By Aaron S. Birk

The sun is out a little more, the puppies are frolicking, and the rockets bursting in air in some portions of our city shed their warm and sulfurous glow, oh the smells of July! You have to wonder if the founding fathers foresaw the party that Independence Day would become. The entire month of July will undoubtedly be full of fast bikes, bursting rockets, and harmless debauchery. What better way to hail our independence? Now to the questions…

Cortni Knox
Super-Mom
Seaside, CA

Q: What do you think about the sale of fireworks?

A: I think they should just be in a show, I hate having to listen to them at home. It’s like having a booth to sell beer and hating all the beer cans lying around afterwards.

Q: Do you think the founding fathers intended for the 4th of July to become such a wild party?

A: Well, they did make it a national holiday, and they were Americans, so what did they expect? They made holidays thinking we could have an excuse to party on just those days and then we made up some of our own birthdays, 4:20… sick days.

Q: Why do some women have to have so many pillows on the bed?

A: So when your spouse is pissing you off you can make a border.

Michele Annereau
Bicycle Queen
Monterey, CA

Q: What do you think about fireworks?

A: I think if we don’t have them that it’s unpatriotic.

Q: What will you be doing on the 4th of July?

A: Making my own fireworks… like the Nubmaker 3!

Q: Did you know “The Star-Spangled Banner” was written to the melody of a drinking song?

A: That makes sense, I mean, come on! If anyone thinks of our history, it was about little pubs, what song didn’t start that way?

Steinbeck
Cannery Row

Q: What do you think about fireworks?

A: Love them as a representation of life. All noise and flash and then POP it’s over.

Q: Did the founding fathers think it would be such a party?

A: I sure hope they did. Ben Franklin was a party animal, you know, loved to get dogs drunk.

Q: How will you be celebrating your Independence Day?

A: Man, look at me! I’m a statue with no legs. I’ll just stand here like this waiting for Doc.

By Mark Krahling

I have to admit that I really kind of like doing the laundry. I mean, I’m not crazy about it, but there is something about doing the laundry that resonates with me, or maybe serves me, would be a better way of putting it.

Before I go on, though, we need to have an agreement. This isn’t just about laundry. In order to explain my relationship with laundry, I’ll need to reveal some secrets about my inner workings that are a little sensitive and embarrassing. I need to know that you have an open mind and that you won’t judge me too harshly, and that you will appreciate what I go through to produce that pile (actually those FOUR piles, but we’ll get to that later) of whiter whites and brighter brights.

Do we have an agreement here?

Another thing that you need to know is that I am far from being the primary laundry/house maintenance person in our family. My wife, Heidi, can survey the disaster that our house has become by Saturday morning, and then list and prioritize what needs to be done in a nanosecond because she was born with this instinct, and assign tasks to various family members who then struggle for the rest of the day to complete them. Or, if she so chooses, she can do it all herself in an hour. While talking on the phone.

But this story is about someone who is wired a bit differently.

The truth of the matter is that I have a touch, just a mild case, of Attention Deficit Disorder. I know that probably sounds to you like someone saying that they have a “touch” or a “mild case” of pregnancy, but don’t judge me until you hear me out.

This is what my ADD is like: Let’s say I’m watching the TV news and the weather report comes on. Let’s say that I really want to know if it’s going to rain tomorrow because I need to know if my son can ride his bike to school. So I’m watching the weather report with a purpose-my purpose is to find out if it’s going to rain tomorrow right here in my hometown.

I start watching the weather report and pretty soon I become distracted by the clownish bow tie that the weatherman is wearing and his breezy off-the-cuff remarks. I start to wonder why they always put the goofy guy on the weather report-do they think that it’s so boring that we have to be entertained by his antics? Now he’s doing the thing with the weather map. Let me see if I understand this. He is actually standing in front of a blank, green wall and looking at a monitor. He’s pointing at specific things but he can’t see them unless he looks at the monitor. How does he know where to point, at the same time that he’s making incredibly corny comments and lame jokes? Like for instance, he just pointed at San Francisco and there were some clouds over the sun and he said … Damn-I just missed the part about San Rafael. Is he moving north or south on the screen? Did he already talk about Marin? Damn again-I just missed the five-day forecast! Oh well, at least sports is next.

So that’s what I like about it.

By the way, I just realized that I pulled a “Widget.” Widget was a college friend of mine who had an annoying habit of completing a sentence that he had started a half-hour before. He would suddenly start talking about something-often beginning with a pronoun so that you had no idea what he was referring to-until you racked your brain to think of which first half of a sentence matched up with this second half of a sentence during the day’s conversation. So when I say, That’s what I like about IT, then IT, of course, refers to … laundry!

It’s because the laundry helps me focus a bit. You see, my house is a lot like that weather map. There are these swirls throughout the house which represent the different projects that I have started, things that I should do, time-wasting opportunities, the refrigerator, the computer, and so on. I start in one of the swirls-let’s say working on this story-and pretty soon I realize that I need a cup of coffee. I head for the kitchen and warm up the coffee in the microwave. While it’s warming up, I have 25 seconds to kill, so I’ll take a look at the newspaper. The sports section catches me in its swirl for a little while and the coffee sits cooling in the microwave. Done with the paper, I’ll put it in recycling. That reminds me of the clutter in the house-got to avoid the swirl of the garage. How can I do that? Head for the coffee. I’ll just pour a cup and put it in the microwave to warm up. Oh, my God, there’s already a cup there! I know-I’ll warm up both cups and then I’ll really get some writing done!

Wait. Let’s try it again with laundry. Okay, let’s bring the laundry down to the laundry room and start a load of colored clothes. All right. Now, I’ve got that working so I can try to get some writing done. A little writing, a little swirl-surfing. I hear that the wash is done, so I’ll put it in the dryer. Start a load of whites. It’s so efficient-the two machines are working together now, even when I’m not-I’ve delegated some of my duties to the two of them! Visit the weather map of my house, hear the beep of the dryer and come back.

Now here’s the important part. Open the ironing board and get ready to start the four piles! No ironing needed, the clothes come straight from the dryer. The ironing board is just for piling. My daughter is the youngest, so her pile is on the left, then my son’s pile, my wife’s pile, and mine. Take a piece of clothing out of the dryer, shake it a bit, fold it, and put it in its pile. I’m getting something done! Just like a normal person! This is so cool!

But it gets even better. You see, there is a system here-sort of like an assembly line. All I have to do is start another load. The washed stuff moves to the dryer. The dryer stuff moves to the ironing board, one piece at a time. And then, one pile at a time, the clothes are delivered to their respective closets.

