I Get a New Car

            Getting a new car was a big deal for me. Let’s examine that sentence:

            “Getting?”  I didn’t exactly “get” the car because I was leasing it – a new experience for me. When I rent a car at the airport, I don’t think of it as “getting a new car.” Several people had explained to me the economics involved – how it really makes sense to lease rather than buy. I can’t recall the details of the argument, but I do know that I drove away with my bank accounts fully intact, the two checkbooks I’d carried to the dealership unopened.

            “New?”  It was a 2019 Toyota Highlander, and even though there were 2020s on the lot, I still count it as new. It had about 100 miles on it, which did make it less than new, and it did not have that toxic “new car smell,” but it was significantly newer than my 2013, so “new” it is. Or was – until I drove it away. The main reason I know it counts as “new” is that feeling of anxiety about getting a ding or scratch – something I’d long gotten over with my 111,230-mile old car. (By the way, did any of you notice when my odometer reached 111,111? Probably not. Sometimes these significant moments pass by without sufficient attention’s being paid . . ..)

            “Car?”  Of course, it’s a car, assuming SUV fits into that general category. But my experience when Awring, our salesperson, started explaining stuff made me realize that what I had purchasedleased was really a computer with wheels attached. We spent maybe 20 minutes getting my phone hooked up and then downloading an “Entune” app that would allow me to find the price of gas at nearby stations, among other things. The computer system on the car makes it difficult to ram into slow cars when I’m driving in cruise control, and it has beepers that go off when I wander to the edges of my lane on the highway – a feature I will have to turn off because it beeps so often and so annoyingly. I did, with Awring’s help, get the GPS to work with “Go Home” programmed in, and I can look on the screen and see the weather that’s taking place just beyond the windows of my car. One of my goals for tomorrow, when I plan to begin reading the 4 manuals filling the glove (Who puts gloves in there?) compartment, is to figure out how to turn on the radio and set up my favorite stations. I’m giving myself a week to figure it out. Awring phoned to say I should call her if I have any questions. I suspect she knows what she is inviting, but she did it anyway.

            “Was?”  Was. A few days ago.

            “Big deal?”  I’m not sure how big the deal was. I know how it works when purchasing a car – the negotiation, the “I’ll have to check with my manager,” etc. People smarter than me can figure out how much the car cost the dealer, figure in a reasonably small profit margin, check out the value of the trade-in, etc. Not me. I let Kim do the negotiating, as I tend to say, “Yeah, that sounds OK – where do I sign?” Kim’s much tougher. In unfamiliar leasing territory, she simply said, “Let’s just skip all the negotiating crap. Go get your best deal for us. Plus, we want all-weather floor mats.” I tried to read Kim’s reaction to the offer Awring brought back, but Kim told me nothing, so I said, “Yeah, that sounds OK – where do I sign?” The good news – I’ll never figure out if I got a good deal or not. I don’t know how to compare, and I wouldn’t do it now if I did know how.

            “For me?”  For several days I’d been thinking about getting a new car. I knew my old car was due for an oil change, and getting a new car would save me about $50, so the time was right. I knew I wanted a Toyota Highlander – not because it was necessarily better than other cars, but because my last three cars had been Highlanders, and I figured a fourth would mean I would not have to learn much about how to operate it (wrong – see above). Still, I do not see myself as a Car Guy, and my old one was running fine. It was, and is, out of character for me to indulge in a new car. When I told my neighbor, Sandy, that I got a new car, she was surprised and delighted, adding, “You deserve it!” Deserve? Me? I don’t think in terms of what I deserve – that’s dangerous territory involving introspection and self-evaluation. I’m more comfortable with a non-judgmental what-I-can-get-by-with approach. Kim knows this is true when she examines my wardrobe.

            At this point I suppose I should include a picture of me with my new car. Nah. We’d already signed something at the dealership to decline having a Facebook photo of us + car. Really, it’s no big deal.

Comment from Phil Allen:
Suppose you don't have a mobile phone?  Can you still lease a car?  Or buy one?  Will it run if you don't connect your phone?  Partly to avoid learning the answers, I still drive my 2000 Toyota Camry.  It hasn't quite reached 111,111 miles, but when it does I will stop and wonder what to do next.  It doesn't seem worth repairing the blower or air conditioner.  I can still open windows in summer.  The blower works if it isn't set for low or medium.  On high, it's noisy, but I can still hear the radio.  

