Denny’s restaurant offers something amusingly named “Moons Over My Hammy”, a ham and scrambled egg sandwich on sourdough that’s pretty good. When Kathy was gone last night I looked around for the ingredients to make one.
I had everything I needed, except the Hammy. I considered alternatives, but somehow “Moons Over My Spammy” didn’t have the same appeal.
Kathy was out at the Greens’ last night and I was left to my own devices. I spent the next two hours looking for some devices.
I finally found the TV remote.
My doctor wants me to go to another doctor for something he says he doesn’t do. I told him I don’t go to doctors nearly as much as the doctors I do go to want me to go to the doctor. Because the more doctors I go to, the more doctors I’ll have to send me on to other doctors, and before you know it I’ll have gone through all the doctors—and be referred right back here to you. Why not just save ourselves the trip?
Now my doctor wants me to go to another doctor and stay there.
I once worked in a factory with big mexican guy. Ruggedly handsome in a fierce kind of way. He hardly ever spoke and never smiled that I saw. The young women adored him; everyone else was scared to death of him. Outweighed me by forty pounds—sixty if you were just counting muscle.
Whenever I worked with him he was cooperative but not pleasant, and would discuss the matter at hand, but no chit-chat. If pressed he would growl, “You trying to bother me?…”. If course I wasn’t trying to bother him. Would you poke a grizzly?
I endured this abrasive behavior and air of menace for a few weeks, then knew I had to put a stop to it. But oh, I could see the dreaded moment coming like a freight train—darkness and doom arriving when I confronted him. I knew I’d worked enough with the gloves over the years to hold my own against most people—but I had no prayer engaging the likes of him. Still…
One night I asked to speak with him outside. It was noisy in here, I said, and this was a private matter. He looked irritated, as always when interrupted; but curious too. And as I walked out ahead to the loading dock area, his shadow slowly loomed up from behind in the 400w halogens. We jumped down. We were totally alone in the chilly, midnight air, and the moment was here.
I told him I was tired of his rough talk, condescending attitude, and abrupt disregard for my knowledge and input. I didn’t like people trying to intimidate me, big or not big. If he didn’t like me, fine. But if we had a problem—we were going to settle it right here, right now.
Seconds went by. The only sounds were a few crickets, a styrofoam cup tumbling across the blacktop, and the shushing over from 880, about a mile East. He looked at me with his usual fierce expression, but thankfully didn’t take a swing with one of those hammer-like hands.
“I’ve got no problem with you, man,” he said quietly. His English was excellent. “I like working with you. Everybody likes working with you. You know stuff. Sometimes I just sound hard, that’s all. I don’t mean anything by it. Where I come from, you’ve gotta be hard.” He looked at me until he was sure I understood, then he nodded. “Let’s go in,” he said.
If there’s a moral here, it’s not just that we sometimes misjudge people. Of course we do. It’s that sometimes when you think the scariest turn in the road lies just ahead, it may have already passed.
Cousin Scratch came by with his dog Scrotum. (I stay away from that joke religiously.) As always, he needed money to aid the poor, namely himself. I contained him in the foyer—out of sight from the coin jar.
Scratch has got an itch to get rich and a thousand ways to get there, all involving your money. That’s why he can truthfully say he’s never lost a dime.
I asked him how things are going with my last investment in his cat bathing business?
I was up in San Francisco not so long ago and stayed in a once-elegant, now seedy side-street hotel. It’s all I can afford. My room needed dusting.
As I was shifting things from my suitcase into the old painted dresser, I wrenched open the bottom drawer and what should I find?—way in the back? …The always expected Gideon Bible, you say? Nope. Nothing less than…
Tony Bennett’s heart.
If you get up from your chair, most labs will spring to their feet and dash like mad to get ahead of you, then put on the brakes. Once you get past them they will dash ahead again and do the same thing. It’s like having two dogs. Or three, if you’re going to the back bathroom.
They don’t smile, but I bet they want to. Doesn’t matter if they’re in a hurry, they just like to be ahead.
There’s some drivers like that.
I asked a psychiatrist if he knew the first person who’d thought to use Ritalin—essentially a stimulant—to treat hyperactivity in children.
He asked me who was the first person who’d thought to eat an artichoke.
Must have had that question before.
An old friend of mine’s wife told him he’d been talking in his sleep. She wanted him, naturally, to stop.
He said he never talked in his sleep, never has. Told her that when he was a young stud-muffin he used to date four/five women at a time. Some of them married. If he talked in his sleep, he said, he’d be dead.
Yeah.
Now nobody knows whether he talks in his sleep or not. He’s sleeping somewhere else.
Guy in an old Toyota blew by me like a rifle shot on 85 this morning. His right front tire was a “donut” spare.
Must have a death wish. I wouldn’t trust one of those things for two miles to the tire repair shop on level ground at School Zone speeds. Not even if they threw in second one for backup.
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