It’s like Ford’s Model T factory. It can’t be stopped! No matter how caught up I get in the swirls waiting to gobble me up, the factory keeps running. I’m getting something done and if I also happen to pay a few bills, write a sentence or two, or make a bed, that’s like getting a bonus check at the factory!

Maybe I can even figure out a way to pay more attention to that too-sorry, I pulled another Widget there. Maybe I can even figure out a way to pay more attention to the weather report. Let’s see, I’ll cut out the weather report from the paper and paste it to the wall behind the ironing board. I just need some scissors. They’re here in this drawer. It’s a little messy-maybe I should straighten it out. I’ll need a cup of coffee for that. I’ll just microwave it for 25 seconds or so…

* * *

Mark Krahling’s stories have been published on the literary websites Redroom and Bust Out as well as on the travel blog Notes from Spain. His book, Still Blinking, is a collection of short stories dedicated to the notion of slowing down and noticing what’s extraordinary, humorous, and meaningful in the everyday. To learn more and to purchase the book, please visit his website at www.pauseforpurpose.com.

By Andrew Grossman

The cranberry juice sloshed invitingly into the glass. The bartender dropped in two ice cubes, too few to sufficiently chill the juice, but just enough to splash me good. I could tell he was sick of me coming in every night with my usual sob story.

“Look,” he said, “it’s not like you woke up one day and suddenly the entire country was back in the middle ages.”

“Oh, really, well dig this” (those last three words were lifted directly from the lyrics of “Everybody Sings the Blues”), I said directly into his mug (yes, he was holding a mug in front of his face). Then I proceeded to tell him my story:

I knew a man named Bart. He was a nice guy. Unprepossessing, as it were. He had a lovely wife named Cindy. Bart had a blue Honda motorcycle that he liked to ride from downtown into the open countryside on weekends. Cindy liked to ride behind him with her hands around his midsection. They both worked in the financial field. What I’m getting at here is that they were quintessentially normal people.

One day over dinner Bart announced to me that from now on he wanted to be known as Bart de Kalamazoo.

“Come again?” I said.

“You heard me,” he said, “and I mean beginning right now.”

Why lose a friendship over a small detail like this? The next thing out of my mouth was a convoluted sentence that ultimately took the form of an address to “Bart de Kalamazoo.”

“And my wife’s name is Lady Cynthia,” he demanded.

Yes, yes, of course, of course, I agreed.

“And we don’t live at 109 Waverly Drive, NW. We live in Kalamazoo Castle. The backyard is actually a jousting arena and the picket fence is a forty-foot-high stone wall.”

No, I wouldn’t agree to that. If his fence was a castle wall, then that meant my wife and I were serfs, since we lived two doors down. One may build one’s self up, but not if it means knocking your neighbors down.

And so I found myself in his backyard on a large horse draped in armor. I mean the horse was draped in armor. I refused to put the stuff on because I was claustrophobic, but noted that Bart did not suffer such problems. I was holding about a ten-foot-long pole that tapered out from my handhold and then tapered down until it reached a point somewhere on the horizon. Did people say “it’s go time” in medieval Europe?

When Lady Cynthia dropped her lace handkerchief, Bart shouted “For King Richard!” and started his charge.

Despite his menacing look, I remained more frightened of my own horse. I felt like I was standing on the ledge of a four-story-high building and the building was tipsy. Retreat, however, was not an option … because that would require staying on the horse.

In front of me was Bart bearing down (becoming medieval had seemed to give him more focus), to either side of me was a George Foreman Grill (on the left) and bags full of little knickknacks (to the right), because you have more space for stuff when you move into a castle. Behind me was the horse’s tail, which felt to be armored when it hit me in the face.

“What happened next?” the bartender pleaded.

Suffice it to say that I am now known as the Squire de Bart de Kalamazoo.

By Jamie Baker

Has there ever been a more sinking feeling than to be away from the house and reach into your pocket, expecting to grab the keys, only to find a dilapidated cough drop wrapper and some lint?

Alas, it happened to me. Again. I am, by my own admission, one of the most absentminded people on the planet, but I was POSITIVE I had put those keys in my pocket.

The first thing that gets you is that nauseating knot in your gut. You know the one-the same one you feel when you hear the door click shut and notice the keys on the seat, safely locked inside the car. Yeah, that feeling.

The series of thoughts that go through your mind are amazing. “Uh, oh,” followed by “How am I going to get home?”, followed by “Crap, my wife has Tae Kwon Do class and she’s going to kick me in the brain,” followed by “So HOW am I gonna get HOME?”

Then the panic sets in and brings on the forcible self-frisking. A bank-robbing, crack-selling, terrorist doesn’t get patted down that violently. I still have bruises on my hips. To an onlooker, unaware of the situation, it must look like the most fouled-up version of the Macarena ever performed.

After you realize the denim cupboards are bare comes the immediate look-at-the-ground reflex. I’m not really sure what this is supposed to accomplish, but if the keys weren’t in your pocket I’m pretty sure that a thieving key pixie didn’t develop a conscience and drop them in front of you before scampering off.

Then the second wave of thoughts hit, but much less organized than before. “Crap, Tae Kwon Do, dead brain, no keys, where, how, tow truck, bad Monday, am I losing my mind? AND HOW am I getting HOME?!?”

Finally comes the frenzied retracing of the steps, elevated blood pressure, and genuine anger. I suspect that if I had one of those old mercury blood pressure meters on my arm, it’d look like a mercury version of the fountains at the Bellagio in Las Vegas.

It just so happens that this one occurred at work, but even if that were not the case, the places you find yourself looking are, in retrospect, odd to say the least. Especially once the obvious places have netted you diddly-squat. Like under the floor mat, for example.

That’s what makes the questions people ask even more amazing, though not very amusing in the moment. I presume they ask them because of some past experience of their own. Or maybe it’s just ignorance. Anyway, here are some of my favorites:

Q: Lose something?

A: Nope, I always walk around at 90 mph, looking under floor mats, mumbling to myself about Tae Kwon Do.

Q: Did you check your pockets?

A: Pockets? OH… you mean those cloth sacks stitched to the inside of my pants? Yes, I checked them. In fact, I took my pants off in the parking lot and gave them a vigorous, upside-down shake. No dice or keys to be found in them at all.

Q: Did you look in the ignition?

A: Yes, as soon as I got my pants back on.

Q: Did you look in your billfold?

A: What the-?? Why didn’t I think of that? I know I often get distracted by vending machines in the middle of parking lots calling me to satisfy my need for a soda or a candy bar. Maybe I put the key in there when I went looking for a buck.

Q: Did you look in the restroom?

A: I wouldn’t normally have thought to look there… but today, given that I brought the car in the stall with me while I was taking care of business, I sure did.

Q: Did you look in your shoe?