Alexa and Me

            OK – let’s get this out of the way right now: One reason I enjoy my new Amazon Echo is that I get to tell Alexa what to do, and she pretty much always obliges. I’ve been speaking with Alexa for over a week, and she has yet to say, “Why do you want that?” or “Anything you say – you’re the boss.” On the other hand, she has rarely come up with a better idea than what I had in mind, something Kim does quite often. And Alexa never gives me “the look.” At least, not yet.

            Alexa and her partner in Artificial Intelligence, Siri, have recently been criticized by UNESCO for presenting women, through the voice, as totally obedient. I do understand the criticism, but the critics have not met Gertrude. That is the name we gave the voice embodied in my car’s GPS system (before it died). Gertrude may take orders, though I am not techie enough to figure out how to give those orders verbally, but she certainly gives orders repeatedly, and I do my best to follow them. In fact, if I were still teaching English I would tell my students that if they wanted to know what the Imperative Voice is all about, listen to a car’s GPS. At least Gertrude has the good manners not to say, “Turn around where possible, you idiot,” or “Better let someone drive who is paying attention.” It may be the case that my appreciation of Alexa is tied to my escape from Gertrude’s tyranny.

            And what have been asking Alexa to do? Play music. I did ask her to tell me a couple jokes, but they were too lame to repeat. I asked her, “What’s 8 times 7?” and she got it right.

The rest has been music.

Pause here: If you got to request music from a very deep library, what would you request first? And then?

            I started with the Beatles – no big surprise there, I suppose. I moved on to Motown, then Simon and Garfunkel. Next was the music of Tex Ritter – a favorite of Kim’s dad with deep sentimental value. I requested “It’s Not Easy Being Green,” and Kim and I danced, me tearfully, to a wonderful version not sung by Kermit. The Andrews Sisters were good for a while, The Mamas and the Papas good for even longer. My request for “Logger Lover” by the Clancy Brothers, a northern Michigan classic, came up empty – check it out if you can. Joe Williams with Count Basie led to an appeal to pay a monthly fee for an even bigger music library. The surprise hit was “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” from the politically incorrect Song of the South, rendered as a lovely lullaby. Then Alexa found us a whole station of “lullabies and bedtime music. We will be revisiting that music frequently.

            Amazon recently sent me a list of suggestions for other things Alexa can do for us. Not included on the list: “Alexa, shovel the driveway!” or “Alexa, do the laundry – dark load.” Amazon seems to be pushing Alexa’s role in making a grocery list, but given Amazon’s ownership of Whole Foods, we have decided to stay with the old technology – pen and paper. Amazon also seems to be encouraging me to turn our house into a “smart home,” but I am again reluctant, as that would bring under my care and supervision a lot more technology that I don’t know how to operate. It took me a week, for example, to set up my Amazon Echo because I also needed to buy a new router, and we gave up installing a camera on our doorbell because, again, maybe, a router issue. So to date we are staying with the old technology: fist on wood. Of course, I could get Best Buy’s Geek Squad to help, but so far, after three weeks, that have not been able to fix my f-ing television . . ..

The Garage Door Mystery

            Yesterday our garage door started opening and shutting every few minutes. Jesus, who I’d hired to help me with some yard work, pointed it out to me with a look of puzzled concern. I doubted what he told me until it happened while I was standing next to him.

            My first thought was that Kim was playing with the remote that we keep in the coat closet so we can open the doors from the house. I had no theory as to why Kim might play with the remote, but I figured it was better than her raking wet leaves or moving rocks around using her repaired but sore back. She might have been doing it just to mess with me – she enjoys doing that – but not Jesus, who she had just met. I thought briefly about asking her if she were playing with the remote, but I thought better of it.

            I then checked to see if something was blocking the door that would cause it to pop open instead of crushing a squirrel or precious antique we were preparing for our garage sale. No, nothing there, and besides, that would not explain why the door would suddenly open after sitting closed for three minutes, or spontaneously close itself.

