"Not comin' down those stairs till you scratch the top of my head ...
And do it well!"
Oh! There have been times when he has to pee "real bad," as kids say, and he'll lead the way ... but only when in extremis like that. So, I scratch his head for < thirty seconds, talk to him in English, his Second Language ... and he begrudgingly runs down the stairs and to the back door where he waits looking disgusted:
"OK, Schmuck! If we're gonna go out and pee, shake yer tail!"
The love of the familiar is no stranger to folks in the Last Quarter. Patterns ... The habitual. I can find a flash of annoyance when my glasses aren't where I put them before closing my eyes, last night. (Like I can remember where I put them!) Finding stuff -- even stuff that I'm better off not finding -- has developed an importance, these days. A sign, perhaps, that my CPU has not crashed.
My Black Coffee cup?
Recommendation: As eyes fade, Howard,
choose a different color coffee cup Black gets lost in the dark.
That Kid of ours? Where is he, this time?
First of all at 50'ish, he ain't my kid, no more.
Secondly ... Better not to know! He does international business ... that's his gig.
Stop complaining, H: All your kids earn a decent living
and are engaged doing interesting stuff. They each have managed to spawn ...
going from youngest to oldest: 3,2 and 1 times. Saw 2 families,
last night, and the third, last Sunday.
Damn Running Shorts? Oops, they're (are running shorts really a they? ... anyway?) under the appointment card from the cardiologist. Like M is saying: Maybe y'should ask first.
(I remember my Grandfather, when he was roughly my age. Didn't matter what the weather was like, as a religious leader, he was gonna toddle off to pray each morning -- no matter the weather. Grandpa used to get upset on Snowy or Cold and Rainy mornings when Grandma would hide his pants and shoes.)
That Word? Y'know the Word? The one I can't find?
Well! It just isn't all that important, anyway!
Oh! but How to spell that word?
ie ... ee ... ea .... Everybody's gonna know the word
I meen/mien/mean. And you can't think of it, anyway.
The car in the parking lot?
M says my driving's not so good, anyway.
Better I should clear my head with two loops about the lot.
Keys to the car? You got it: Better just walk!
Perhaps, what's easiest to forget is one's mind .... minds CAN get lost. Oh, there ARE those who are good linear thinkers in the Fourth Quarter and go through life with a firm grasp on what they want. They find it appealing and not too hard to follow in some well-defined system of thought. Even when no one else is involved, they make firm and immutable decisions. They are Dodgers fans. Republicans or Democrats or members of some very rigid Independent Party. They know whether abortion is OK or not. They know that Euthenasia is not a boy-scout troupe in SouthEastern Asia. They are graduates of this and that to which they sing their allegiances and, damn, they know what songs they sing and precisely what they're gonna order on the menu. If the coach/couch of their college Football Team does something not-so-nice, they defend him till the end. I remember one person that M and I dined with who ordered a Martini with one olive; his came with two.
"Oh, no! I ordered one olive ... count them! There/they're/their ... are ... two; one ... two."
I have only a little doubt that the waiter -- in doing his bidding -- took some personal revenge on this man's unshakable desire to drink the sweat/sweet/swiet of one -- "read my lips: one" -- olive.
Need I tell my readers that my mind is looser than all that ... This column, you know, is not about nuts-and-bolts. No step-by-step on how to don Depends without losing your balance. I couldn't do it if I wanted. I AM a good student of one of the earliest Skeptics, Sextus Empiricus and on top of that I identify with dogs. Dogs don't have much of a 5-year plan. Take it easy. I'm not suffering from Clinical Lycanthropy ... I don't believe I turn into a wolf or a dog and howl at the Moon. But I do enjoy the occasional howl ... Howling Mad Howard, if I may borrow from a so-so TV shoot-em-up from the 80's. I don't chase fire-engines but did have a fleeting/fleating Walter Mitty fantasy two days ago of buying a Moto Guzzi and riding West for a while. Throaty Italian Vroooom! I eat more or less everything that I or anyone else puts in my bowl and occasionally need my quiet time. But I now tend to not bite unless bitten.
That brings me back to Sandra H. from Hungary. Y'asked a question ... guess I should answer. 'Why would my Department Chairman jump me at a party -- now, a lifetime ago.' It's the story of a young man ... I was a Mathematician in the very early 70's when jobs suddenly dried up in the universities. 93 rejections of university posts in Spring '71. I was friendly with a Kentucky Colonel, Gail Young, who had been President of the American Math Society and was 3+ times my age. We figured out over dinner that if every working Mathematician were tax-deductibly taxed by the Society at 1%, enough monies would be generated to hire all the new unemployed PhD's. In a public discussion of the lack of jobs, Old Nick K. was talking about his notion that Mathematicians could be hired by Hospitals to run them better than the business folk do (Duh!) and by municipalities to order the filling of Spring Pot-holes on American Roads (Double-Duh). In the public forum that followed, I shared my calculations that I had done with Dr. Young. Dr. K. glared and left the room. Everyone in the Department heard that I had faux-pased. Oooops! It was just a few weeks later that a party was held for a speaker who had come to help us fall asleep after a long week. Most Department Colloquia was greeted by an audience of folk doing the Colloquium Nod ... the ability to shake one's head up and down while sleeping soundly. Back at the Party ... Dr. K. was talking about his years as an Ann Arbor Town Councilman. He looked at me, as if to say:
Whaddya say about that.
I thought for a moment and said:
"Hospitals, Potholes? I always knew there was a clerk
mentality hiding somewhere in your head."
My still-friend Milton was pealing/peeling him off me just a moment later and Nick and I never spoke, again.
So, Sandra ... while there may or may not be a Santa Claus, we were all young and (many of us) impetuous once. Not you? I'm surprised.
And maybe, just maybe, Sandra, y'think my howling is a form of this impetuosity?
Look ... Try -- just once -- chasing a fire engine
and see how it feels. Oh! And watch for the potholes! And get back to me!
Chase ye fire engines, while ye may!
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