A: Now, I know that I’m no princess and there’s no way I’d feel a pea under my mattress, but given the fact that a 1/16 inch pebble in my shoe made me sit down in the parking lot to empty it out, I don’t suspect I’ll find a 2-inch steel key in there. Still, I can’t rule out a chance encounter with David Blaine, so it’s worth a shot.

Q: Did you look in the fridge?

A: Yep, over between the O.J. and Thousand Island dressing, where I usually keep them.

I know they meant well and I truly appreciated the concern, but I just wanted them to go look instead of playing Dick Tracy. I also know that, in their shoes, I’d probably find myself doing the same thing.

And for the record, yes I got the keys back. A kind gentleman found them in the parking lot and returned them to me when he came to investigate the crowd watching the Macarena exhibition.

***

Jamie Baker is a professional chemist posing as a humor blogger. Or maybe vice versa. Jamie would be most happy to get reader feedback. The blog URL is http://lunatron.blogspot.com.

By Gillian Bottrell

Some people file. Others pile.

Piling systems are quite complex, really. A reliable system can work well for years-mine has. Skilled pilers tend to be visual, tactile, and have an incredible memory. Or they remember having one, anyway. Well organized by their own standards, their piles have an order that most would never understand. The important piles don’t even need searching through; its items are memorized. Well, for the most part, anyway.

My system, although it lacks, well, any sort of obvious order, works quite well. It allows a pile to sit in plain view until it is about two, or no more than three, inches high.

First there is a quick run-through to retrieve important pieces. Maybe there is a form to fill out, a nameless phone number, an envelope with a return address from some charity. This pile can be kept in its own pile.

Then I sift through again to get rid of the true junk-things addressed to a former resident, for instance, Don’t worry, I got rid of that pile ages ago.

The rest goes into the kitchen piling cabinet. Others go into the hall piling cabinet-at this stage in the system, the piles are nonspecific. Well, maybe they are at all stages.

All piles start in pieces. They come in the mail, home from school, on the doorknob, from who knows where. Take the dinner table. Clearing this usable surface would require reheating the meal. Whatever has collected since the evening before makes a new pile at the extra place setting. At least it’s neatly stacked now.

In a couple of days, before it hits three inches, it goes into the random cabinet. That’s the cabinet with a lot of three-dimensional piles. Tupperware lids and ugly coffee cups from a vacation resort you’ve never been to.

Before they get into the piling cabinets, however, they stay put for about a month or two, giving me time to get out the real stuff. Well, not really, just to be rearranged. What comes back out goes onto the pile on the piano.

When the time comes, things that still seem important to keep on hand, such as the entire pile, eventually go into a box. I guess I’ll need these things some day, although I don’t really know what for. Usually those boxes go into the closet, undisturbed.

Some small parts of a pile stay around for some reason. Bills due. Bills past due. Bills that are too old to pay, but too interesting to throw away. Others are tall-magazines that are being kept for a reason, then just being kept longer because they were kept at all. Managable piles, or nice-looking ones like magazines, just meander throughout the house.

I can go to the little drawer in the occasional table for those things I need occasionally, like the electric bill, proof of insurance, little pads of blank paper. That antique dresser in the living room? Well, that’s where booklets printed on glossy paper, standard-sized single pages refolded into thirds, and strange or scary-looking unopened envelopes go. That new little piling cabinet above the hall closet? That one migrated from the kitchen and still hasn’t had the second sift-through.

A rough draft, recent homework assignments, an operator’s manual or two, receipts, birthday cards, party invitations, recipes, unopened bank statements, local voting flyers, unused envelopes with scary-looking glue, a date next to some bizarre thing like g.t. bbd 3 times. I just like that one. I like that the paper is getting fragile and turning a cool color. I’ve kept it piled for years. Each pile just contains two or six of each. That pile stays where I put it until I move it again. It merges with other piles and so on and so forth.

After feeling like I have organized them a few more times, they go into a box. If I need something out of it, I just go and get it.

The misunderstood phenomena of being able to go to the right box is why I think the system really works. A warranty for instance. Getting to the right box, to the correct place in the pile, is easy. The warranty and other things that seem interesting will go into another pile while I’m working my way through the box. More likely than not, this pile migrates back into the piling cabinet after the warranty has expired. This is where it gets weird. Piles of good intentions make the rounds until they make it back into the big box.

Some boxes do contain all of one thing. Let me get one. It’s on the top shelf of one of the hallway cabinets. This box is full, literally, of gardening magazines. I only pseudo garden. I was keeping them to make a collage. Oh well, back into the cabinet it goes. There’s a flat box full of school art projects. Don’t worry, they aren’t mine, those are in the garage.

I do have an actual filing cabinet. It’s in the bathroom. It’s full of really organized piles. They were when I made them, anyway. That’s where I keep the first 47 (edited) pages of that teen novel I never have the time to finish. It also has books the kids have written, some more non-wall worthy art projects which haven’t gone into their box just yet. There are piles of official stuff like mortgage papers that should never be boxed. There are school portraits that I buy to put in there. It has old journals and bad poetry. I like to keep that poetry because it is so bad that it is hilarious and I like to read it sometimes.

Don’t get me started on the boxes in the garage. There’s a whole other system at work there. But the boxes are piled in the best way possible. To go through them would add too many elements to the system. I could just recycle them all, but how could I without going through them first?

* * *

Gillian Bottrell is mother of three, wife of one, and owner of Truman the Dog. She works with Special Ed and lives in Watsonville. You can reach her at gillian@charter.net

By Ted Gargiulo

How can I describe my problem? There’s a lack of focus, a disconnected-ness when it comes to mental activities. It’s like perceiving the world through slits that broaden on better days and become narrower on not-so-better days.

Processing what I read, unscrambling words, constructing sense out of what I’m looking at, has become such a slow, tedious pain in the butt that it hardly seems worth the trouble anymore.

Plowing through an entire book is almost a thing of the past. It takes me several minutes just to read the jacket.

Skills that normally improve with practice seem to unravel the more I practice them. Hard for me to believe I once performed on a stage. Plugged away at it with a passion for 14 years…until the gears upstairs began slowing down. No way could I tackle anything that challenging today. Set foot on a stage? Heck, I wouldn’t even know where left field was.

I’ve had cracks in my woodwork all my life. Except, they appear to gave gotten worse with age. Emphasis on “appear.” It’s the old riddle of “Is my nose getting larger, or is my face shrinking?”

My doctors have all identified Attention Deficit Disorder-or ADD. If you’re at all familiar with this topic, then you know that ADD has become a very popular handle these days. Personally, I hate being pigeonholed. Whenever I read about a so-called “ADD community,” I become suspicious.

