set my Omega 3 Fatty Acid down and get the show on the road.

Despite my granite face and even harder head I obviously bore easily since my gray matter tends to turn a brackish green at high altitudes. This in turn is only cause for concern because my wife must find ways to keep me busy, with minimal harm to my fellow (and girl) passengers. Like a big Baby Huey, she usually brings me a bib and a ball-point pen so I can go through the Airline magazines and black-out the teeth of anyone caught smiling in an advertisement. Once complete, the same magazine gets my makeover of random stubble and wild crevice hairs, to bestow imperfect 5 o’clock shadows upon the Aero-rag's 'perfect 10' models.

As I make the third magazine pass to finish my obligatory cartoon speech bubbles with juvenile comments, my lizard brain needs additional stimulation beyond that screaming baby two rows up. I reflexively reach for my olfactory arsenal of tortilla chips and day-old tuna fish. Wisely but irritatingly my wife calmly backs me down and tells me to wait. WAIT? - Didn’t we already discuss this kitchen analogy? I am too old, hairy, and sweaty for THAT gig, especially when trapped in a flying aluminum cigar tube. From now on I think I had better stay grounded since apparently I am better suited as a ‘BUS boy’!