Smartypants

It’s humbling, this recalling the dumbest thing you ever did. It's what I was doing yesterday, in telling about the time I targeted a bunch of vulnerable people just to get the laugh god forgive me. That’s how we all were in my family: anything to get the laugh. My cousin Sheil and I practically had a stand-up act at summer camp so funny we were be about people. It was like if you took Robin Williams and divvied him up, pouring his wicked wit into the bodies of two smartypants 15-year-olds. Our whole section of five cabins would gather around to watch us work.Our two moms had done just this kind of thing before us. We all did it in our family: imitate accents, postures, get that slight speech impediment of yours down cold, sum up anybody’s essence with one witty phrase.Witty, maybe but kind of M-E-A-N too.Mostly mean in fact.One college summer we managed to get actual jobs in the city and rent an apartment, sublet to us by four B.U. students who’d gone home for the summer. It was a weird and dingy place but we made it our own; gathered up the Playboys from behind the couch, threw out the bottle of dark-yellow something-or-other in the back of the fridge, took tweezers to the curly human hair lodged in the freezer's three-inch icepack. (Lots of things in that apartment didn’t bear dwelling on.)Sheil was gorgeous with long blonde hair and it wasn’t long before she was getting asked out. One poor lad who took her to the Red Sox game walked her all the way back to the door of our apartment, earnestly grasped her hand and with a puppy dog’s pleading look asked “Can I call you sometime, honey?”“Honey?!" I hooted . “HA HA HA he called you ‘honey’! And he ASKED if he could call you!” we laughed and laughed at the guy, only because, instead of being faintly cruel and offhand like most of the boys you got out there on the dating scene, he was kind and gentlemanly.We didn’t wise up for at least five more years when, out drinking with our two dates after some football game we got called on our behavior. There we were running our mouths in the old way; really getting on a roll. Then my date who later became the husband I call “Old Dave” in these posts, a man who never in all the years I have known him has even uttered a crude word much less a curse said, “You know you guys, nobody likes a smartass.”And didn’t that gave us something to chew on! So now I never do impersonations anymore much less think up funny epithets for people the minute they leave the room. That reminder picked me straight up and set down firmly in the Kingdome of Niceness.Some of my old are disappointed in my dullness and maybe you don’t like me much either but I like you! Honest I do! In fact, um, can I call you sometime.... honey ?

Statistics!

(me last Saturday)I took a survey, together with some 150 members of my college class and discovered some dandy facts:ONE, 10% of the class recently stopped having sex and 4% resumed having it.TWO, 5.4% of us never married, 18.1% are divorced and 72% have a spouse, partner (or taxidermied surrogate to prop up at the breakfast table.)THREE, 92% of us have children but most report that they're more likely to have pets in the home than kids. (No laundry is why. Next to kids pets are a breeze, especially if you teach 'em to flush.)FOUR, more of us exercise at health clubs AND more of us take antidepressant medicine than did then. (It’s those darn Step Classes; they'll  bring anybody down.)FIVE, There's been a big increase in ballroom dance lessons and a big dip in travel. (Why travel the world if you could just cross the dance floor?)SIX, 11% of us wish to work indefinitely.Well I know  I certainly wish to work indefinitely, if you can call this work. Now if you'll excuse me I have to go find my long black wig and my dancing partners the cats.

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Sometimes Video's Best

Feeling I might need to keep my spirits up today I thought I'd post these two silly vids, each just 37 or so seconds long. When will that great sun shine again?Here's the first:[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btsDEgt6fxg]And then, at my desk 90 seconds later..[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_c5cE-9kur8]

Dead Dog Drinking

I don’t care if it’s raining again or if this is the coldest summer since 1881, I’m reading and answering letters from kind strangers and getting ready to watch four whole episodes of The Wire back to back while ironing. (I don’t mind the ironing: as Jesus said, the ironing you will have with you always.)  The breeze has freshened with the incoming rain and those big old wind chimes that cost my family 200 whole bucks to get me for Christmas are mooing away in their deep voices and I have so far had two breakfasts, two lunches, one supper and eight cups of coffee. Today I’ve been an engine of busy-ness but yesterday I lay like a dead dog on the deck and did not go to the dump, nor foodshopped nor even shaved my legs but instead wore my bathing suit all day and sat looking out at the lake; then calculated the calories for the stern taskmasters at Weight Watchers and opened some nice cheap Meridian which, you ask me, just never disappoints.