Seems everyone belongs to a “community.” You’ve got political activists, white supremacists, heavy metalists, pro- and anti-abortionists-a virtual smorgasbord of “ists” and “isms” to which people profess allegiance. I’m not one to jump on a bandwagon. I avoid pastures where too many cattle have trodden, and I keep my “flops” to myself.

My only reason for identifying with a known disorder is that there are known treatments for it. And yet, pharmacology, for all its benefits, is hardly a cure-all. My neurological mis-configurations are too deeply gouged into my foundation to be wiped clean by an attention enhancer. Even on Ritalin, I still become confused in parking lots, and am just as likely to mistake my death warrant for a library card.

On the surface, I display the standard symptoms of ADD: inattentiveness, difficulty finishing projects, lack of organization, restlessness. But the profile doesn’t account for those other less obvious glitches in my circuitry that have bugged me long before space-age analysts invented trendy names for them.

Although ADD afflicts people of all ages, most of what you see or hear about it in the news revolves around children. I’m sick of it. Everything today is kids-this and kids-that. Where was all this information when I was growing up?

Thankfully, I’m not a kid anymore, haven’t any small ones of my own, nor am I concerned about anyone else’s kids…just as long as they don’t run me down with their skateboards or mug me while I’m at an ATM machine. (No, “ATM” is not a disorder.)

Members of the ADD community like to flatter themselves by pointing to some of the greatest minds in history, who, they theorize, may have been afflicted with a similar disorder. Now, isn’t that a neat conceit! If a man’s affairs are in disarray, if he can’t balance a checkbook, remember to bathe, or change his underwear, it’s because his mind is operating on a higher, loftier plane. Another Beethoven! Another Van Gogh! It’s the old Decartian proverb: “I think, therefore I stink.”

It’s hard to separate the facts from the froth. I suspect there’s more to being a genius than choosing the wrong socks or dropping pizza sauce on your pants. (What a shame. I cooda been a contenda!) Considering all the things that can go amuck within a person’s brain, my situation is hardly interesting, not destined to take its place among the celebrated cases of clinical neurology. I’m not brilliant enough to change the world, nor sufficiently demented to be excused from dealing with it.

One major advantage to being loopy, off-balance, and/or inattentive is that the rest of the world appears straight. Crooked pictures don’t offend me the way they offend my more discerning Better Half. Neither do crooked situations. Flaw cancels flaw, error cancels error. Bumpy roads, filtered through a bumpy mechanism, seem smooth. Noise doesn’t sound noisy to me because my head’s already filled with it.

Truth is, I may already have the best possible deal in life. Suppose I’d been in full possession of my faculties during my formative years. Suppose I had remained focused on my schoolwork, finished college, pursued a promising vocation. What if I hadn’t succumbed to the lure of undemanding, blue-collar monotony and regular paychecks, but had braved the challenges of the stage and made a career in show business?

Chances are that on April 20, 1979, I’d have been under contract with some rinky-dink dinner theater in Two Shoes, Nebraska, doing No Sex, Please, We’re British…instead of at a Trailways station in Detroit, Michigan, which is where I met my future wife. That bus carrying Jann would have left without me. Without ME!

Here, then, is the moral of this strange, serio-comic tale off Dr. Garjekyll and Teddy Hyde. If, in fact, I’m “cursed” because I have a flaw in my mainframe that forces me to compromise my goals, expectations, standards of excellence-and if, for all my compromising, I’ve found such contentment in a woman who’s utterly devoted to my happiness and well-being, who loves me in spite of my glitches and hitches and crotchets and quirks-then I say that all men should be so “cursed.”

* * *
Ted Gargiulo’s stories and essays have appeared in The San Jose Mercury News, The Monterey County Herald, Wilde Times, The Gamut, and The Fringe. Born in New York City, the former stage actor and prize-winning author now lives with his wife in Seaside, California. Ted is currently working on a collection of short stories. He In Me, available from PublishAmerica, is his first published novel.

July birthdays: Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. Better yet to light a candle and curse the candle because you forgot to pay the electric bill.

ARIES (3/21-4/19): A donkey’s lips do not fit onto a horse’s mouth. I have tried it, and it just does not work. A donkey’s lips fit best on a donkey’s mouth. They sometimes will fit on a cow’s mouth, but only if the cow’s mouth is donkeylike in the first place.

TAURUS (4/20-5/20): Men trip not on mountains; they trip on molehills. Especially in your front yard. Take care of your moles, Moleman.

GEMINI (5/21-6/21): Learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere. Yes, it’s true. Knowledge will haunt you and darken every pleasant moment with the realities of existential loneliness and impending oblivion. You were right to drop out of school, but wrong to read this horoscope.

CANCER (6/22-7/22): A needle is not sharp at both ends. Only the end you prick your finger with, which inevitably is going to be the end that’s sharp.

LEO (7/23-8/22): Guests, like fish, begin to stink after three days. So stop inviting so many fish to stay with you. And if you’re the one who’s doing the staying, don’t blame that smell on the fish.

VIRGO (8/23-9/22): The miracle is not to fly in the air, or to walk on the water, but to walk on the earth. Especially after a day at the Monterey Beer Festival.

LIBRA (9/23-10/22): The participant’s perspectives are clouded while the bystander’s views are clear. Especially after a day at the Monterey Beer Festival.

SCORPIO (10/23-11/21): To know the road ahead, ask those coming back. But make sure those coming back aren’t winking at each other and giggling when they’re giving you directions.

SAGITTARIUS (11/22-12/21): I was angered, for I had no shoes. Then I met a man who had no feet. Then I got really angered, because no matter how many times I explained my shoe problem, the guy just didn’t get it.

CAPRICORN (12/22-1/19): If you don’t go into the cave of the tiger, how are you going to get its cub? Answer: Pay someone else to go into the cave of the tiger, Capitalist.

AQUARIUS (1/20-2/18): Once bitten by a snake, you are even frightened by a rope that resembles a snake. Hell, you’re even frightened by the guy who made the rope. Even the ponytail of a five-year-old girl will cause you to run screaming. Stay away from snakes this month, is what I’m basically saying.

PISCES (2/19-3/20): If you have money, you can make even the ghosts and devils turn your grindstone. But in the current economy, it’s much easier to hire humans. Plus, they will work just as hard as ghosts and devils, once you’ve explained what a grindstone is.

By Harold E. Grice

Once, long ago, in time gone by, several boatloads ago at least, there appeared in Castroville a bunch of Italians. Of the men, there was Arturo (the oldest and responsible for them all), Carlo, Luigi, Giuseppi, Ralph, etc., and they brought some women too.