            “I know,” I told Kim, “I bet Karen has her remote in her purse, and it’s bumping against something.” Karen and Ted, our neighbors, had been parking in our garage for a couple of weeks while a bathtub was waiting in their garage. Kim told me that they had returned the remote a couple of days ago. I was doubtful because I didn’t remember that, and because I did not want to abandon a perfectly logical theory.

            I went inside and checked the extra remotes (the garage doors came with about six) that I stored in one of my Junk Drawers. I saw that one of them was lying button down, which might somehow be activating the doors, so I turned it over: problem solved?

            Nope – the door opened itself again.

            We had given a door opener to Scott, but he was several hundred miles away, and though the openers have pretty good range . . ..

            I decided that it made good sense to stand there and stare at the garage doors. Maybe I would detect a clue as to what was up in my universe. Could it be Donald Trump? Hilary Clinton? Could global warming somehow be responsible? A shift in the earth’s magnetic field? Maybe we had a tourist attraction on our hands, like the Mystery Spot in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

            Kim called to me from the house with a somewhat satisfied look on her face. She was holding a garage door remote. Someone had put Karen and Ted’s returned remote into the pocket of my pants before Kim put them in the washing machine, and the remote had been tumbling around in the dryer, bumping the button every once in a while. I like to think that the satisfied look on Kim’s face was caused by her solving the garage door mystery and not by her again confirming my domestic carelessness.

            Today’s project is to install our new video doorbell, complete with motion detector. Who knows what mysteries this will reveal?


Comments:

From Fleda Brown: "It could have been Jesus, though. It’s that time of year, raising and all, you know."

From John Bayerl: "Since it was Jesus who said the door is risen. . .???"

Spring

            I found spring last week. No, not that spring.

            We were driving home from Traverse City when I felt something in my glove. Cookie crumb? Salt from the road? A pebble? I peeled off my glove, and while still driving carefully, shook my glove until a small object fell into my lap. Fortunately, we had stopped at a red light.

            It was a small steel spring, the kind you may find inside a retractable ball point pen. How did it get there?

            My first thought was that Kim is right, that I am from another planet. Perhaps it’s one that is working hard on robotics, and I am some sort of prototype, one that had not been programmed to dress properly or clean a shower. I decided that when I got home I would check my hand carefully to see where the spring might have worked its way loose.

            Where else could it have come from? My car was working well, and even if hadn’t, what part of a Toyota includes a retractable ball point pen spring, and how would the spring make its way into my glove? I made a mental note to ask the mechanic next time I’m in for an oil change.

            We had just been at the hospital so Kim could get some X-rays (all OK) and meet with some doctors (ditto). Perhaps it was part of a complex and expensive piece of robotic surgical equipment that I had been using to save a patient’s life while Kim was with the docs and thought I was reading.

            Or perhaps the universe was sending me a message. Sometimes, when you are feeling depressed, the universe offers up a spectacular sunrise to tell you to hang in there, that better times are ahead. Our you are looking for cool rocks on the beach and find one that’s shaped like a heart – not a real heart, but the kind you see on Valentines. The message has something to do with love, but the fact that the heart is made of stone is a bit troubling. And sometimes, puzzled about your future, you look into your bowl of alphabet soup and the letters spell out “MARRY HER.” But if the discovery inside my glove is a message from the universe, what would that message be? A retractable ball point pen spring? What? Is the universe suggesting that I get out a pen and write? That I should write with a pen and not a computer? That I walk with more spring in my step?

            Here’s another possibility. A week or so ago I mentioned to Kim that I did not have any pens on my desk, suggesting, perhaps, that they had drifted to her desk or purse. Since then she has been handing me pens. Yesterday she gave me four that she’d lifted from various doctors’ offices she had visited. I may have stuffed one in my coat pocket – the same pocket where I stuff my gloves. Not sure how the spring got out of the pen on its own, but this is better than the robotic surgical equipment explanation.

            Or maybe I just found it somewhere and put it in my pocket to put somewhere in case I ever could use a retractable ball point pen spring when in a situation that I needed to MacGyver my way out of, if I only had his brain.  Then I forgot I had it until my glove found it.