They were not fitting in well or having too good a time because, well, it wasn’t the old country and here people spoke funny, in two languages.

Arturo, as the oldest, felt responsible for this and said to himself, “I feel so bad, I think I will kill myself. These thistles all over the place nobody will eat, they must be bad, and if I eat them, they will kill me.” So he swallowed down a bunch of the thistles. The thistles got all stuck up and he choked, gagged, and sure enough, died.

When they examined him, Carlo saw Arturo’s insides looked like there had been a cat fight because his throat and stomach were badly mauled. This was not an honorable way for an Italian man to die, which made Carlo feel so bad he wanted to die too.

Carlo decided to kill himself the same way, but Carlo was not one for pain, and since eating the whole prickly thistle would hurt too much, he would just eat the soft-looking part. Better yet, he would boil it to make it a soft death. He wouldn’t have to suffer through all that pain.

So that is what he did. Carlo was surprised, as, to his amazement, he found, “These are really good! What a way to die!”

Well, Carlo not only didn’t die, he discovered the cooked thistles were really good, especially with a little olive oil and garlic on them. So Carlo fixed up a bunch and took them to his friends. “Here,” he said, “these are good, try them.”

His friends knew about Arturo dying, so they said, “We’re not going to eat those. You’re crazy, why don’t you go kill yourself.”

Since his friends would not eat what he had fixed, Carlo decided to sell them if he could.

He did sell them. He practiced how to cook them and the thistles became popular. Carlo wanted to name them something besides “thistle” so, in honor of his friend, he named them “Arturo-he-choked.”

But this name is long forgotten.

Selling these thistles became a thriving business and, by and by, Castroville became synonymous with Art-he-choke.

Interestingly enough, a lot of people still retain the old belief that artichokes will kill you because we often hear, while the French-fried artichokes are frying, the following lament: “God, if I eat one more of these I’ll die!”

Oh, well!

***

Harold E. Grice is a sixth-generation Californian and has spent most of his life within the Central California Region. While his background is in professional engineering, he has also been active in the arts. As a founding Board Member and later Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Alisal Center for the Fine Arts, he was instrumental in bringing the arts experience to an underprivileged high school. Harold wrote two plays while studying at the Western Stage in Salinas, California. More recently, he participated in the Thunderbird Writers Group at the Thunderbird Bookstore in Carmel, California. This group published two anthologies, which included a half dozen of his stories and poems.

Six AM sitting at the computer checking emails DEADLINE! Six-ten AM coffee’s ready DEADLINE! My mind’s waking up rattling off things I’ve procrastinated away for three weeks DEADLINE! Get the proof for this ad DEADLINE! Get the approval on this ad DEADLINE! Check on the layout DEADLINE! Don’t forget to call my grandson for his birthday DEADLINE! The editor DEADLINE! Head fool note DEADLINE! Doctor’s appointment DEADLINE! Call the printer DEADLINE! Six-twenty AM Comcast exchange server crashes for the tenth time in two weeks DEADLINE! Panic DEADLINE! What now my computer tech that I paid hundreds of dollars to install DEADLINE! and reinstall DEADLINE! Outlook and talk to Bob from India DEADLINE! and Jim in the Philippines DEADLINE! SIX times this week has changed his number telling me to keep my money and never call him again DEADLINE! Six-twenty-eight AM I’m going back to bed. Let me know if we made the deadline?
Don’t Forget The Advertisers!

Mike M.
Head Fool
mike@foolishtimes.net

We took the picture of the guy on the front cover as he was driving down Alvarado the other day. How did we get such a clear shot? He almost hit us, that’s how. We even overheard part of his telephone conversation-he was informing someone that he was, at the moment, eating a doughnut. VERY important information that ABSOLUTELY needed to be transmitted THEN and THERE and could NOT be delayed until later. Meanwhile, as he engaged in this earth-shattering (not to mention law-breaking) conversation, a couple of cars veered out of his way, two pedestrians went flying, and a red light was thoroughly ignored. Anyway, enjoy this salute to the modern American driver-although not while driving, of course. I mean, how would you hold your coffee and doughnut?

Mike T.
Editorial Fool
editor@foolishtimes.net

by David Filmore

Many geniuses are “driven,” but I know of only one who is “driving.”

He lives right here in Monterey. His name is Kirby Wheeler, and from a young age, he knew exactly what his mission in life was. To drive a car.

“Oh, he came out of the womb driving,” says his father, “Mr.” Wheeler. “One day he reached out his hands, as though for a steering wheel. My wife and I looked at each other and said, ‘My God.’”

“I’ve never known anybody so in control of his hands,” says driving instructor Sally Pickles. “When he drives, you cannot deny that his hands are on the steering wheel at ten-to-two. Sometimes at six-thirty, but only if he orders his hands to do so.”

A friend, Felton Lyle, recalls a drive they took to the Gilroy Garlic Festival. “I was in awe the whole time. He was clearly at the peak of his powers. It was a heartbreaking drive of staggering genius.”

Little Kirby understood the driving theories of Raoul Stupide at age 7, and by age 10 had finished the French driving philosopher Jean-Paul Moronique’s massive “Driving and Nothingness,” in which he theorized that if one were not driving, neither the car nor the driver could truly be said to exist.

Kirby’s first car was a 1975 Maverick. It was in this Maverick, as a teenager driving to a basketball game, that he invented “breaking the speed limit.” “You have to think outside the box in life,” he says.

“We were going to send him to driving school, but it was clear that there was simply nothing left to teach him,” his mother said.

“Nobody could teach me anything,” he admits.

It was during his “lost years” (he has never learned to read a map) that he formulated his Special and General Theories of Driving. The latter included the now-famous postulate that it was permissible to run a red light if no police were around. “Each trip to the grocery store represents its own set of time and space coordinates,” he wrote. Years later, he is still being proven correct.

Today, as we drive down Lighthouse Avenue, I study his forearms and fingertips. He has long fingers, almost evolutionarily adapted to the demands of clutching a steering wheel. It’s uncanny-almost as though he were born ahead of his time, into a world where nearly every household owned a car.

The muscles in his forearms flex as he adjusts a contraption he calls “the rearview mirror.” “This lets me see what’s going on behind me,” he says. He predicts that one day every car will have one.

Among his accomplishments: changing lanes without signaling, braking at the last possible second, and accelerating through crosswalks, which he theorizes makes the entire community work more efficiently. “Simple math,” he says. “A car can go faster than people can walk.”

His ideas about driving reality continue to evolve. “Car insurance,” he scoffs.

“Completely rooted in superstition. The earliest drivers had this primitive need to pay money to some third party to protect them. It’s a step away from sacrificing a goat to the gods.”