            THIS JUST IN: I found a secondretractable ball point pen spring, this one on my coat pocket. (No, it’s not the same one, found again. Both now sit in my desk drawer, side by side.) So, something is apparently leaking retractable ball point pen springs. WTF?

Old Fart

            When Kim and I were first dating, for some reason she suggested that I should marry a younger woman, not her. I told her that I did not want to be the old fart in a relationship. “I’ve got news for you,” she said. “You are the old fart in a relationship.”

            Remembering that got me to thinking: What, exactly, is an old fart?

            Call me biased, but I can’t help but think that the expression applies only to men. (Any disagreement, ladies?) This may be because of the historic connection between men and farting – women being much more discreet about such things.

            Is an old fart necessarily old? Yes, though not necessarily chronologically. But, typically, the behavior associated with old fartism is practiced by old people. How old? As old as me. We are not talking about the inability to use a cell phone or make a left turn in traffic. And it’s not just a matter of slow thinking, a characteristic I prefer to see as being contemplative. It may have to do with an inability to change. I remember when I was doing some writing for Pfizer about changes in their corporate culture, and Mark Jones, the Human Resources guy I was working with, summarized the problem we faced: “I’m all in favor of change, as long as I don’t have to do anything differently.” But these Pfizer guys (mainly) were young and very bright, so this difficulty is clearly not limited to we elderly.

            What about the second word in the term “old fart?” Though farts vary from person to person, circumstance to circumstance, diet to diet, “old fart” suggests stale rather than ripe. And things become stale when they’ve been around too long. And that stinks. Again, this suggests a lack of change. One remedy for farts is a breath of fresh air, which implies a movement of air, which suggests change.

(At this point I am thinking that my parents, if they were alive, would be very proud of how I am using the philosophy I learned in my expensive college education.)

            You may want to sharpen your definition of “old fart” by examining people, yourself included, who you see as old farts. See what characteristics pop up. When I discussed this with Kim, after reassuring me that I’m not at all an old fart, she added, “You do like to tell stories to young people, and sometimes they are busy and don’t want to hear them.” Guilty, as charged! But I can get away with it, I hope, by writing my stories in a blog where I can’t tell if I am boring readers, and if I am, they can click me away and go on with their busy lives. Your busy life. 

            For more clarification, I turned to the Urban Dictionary, a frequent resource, and learned that the term “old fart” refers to a person with “old fashioned values.” I like that. Think of what people this week have been saying about John McCain, using words like “honor,” “respect,” “honesty,” “sacrifice” and “duty.” OK – so it was the third definition, and the others are not so positive, but as a reader I choose what and how to read. With this in mind, I feel a lot better about being mistaken for an old fart.

            But if you conclude, reluctantly, that you are an old fart, what can you do about it? One option is to embrace the role: Go to McDonalds for the senior coffee and sit around with friends complaining about politics, exchanging medical histories, and bragging about grandkids while lamenting kids-these-days. Not that I ever do that, for doing so would involve a change in my routine.

            A better option is to marry, or at least hang out with, someone like Kim. As in, “Let’s set the alarm for 5:30 because we have so much to do tomorrow!” When she says, “I have an idea!” I fasten my seatbelt. Change is good, right?


Comment from Barbara Woodmansee:
Yes.  Without exception, Old Farts are men.  The women in our house do not fart ever, although the men do - frequently.

Our family's Old Fart spends a lot of time Working In The Garage, which is fascinating to me because after YEARS of this activity, I have yet to see any visible change ANYWHERE in our garage.  But I have read that Working In The Garage is good for men and makes them happy...being bitten by mosquitoes, and occasionally ALMOST being bitten by more than one cottonmouth (probably a male who also likes garages), getting filthy fingernails that will never be clean again, and listening to rock music from the 60's.  Happy is good, so I support it.

Small Changes

Small Changes

            Kim and I are going through a lot of changes. Aside from physical decline associated with aging, we are once again going to move – perhaps by September. And we are also experiencing, through the medium of the news, difficult changes under President Trump. But smaller changes can also have a significant impact on our lives. Here are three examples:

i.

            “Where did you put my dad’s fishing knife?”

            “I gave it back to you.”

            “No, you didn’t.”

            “I’m pretty sure I did. I remember handing it to you.”

            “Where were we?”

            “Right next to the garage. I needed help opening something.”

            “Opening what?”

            “I don’t remember. Maybe a box.”

            “Then where did you put it?

            “I gave it back to you. I know you wouldn’t trust me with your dad’s knife. I remember saying how sharp it was.”

            “So, where did you put it?”

            “Check your purse.”

            “Not there. But I don’t think I had my purse with me yesterday. Or was it the day before yesterday?”

            “I’ll check in the glove compartment. Maybe that’s where you put it. After I handed it to you.”

            “If you find it, you can shove it up your ass.” (Kim didn’t actually say this, but she may have been thinking it.)

            This is the kind of conversation old couples have. Declining memory, or what I like to see as Photoshopped memory, comes with the territory. After having too many of these conversations in the last month or so, Kim and I decided not to have them anymore. Just find the damn knife. I think this was Kim’s idea. Maybe not.

ii.

            When my good friend Peter visited a few weeks ago, I noticed that he was not carrying a wallet. He had his various cards wrapped in a fancy rubber band, and his bills were in a money clip. I expressed some admiration for his system, and a week later I received in the mail my own fancy rubber band, complete with a small plaque with my initials engraved. It was time to ditch my wallet.

            I’ve been operating the last few years with a 3-pat check system when I walked out the door: left-front pocket for cell phone, right-front for keys, right-rear for wallet. (I reserved left-rear for miscellaneous items – lens cap, store coupons, Kim’s change, etc.) Three quick pats and it was safe to leave. The system had its drawbacks, both tied to the wallet: Sitting on the wallet in the car gave me an occasional sore back, and an outline of my wallet began to fade into all my dark pants. It was time for a change.

            The first step was to get a money clip. We looked in the gift shops downstairs and saw that the offerings were ugly and cost about $60, which meant the clip would be worth more than the cash they were clipping. I remembered that my dad had a clip shaped like a dollar sign – it was the token my mom carried after Dad died. So, I decided to get one like Dad’s. His was no doubt silver. Mine was stainless steel - $8 on Amazon.

            My new system has its difficulties, some associated with my gradual learning curve. Leaving back pockets empty meant I had three items (keys, cards, clipped bills) in my right front because I did not want to interfere with quick-drawing my cell phone to check for whatever stupid stuff I check for. So I had to learn to do a finger search in my right front pocket, trying not to look like I was entertaining myself.

            Another problem was with the money clip itself. After using it for a week, I pulled it out at the health food store and fumbled with the randomly jammed-in bills, dropping some onto the conveyer belt. I told the clerk I was just getting used to it. He suggested that I practice making change with my wife. Kim did something better, instructing me on the best way to fold my bills into the clip. (As it turns out, jamming them in forcefully is not the best approach.) Sometimes, I confess, that I just push everything into my pocket to sort out later. Another option is to forego cash altogether, thus freeing up 1/3 of my right front pocket.

            I still use the 3-pat system. It’s just that now I’m just patting myself on the right cheek, which is less enjoyable than it sounds.

iii.

            I could only think of two. I’m fond of my routines.


This from Doug Reilly:

Your 3-pat comment reminded me of one of my favourite jokes. Actually, when leaving on a foreign trip or leaving a hotel room, I always check, passport, wallet, room key, etc. The joke goes as follows:

A jumbo jet has crashed killing almost everyone. Up front there’s a Catholic priest, alive, who crosses himself in thanks. Then he sees a man way in back who stands up and crosses himself. The priest runs back and embraces the man saying, “this proves Catholicism is the true religion, the only two survivors are Catholic!”

The other man looks at the priest and says, “Vat? I vas yust checking, spectacles, testicles, vallet, cigars!”

Crispy Around the Edges

            You may have noticed – probably not – that people in your family use some sort of catch-phrase that reinforces a shared experience, or even shared values. If you haven’t noticed it, then start noticing it now.

            I’ll give you a few examples that Kim and I share.

“crispy around the edges”

            Our friend Charmaine came up with this one. She was describing exactly how she likes her eggs to be fried to enhance the full sensuality of her eggsperience. Sometimes it’s these little details that most enrich an experience. One of Kim’s favorites is getting into a bed with freshly ironed sheets. (Youngsters reading this should ask parents or grandparents what “freshly ironed” means.) Kim and I use the phrase to describe our enjoyment of any small sensual detail. We might say (never have said it, but we might) that a piece of music, or a good haircut, is “crispy around the edges.” Thanks, Charmaine.