So wrapped up in theorizing is he that he cannot find time to get patents on some of his other driving inventions: parking across spaces instead of within them. Chatting on his cell phone while driving. “You know eating while driving? I invented that. Now you see it everywhere, but what are you going to do?”

How does he respond to critics who say his ideas are making the roads of America less safe? “The concept of ‘avoiding an accident’ is not one that has ever really set well with me,” he says. “Some of my greatest insights have happened after a wreck.”

It was after a wreck on Alvarado that he understood the meaninglessness and stupidity of his own existence. It was after a wreck on Del Monte that the concept of insurance began to make sense. “You can’t live in a world impractically,” he famously intoned to the arresting officer. (“These handcuffs hurt” remains one of his most staggering insights.)

He teaches Driving Theory at MPC and sometimes is even understood. “He has a definite passion for his subject,” student Tara Keith says. “When he drones on and on and on about Nothingness, you start to really understand the concept.”

Asked where he gets his best ideas, he says, of course, “while driving.” “Sometimes I drive with my knees while writing theories and postulates,” he says. Asked why he doesn’t just use a tape recorder to record his thoughts instead, he stares blankly.

What does the future hold for him? He wants to petition for a nationwide change of green lights to red and red lights to green. “Red is fiery, it obviously means to go. Green is peaceful, it obviously means to stop.”

He also wants to do some consulting work for the Highway Commission. “It isn’t hard to enforce the speed limit,” he avers. “Install surprise speed bumps on freeways. Move them around like golf groundskeepers move holes on greens. Invent a car that explodes at 56. I mean, it’s not hard, people.”

At a residential intersection he comes to a complete stop, even though nobody is coming-another undeniable stroke of genius.

“Sometimes,” he says, “I feel I am not part of this world.”

©2009 David Filmore

We’ve been hearing a lot in the news about a disease called swine flu. Laughter is always the best medicine for flu or any other illness. From the funny farm, these are the symptoms:

YOU MIGHT HAVE SWINE FLU IF. . .

* You always pig out at food bars.

* You got a traffic ticket for being a road hog.

* You only go to work to bring home the bacon.

* You call your bathtub “the wallowing hole.”

* Looney Tunes offered you a movie contract.

* You are worried about whether pork is the real white meat.

* People think you’re snooty.

* You have a jar for bacon drippings on your dresser.

* You keep your valuables in a lard bucket.

* Your breath smells like bacon frying.

* You sizzle when you suntan at the beach.

* You’re married to a male chauvinist pig.

* You sleep like a pig in a blanket.

* The butcher asked to take your pulse.

* Your favorite movie is Babe.

* Your favorite book is Olivia the Pig.

* Barbeque restaurants make you nervous.

* Your mother’s name is Miss Piggy.

* You keep the baby in a pigpen.

* Your vehicle of choice is a Harley Hog.

* You like to ride piggy-back.

* You’re developing a sizable pot-belly.

* You believe in a high-fat diet.

* Your hair is braided into pig tails.

* Your favorite pastime is mud wrestling.

* Your favorite sports team is the Razorbacks.

* You refer to your kids as “the three little pigs.”

* Jimmy Dean wants to adopt you.

* You are exercising to get rid of your ham hocks.

* You speak perfect Pig Latin.

* Your fur coat has a curly tail.

* You snort when you laugh.

* You buy your groceries at Piggly-Wiggly.

* You wear a ring in your nose.

* You are living too high on the hog.

* Your kids are named Portia and Porky.

* Your kitchen looks like a pig sty.

* You actually went shopping for pig in a poke.

* You call your shoe rack the family tree.

* You eat mash for breakfast instead of cereal.

* You love mudpack facials.

* You have gravy stains on the front of your clothes.

* You refer to leftovers as pig slop.

* You keep your money in a piggy bank.

* Your dream is to live in hog heaven.

* Your house is mortgaged with Frosty Morn.

* You think of vacations as, “When pigs fly.”

* You’ve gone hog-wild on MySpace.

* Your favorite quotation is “That’s all folks!”

Furthermore, I like having cats AND a dog because: a) inter-species dynamics are fascinating; b) animal love nourishes our souls; and c) when a cat pukes, the dog will always clean it up.

More later on the dog. But, speaking of mealtime adventures, a local restaurant recently went bust and reopened as Le Trough Magnifique. Wow, French cuisine!!?! A friend and I gave it a whirl, and I’ll try my hand now at the genre and parlance of a restaurant review. Genre? Parlance?? Golly, us writers speak good.

Here we go.

Ambience: A display board of Are Special’s greeted us. The looping script in primary colors included such culinary delights as Sun-Ripened Liver and Free-Range Meatloaf. At last, a class act in town.

The hostess seated us near a digital sign flashing the servers’ names as orders came up-another hallmark of fine dining.

And, while many other “fancy” establishments set out naked utensils at each place
setting, our tableware lay swaddled in napkins. Real cloth. And sealed with paper strips. Clean ones.

The restroom harbored the usual confluence of organic aromas. But management had cared enough to scrawl on a paper towel: Wash youre hand’s!!!!! Misguided punctuation aside, I applaud the attention to hygiene.

Food: Salads possessed a subtle tone-on-tone quality. One sliver of pink tomato peeked from a wedge of iceberg lettuce laced at the edges with a hint of rust. I took the pale, monothematic presentation as a bold statement of confidence that diners would indeed look elsewhere for daily quotas of Vitamin A and bioflavonoids.

In contrast, the Cream of Reuben soup offered a robust, polychromatic demeanor not unlike a hearty butterscotch pudding flecked with something corned beefish. A nest of rye croutons and sauerkraut rode on a gossamer skin of surface tension. Finally, a gaggle of individually shrink-wrapped dinner rolls loitered in the bottom of a wicker basket.

My Alaskan Pike reclined on a bed of shredded lettuce-again the iceberg and rust. To this trained reviewer’s eye, the pike’s “light breading” was not unlike potato chips in a street brawl.

Juxtaposed inside this mayhem lay a fish of such ethereal translucence that a less sophisticated diner might call it raw. I, however, quietly noted the yin-yang essence of this Sushi-like preparation, and dug into the baked potato. My friend commented on my new braces. Ha-ha, what a silly goose! ‘Twas only charred aluminum foil stuck to my teeth.

The pike also interfaced with a softball-sized lump of white rice, smothered in a dark brown sauce. Oh, what a surprise!! Seeing my astonishment, the waitress assured me that no fish were harmed in making this gravy. Nevertheless, my dining companion scraped the same ubiquitous gel off her Sausage Loins du Jour.

Boneless breast of corn-on-the-cob lent color to our plates. Although I still have my teeth-most of them-I quickly ascertained that said corn had been boiled with such loving fervor that it required no chewing! A novel tactile slide.