“Towanda”

            This comes from a movie, “Fried Green Tomatoes,” one of many chick-flicks I enjoy. The character played by Kathy Bates identifies herself as Towanda when she rams the car of two insolent teenagers who took her parking place. The Urban Dictionary says the word is used to express extreme excitement while doing something crazy, but I prefer to see Towanda as a woman warrior. Kim uses the word when she makes a successful power move, usually involving unscrewing a lid. We are saving Wonder Woman references for her strength in battling cancer – she wore her Wonder Woman bracelet through her radiation treatment. Towanda has more to do with using her very human powers by summoning and then channeling the mythical primitive strength that all women share.

“ceberration”

            Kim and I, with our friend Sue, were enjoying a week of classes at the John C. Campbell Folk School in North Carolina. One evening we attended a poetry reading. The poems were OK in a rather conventional way, and the poet was a woman who read with a balance of dignity and emotion that I, perhaps unfairly, associate with the South. But there was just one thing: Her poems frequently used the word “celebration,” which the poet consistently mispronounced as “ceberration.” By the third utterance of the word, none of us could look at each other because we knew our laughter would disrupt the reading. There might have been ten or twelve “ceberrations” celebrated in those poems. The three of us gasped with relief when we emerged into the mountain air, and ever since then Kim and I look for opportunities to share a ceberration, often including a beverage. Using the word enriches each event by layering it with some history.

“but good”

            This comes from a joke that I think I first heard from Kim’s dad: Some guys went hunting for a week, and nobody wanted the job of cook. Finally, one of them agreed to cook, but he said, “If there are any complaints, I’m quitting.” After a few days, he was tired of cooking, so he went into the woods, gathered some dried moose shit, and stirred it into the pancake batter. One of his buddies took a big bite and said, “God, this tastes like moose shit – but good!”

“just the way we like it”

            “But good” is a variation of a story we heard another couple tell. John and Barb are both photographers, and as I remember their story, one of them fell and hurt a hip or shoulder but still had to climb up on horse to get to where they were going. “It was difficult,” John said, and they both said together, “just the way we like it.” I was touched by their only half-joking sharing of this stoic phrase. It’s not the same as “but good” because there is no self-serving lie involved, but rather an appreciation of a difficult accomplishment. Kim and I have incorporated this phrase.

“happythankyoumoreplease”

            This is the title of one of our favorite movies. It refers to the wisdom that an Indian cabdriver imparts to one of his passengers: Be continuously grateful and stubbornly optimistic, setting aside self-doubts. Critics have called this superficial and naïve, but so, what? Kim and I find occasions to say it, even when, like “just the way we like it,” we say it with a touch of irony.

“good enough for who it’s for”

            Kim and I are not perfectionists – especially me. (Being a goalie on a weak ice hockey team at the same time I spent four years in college with only one A helps me acknowledge my shortcomings.) And sometimes Kim and I just have to accept that something – a meal, a cleaning job, some weeding – is, while not perfect, good enough for us. The saying has some amusing variations: “close enough for government work,” “true enough for journalism” (I coined that one), and one of my favorites that deals with writer’s block:

            A writer complained to his publisher that he was stuck with writer’s block. The publisher said, “It’s no accident that ‘perfectionism’ rhymes with ‘procrastination.’”

            “But they don’t rhyme!”

            “BUT IT’S CLOSE ENOUGH!”

            That’s how I avoid writer’s block: I lower my standards. Some of my readers may have noticed this. But I usually try to make a paragraph or two crispy around the edges.