According to the menu, all meals included “desert.” What an unusual and healthy alternative to “ssweets”! We declined, however, for fear of getting sand in our pantyhose.

Instead, we lingered over coffee and exchanged perspectives on the exotic nature of French cuisine. Our coffee was strong, with a pinch of grounds floating in each cup to prolong the hearty flavor.

Service: Our soup, salad, rolls AND dinners came all at once. Lordy, was that cook smokin’! No, not cigarettes. I mean the poor chap was on fire. Literally. He left in an ambulance. I’m told he’s okay, which is good, but you wanna hear the REALLY great news?? A wicked cute paramedic asked me out!!

Despite substandard results, I’ll award the place an A for effort. Same as I rated the haircut that an energetic albeit unsupervised preschooler recently gave my dog.

Think crop circles on a clueless beagle.

Copyright 2009 by Mary Tompsett

* * *

Mary Tompsett is a self-syndicated humorist who lives with her dog and cats on the far east side of Santa Cruz (okay, Racine, Wisconsin). Her horse left the family for a more stable environment. Read more at www.marytompsett.com.

Editor’s Note: Apparently a Foolish Times reader named Kiri took exception to a limerick by Gene, Gene, the Limerick Machine, printed in last month’s issue. We printed it as one of our “best of” limericks (it’s from a few years back), but Kiri thinks otherwise. We’re printing it again below, with Kiri’s response. Let the Limerick Wars begin!

There once was a pitcher named Zito
The Giants thought he was neato
They paid out big bucks
For an arm that just sucks
And now their season’s finito
-Gene Gene the Limerick Machine

Dear Gene,

Your limerick dissed a great pitcher,
‘cuz Zito is no belly itcher
Sure, his fast ball is slow
but I’d like you to know
It could still knock your ass in a ditch, sir.

My intent, Gene, is not disrespect
but there are factors you seem to neglect
Zito won a Cy Young
and that puts him among
Elite players we fans can’t reject.

I admit Zito’s had two bad years,
but he’s making good now, it appears
Giants sit second-place
in the NL West race
and soon Dodger Blue will shed tears.
-Kiri

 

A guy comes in to buy an airline ticket from a travel agency. The travel agent starts filling out the ticket form.

Agent: “Okay, what’s your name?”

Customer: “G. Youshudknow.”

Agent: “Why?”

Customer: “Why what?”

Agent: “Why should I know?”

Customer: (stares).

Agent: “Your name?”

Customer: “I told you, but you didn’t get it right.”

Agent: “What?”

Customer: “My name. It’s not Y. Shudiknow. It’s G. Youshudknow.”

Agent: “How can I?”

Customer: “What?”

Agent: “Know your name?”

Customer: “I just told you.”

Agent: “You did? How come I don’t know what it is?”

Customer: “I don’t know.”

Agent: “What is it?”

Customer: “What?”

Agent: “Your name?”

Customer: “It’s…G. Youshudknow.”

Agent: “Why should I?”

Customer: “What?”

Agent: “Know your name?”

Customer: “Because I told you.”

Agent: “No, you didn’t. You said, I should know.”

Customer: “It’s not I. Shudknow. It’s G. Youshudknow.”

Agent (waving him away angrily): “Get out of here. Get out! You’re nuts.”
Later, another customer walks in.

Agent: “Okay, I’ll fill out this ticket for you. What’s your name?

Customer: “Hy Watfore.”

Agent (nodding): “Hi. Because I need to process your ticket. What’s your name?”

Customer: “Hy Watfore.”

Agent: “Are you gonna tell me your name?”

Customer: “I did.”

Agent: “You did?”

Customer: “Yes.”

Agent: “How could you have? I don’t know what it is.”

Customer: “What?”

Agent (shouting): “Your name.”

Customer: “Watfore.”

Agent: “Because I can’t do this without it.”

Customer: “What?”

Agent: “Process your ticket! What is it?”

Customer: “Hy.”

Agent: “I already said hi. What’s your last name?”

Customer: “Whatfore.”

Agent (screaming): “Get out of here. Get out! And don’t come back.”

Another customer walks in.

Agent: “I better not have any trouble with you.”

Customer (looks around uneasily): “Trouble?”

Agent: “What is your name?”

Customer: “Joe.”

Agent (breathes a sigh of relief): “Thank God! Okay. What’s your last name?”

Customer: “Canttell.”

Agent: “What?”

Customer: “Canttell.”

Agent: “Can’t tell what?”

Customer: “Just Canttell.”

Agent: “What is your name?”

Customer: “Joe Canttell.”

Agent (rubbing his forehead): “Joe, why do you refer to yourself in the third person, Joe can’t do this, Joe can’t do that, and then tell me you can’t tell me your last name?”

Customer: “I did.”

Agent: “What?”

Customer: “Told you. It’s Joe.”

Agent: “I know. What’s your last name?”

Customer: “Canttell.”

Agent: “Why not?”

Customer: “Why not what?”

Agent (crying): “Why can’t you tell me your last name?”

Customer: “I did.”

Agent: “No, you didn’t. You said you can’t tell.”

Customer: “It’s not U. Canttell. It’s J. Canttell.”

Agent: “Who’s Jay?”

Customer: “I am.”

Agent: “You said your name was Joe.”

Customer: “It is.”

Agent: “What’s your last name?”

Customer: “Canttell.”

Agent: “Why not?”

Customer: “Why not what?”

The agent chases the customer out into the street and hits him several times. The agent is arrested and taken to jail. A policeman is in the office taking evidence from a woman co-worker of the agent.

Policeman: “Okay, ma’am, that will be enough for now. Let me get your name for the record.”

Woman: “Ida No.”

Policeman: “What?”

Woman: “Ida No.”

Policeman: “You refuse to tell me your name?”

Woman: “I did. Ida No.”

Policeman: “That’s a felony ma’am. Refusing to tell me your name.”

Woman: “What?”

© Copyright 2009 by SammonSays.com

Last week, I succumbed and signed up for Twitter. I had sworn that I was going to be the last person on the planet to join this crazy 140-character-driven-communications Whatever, but I like trying new things.

I have to admit, though, that I’m having trouble with the question, “What are you doing?” That’s the opening teaser presented by Twitter, which must be answered in no more than 140 characters (not words).

Is this a trick existential question on the order of “Who am I?” which requires a deeply thought-out philosophical answer and which, if I’m not careful, I could get wrong? Or, does anyone really care what I’m actually “doing right now”?

In any case, my impulse is to write “none of your business,” but that would probably not garner much of a “following.” I’ve come to learn that attracting a following is the entire point. Just like back in high school (as everything so often is), I get to compare my following to that of others, and so far, my following is pitiful. It may stay that way, too, if I don’t jazz up my tweets. Thus far, I have written:

Tweet One: I’m eating some dark chocolate and drinking some green tea and missing my beloved cat who died on Feb. 9.

Tweet Two: Just had dinner and wonder what the heck am I doing on Twiter and who cares anyway?

Tweet Three: Well, that was a big duh, spelling Twitter as Twiter, sorry about that…

I’m from a generation that values privacy; so, this new world of divulging every little thing about one’s mundane life is rather unsettling.

After I plunged in with my pathetic tweets, things got creepy. I received an unexpected email telling me in the subject line that Mario Colarumbo was following me. Oh, great! Now I’ve attracted a stalker!

I don’t know what I expected (well, nothing frankly,) but who is this Mario person, and why is he following me?

Then, it happened again and again, more followers. I eventually calmed down, checked them out, and since they seemed like reasonable and interesting non-stalkers, I began to follow them, too.

Well, now I’m hooked, and I can’t wait to be followed. When I check on my email and there are no “following-you-on-Twitter” messages, my spirits sink. Must get better material!

At some point during my initiation into all things Twitter, I began to wonder what would Noah have tweeted if he’d had Twitter back in the day. My apologies to Mr. Noah, but I imagine his tweets would have gone something like this:

THE YEAR: 2349 BCE. NOAH’S TWITTER NAME: Cannotswim

FOLLOWING: One. FOLLOWERS: 732

Tweet One: Kinda worried about this Ark thing…You think he’d be concerned that I don’t know from cubits…

Tweet Two: Ezekiel is cheesed off. He got red in the face when he heard. He yelled, “Dad always loved you best.” I didn’t ask for this, you know…

Tweet Three: I wanted to nix the snakes, but He wouldn’t let me. Just once, I wish he’d let me manage my own Ark.

DAY ELEVEN OF THE FLOOD. FOLLOWING: One. FOLLOWERS: 349

Tweet Four: Getting pretty gosh darned noisy in here-can’t sleep…and the smell! Whew…

Tweet Five: Shem and Ham are OK with the “no procreation” edict, but Japheth has issues…Hope his mother can knock some sense into him.

DAY TWENTY-NINE OF THE FLOOD. FOLLOWING: One. FOLLOWERS: 227

Tweet Six: Don’t know how much more of this pouring rain I can take. Haven’t heard from Ezekiel in awhile, probably won’t speak to me again.

Tweet Seven: Sprang a leak. Fortunately, had plenty of elephant dung to patch the hole.

DAY THIRTY-SEVEN OF THE FLOOD. FOLLOWING: One. FOLLOWERS: 0

Tweet Eight: He said it’ll soon be over. Can’t happen too soon if you ask me. Japheth still unhappy. Mother no help.

Tweet Nine: I guess everyone’s pretty mad at me-no tweets in days. Can’t wait to get a cuppa and talk to someone face to face. Never again do I want to hear the question, “What are you doing?”

* * *

Rosie Sorenson is an award-wining writer whose work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and other publications. Her new photo essay book, They Had Me at Meow: Tails of Love from the Homeless Cats of Buster Hollow, is about her thirteen years of loving and being loved by a colony of smart, funny feral cats. To learn more and to purchase the book, please visit her website: www.theyhadmeatmeow.com.

I always figured I would end up on the orthopedic surgeon’s operating table sooner or later, but I thought it would be for a knee replacement, not for a cervical disc fusion in my neck. But here I was, asking-actually begging-to have my neck slashed.

Shows what pain can do to you.

On the big day, I checked into a tiny room that was as cold as a freezer locker and received a backless hospital gown and a blanket so thin I could see through it. Eventually, a stretcher arrived for me and I watched the ceiling squares fly by as I was wheeled down long halls and into an elevator.

The anesthesiologist put an IV hookup in my arm. I was given meds that were supposed to relax me, but didn’t. “Don’t worry, you won’t wake up during surgery, we monitor your brain waves,” he said. What a relief. I hadn’t considered the possibility before that.

I wished they would turn up the drugs.

I was wheeled into what I recognized from TV as an operating room where masked figures in blue garb hovered over me, fiddling with various monitors. I felt a hot sensation in my arm and my wish for drugs was granted.

“Where am I?” I asked.

My eyes burned like fire. I had a large collar around my neck to support my head. Various medical people came in and out, checking monitors and doing whatever it is that medical people do to see if you are still alive.

My chest was congested and I couldn’t breathe. “Cough,” they told me. So, I coughed and coughed and nothing happened except it made my sore throat even sorer.

When I eventually woke up completely, I felt great except for blurry vision. I was ready to be discharged and go home. It wasn’t until later that I found I felt great because I was receiving morphine in my IV. The sneaks.

Breakfast was served-bacon, eggs and a biscuit. I wondered why they didn’t realize my throat was too swollen to eat.

The nurse’s aide came and bathed me with what smelled like Lysol. I wondered if she was using mop water. I was too weak to protest the burning disinfectant, but if there is ever a next time, I intend to be a hippie and refuse baths.

By evening, it was time for my first walk. I was afraid my head would fall off and go rolling down the hall. Two nurses dragged me and the IV stand down the hall and wheeled me back quickly when I nearly passed out.

By the following day, however, I would be able to walk up and down the hall with assistance and without mooning anyone.

I continued to cough. I’m not sure how long you can go without sleep until you become delusional, but given a choice between breathing and sleeping, sleep does not seem very important.

I wanted to go home. Finally, on the third day the doctor came and discharged me. A mere five hours later, I was able to leave. I was much weaker than I realized and fell on my knees trying to get into my house.

Welcome home.

The bad news: the doctor forgot to put a date on the prescription he wrote for pain meds, so the drug store wouldn’t fill it. The good news: I had pain meds left over from pre-surgery.

I slept sitting up in a chair for the first week after surgery, if you can call it sleeping. Nights were hell, coughing all night and trying to breathe. I called my primary doctor for an appointment, and found that I had bacteria in my lungs transmitted by the tubes in my throat during surgery.

I wondered why someone didn’t think of that sooner.
Not fully coherent, I took pain pills along with other medications, which must have been too much sedation as I dreamed of being three people, one who slept, one who floated around the room on sparkling fireworks, and one who coughed.

The doctor ordered a neck monitor to electronically stimulate my neck and make it heal faster. I call it a high-tech witchdoctor necklace and have threatened to decorate it with chicken bones and feathers.

Surgery is gross. I do not recommend it. Pain is worse and I recommend it even less.

Next time, I intend to find an easier way to get material for a column.

Sheila Moss, Humor Columnist

www.humorcolumnist.com