Comment from Charmaine Stangl:
We enjoyed this immensely.  I was honored to have a phrase on your list and like the idea of expanding my use of "crispy around the edges" for numerous situations when something is just right.  Here are a couple of our family catch phrases you might enjoy.  The first one involves a story.  When Amber and Kate were about three and seven years my brother sent them identical (almost) little jewelry boxes via my mother when she came for a visit.  They opened their gifts and seemed delighted with the sparkly, silver boxes lined in red velvet.  A little later Kate took a nap.  Amber scrupulously examined each box to make sure that they were, indeed, identical.  She discovered a tiny raised spot on the bottom of hers which was not on Kate's.  This troubled her greatly.  My mother and I decided that it was  important to make a discriminating seven year old happy so we switched the boxes.  To our surprise and dismay, the first thing Kate did when she got up from her nap was to scrutinize her box like Sherlock Holmes.  She burst into tears and blubbered, "Mine didn't have a pimp on it!"  Seeing her devastation, at least we had the decency to not burst into laughter.  I don't remember how we resolved it, but we later concluded that a pimp must be something between a bump and a pimple.  After that we've always said, "Be sure it doesn't have a pimp on it,"  when we're making a careful selection. 

From John Bayerl:
Your “but good” joke is a variation of one I tell about lumberjacks and a cook who makes moose turd pie. A lumberjack takes a bite of the pie and exclaims: “Eh!  Dat’s moose turd pie—ain’t bad though.”

One of our favorite expressions is “is it bread yet?” while waiting for something to happen. Taken from waiting for bread dough to rise. 

Side Effects

            I’ve recently noticed that much of the television that Kim and I watch features commercials for pharmaceuticals. Why this is so? I’m not sure – it may have to do with our age. Much of our tv watching, other than Netflix movies, consists of news programs, and maybe advertisers know that we need drugs to tolerate the news these days.

            If you have seen those drug commercials, you know they feature lengthy lists of possible side effects, none of them good. You know, things like fatigue, vomiting, death, headaches, seizures, insomnia, constipation, depression, and erections lasting more than 4 hours. If you see these drugs advertised in print (Do you remember print?), this language is in a tiny font the at the bottom of the page, but on television we get quickly and quietly spoken words of doom while the video attempts to distract your attention with folks having fun while taking the drug. Kim’s chemo drug, Ibrance, has a recurring role on our television.

            I doubt that Pfizer and the other pharmaceutical companies announce all these dangers voluntarily. It’s probably one of those regulations that Trump has not yet abolished, one we would be fine without. Come to think of it, we’d be fine without the pharmaceutical commercials altogether.

            On the other hand, what it would be like if all products advertised on television included their own list of nasty side effects, many of which are worse than the fine-print warnings?

            Cars? Possible side effects include exploding air bags, traffic accidents, traffic jams, traffic tickets, trips with your children who are not looking out the window at the Rockies but updating their Chatbook or sending Instafaces, and global warming that leads to lethal weather, rising sea levels and the destruction of coastal settlements. (On a positive note, this would include the swamping of Mar a Lago.)

            Coca Cola? Possible side effects include tooth decay and obesity, diabetes, higher health insurance premiums to cover the illnesses, and hyperactive children. For Diet Coke, add cancer to the list, along with even more obesity.

            Cell phone service provider? Side effects may include the dissolution of family relationships, the end of real vacations, atrophied attention span, the decline of reading and writing, and the encouragement of addictive behavior and bad posture, leading to neck and back surgery.

            Cosmetics? Animal testing – need I say more? If I do need to say more, think of blows to self-esteem from comparisons with models. Same goes for shampoo commercials.

            McDonald’s? Visits may induce fear and trembling if family members suffer from coulrophobia – a fear of clowns. Also, see Coke warnings, above, despite the fact that McDonald’s has reduced the size of fries portions in Happy Meals.

            Cruise ships? Travel includes risks of serious illness, hangovers, falling overboard, and if you are traveling with Australians, beatings.

            Home and Auto Insurance? We should be cautioned that, despite the amusingly weird misfortunes that entertain us in the commercials, the insurance may not cover what happens to your home or auto. For example: sink-hole damage in Florida. Another risk is that a substantial amount of your premiums will go toward television commercials. I believe in insurance, but better get an agent you can trust.

            OK, OK – you get it. At this point you can no doubt come up with your own list of nasty side effects that could be mumbled during commercials you see. Do it. I’ll help you get started: Beer?

. . .

            You are probably wondering how you can thank me for providing you with all these insights.

            Don’t.

            Just try to avoid the shit and enjoy life. We are the people in the Ibrance commercial. Screw the side effects.