TO YOUR HEALTH

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (11-14-19)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     It's "open enrollment" time at my job. That's when I take an educated guess on how badly I'm going to injure myself next year so that I can sign up for the health insurance plan that's going to do me the most good. Will I be in good hands? Will my insurance company be on my side, like a good neighbor? It's really a form of legal gambling. Obviously I can't predict the future, so I have to handicap myself regarding how much I'm going to handicap myself. I've always done stupid things in the past, so realistically, I should be able to continue doing them well into the future.

     Once, I blew out my knee skiing on Birch Hill, up in Patterson, not that many years after it was a petting zoo. How is that possible, you might ask, if there were no farm animals left on that little hill to ski over? I will admit it wasn't easy but that's never kept me from injuring myself. Another time I blew out the same knee even more thoroughly playing touch football, and lo and behold, the one place that nobody touched was my knee. Four years ago I fell on the ice at the train station, tore my rotator cuff, and my cuff was done rotating for six months.

     So I need decent insurance but I don't want to pay an arm and a leg, nor would I get much for them in their refurbished condition. One thing I've learned is that the higher the deductible, the lower the insurance premiums. So I found a very reasonable plan with a $10,000 dollar deductible, and I can use any doctor I want that is located in Nigeria. They don't have pockets over there, so you should keep any out-of-pocket expenses under your hat.

     Actuarially, and I just made that word up, my insurance should be incredibly low. I gave up smoking years ago by standing farther away from the barbecue. I only drink to excess on a social basis, and I don't eat any red meat, because I cook it until it turns brown. I've been watching my calories for years, waiting for them to do something interesting, and I get 8 hours of sleep each day, 9 if I have a meeting that day. I'm in perfect health, although my wife thinks that my hearing is shot, and when she tells me that she only pronounces every other word to prove her point. My hearing is fine, I counter, because I can hear a "Cars For Kids" ad playing on a car radio three lanes away from me and it causes me to exhibit signs of of PTSD.

     Last year at around this time I knew I had a big, nasty birthday coming up. I'm getting old, and so I figured I had better ramp up my flexible health care spending account to pay down my $10,000 dollar deductible, in case body parts start dropping off of me like a '57 Chevy. What if I need a knee replacement? What if I need a hip replacement? What if I injure my knee while having my hip replaced? The catch with a flexible spending account is that if you don't use it up, the government gets the money at the end of the year, and they're probably going to waste it on something stupid. I read somewhere that they spent $518,000 dollars studying how cocaine affects the sex lives of Japanese quail. Supposedly they were trying to extrapolate the results to humans, but instead all they found out was that quail have a lot more fun than quail researchers do.

     Well, I didn't end up having a knee replacement or a hip replacement because I couldn't think of anything to replace them with. I had all this money left over and only a month left to use it up before the government gets it and throws a party with a bunch of exotic dancers, some quail researchers and bevy of quail who talk way too fast and don't make any sense. So I pushed a big shopping cart around CVS to use up the balance on some medical-related purchases. I grabbed a case of those Pine Bros. cough drops right off the bat, that was a no-brainer. Next door was the candy aisle, and I'm sure most medical experts would agree that if you run out of Pine Bros. cough drops, Milk Duds would probably make a good substitute, so I picked up some of those and a few Kit Kat bars as a possible source of Vitamin C. I read that if you have a sprain you should treat it with RICE, in capital letters, so they were very adamant on this point, or else my wife had mentioned to them that I was hard of hearing. So I picked up seven bags of rice at the supermarket.

     Well, strangely enough, my medical expenses were denied and I still have $500 bucks left in my flexible spending account. I'm going to need to have an actual medical emergency to use up the money. If I was a quail I would blow through that money like nobody's business, but I don't normally engage in the kind of risky behavior that they do. I guesstimate that I'll need at least a sprain or a fracture to reach the $500 mark, but I don't want to break the bone TOO much and go over. Or I could go for a laceration, an abrasion and a wart. I could have a couple X-rays and an MRI, and that way I'll have something to compare it to if I have an injury in the future. I figure that if I try to skateboard on a gravel road, or bungee jump from a 12-foot stepladder, or make some catcalls at the neighbor's cat (he has quite a temper), I should sustain $500 dollars worth of personal injury.

     There has been a lot of talk on the campaign trail about "medicare for all," but really, if we could only simplify and de-mystify the health care process just a little bit, the benefit to society would be surprisingly small, but better than nothing. For instance, when I have a car accident, the insurance company should send out one guy with glasses, a tie and an iPad. He can look everything over and report back with an estimate for how much of a mess my car's body is AND how much of a mess my body is. Then a "tow-bulance" drops off my car at the collision repair shop and then takes me to the doctor, who can tell right away if I should be listed as a "total loss." My doctor can be credited with using the phrase, "failing Rick Melén" way before Trump did but way after my 7th grade teacher did.

WHAT ARE YOU SO AFRAID OF?

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (11-07-19)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     Is it a pumpkin? That big round orange thing with a goofy smile on its face? People voted for much the same thing for president before they knew how frightening it really was. What is so scary about pumpkins? The only thing scary about pumpkins is that someone might come along and try to make beer out of them. But there they are every Halloween, part of the American legend on an evening dedicated to people trying to scare each other.

     What scares you might not scare me at all. I came home early from work last week and was sitting in the kitchen eating a sandwich, and my wife walked into the room and jumped ten feet into the air when she saw me. "That scared the crap out of me!" She said. And she really looked disturbed, with her hand over her heart in case it tried to jump out. I guess it was the sandwich, which had a frightening amount of calories in it.

     Now a spider, for instance, really is scary if it's big enough. My wife was cleaning the garage and she yelled, "ACK! Get in here and get this spider! It's huge!" I made a little avuncular chuckle and thought how much I love women because they make the rest of us seem useful, and I gave a little speech about how spiders are a beneficial part of the food chain because they eat all the insects, and isn't it interesting that they have eight eyes, etc. Well, once I got a look at this spider, it was ginormous, with hair all over it and giant teeth, and it was breathing heavily and not looking at all beneficial. I saw something just like it in a movie, and it tried to trample the entire city of Tokyo and they had to call out the army, and they were so confused that they were barking out commands in Japanese that came out a second later in English. If I could read lips in Japanese it looked like one of the generals was asking if spiders even have teeth. I was trying to remember how the movie ended so I would know what to do, but instead I grabbed a shovel and conked it over the head and scooped it up and threw it outside in the general direction of Tokyo and closed the garage door before it came to and tried to grab my shovel and conk me back.

     My friends Lauren and Tim had a great Halloween costume party last Saturday and I was really afraid. I was afraid I was going to get a ticket for parking on the street. Lauren had bought some great props on Craigslist from a haunted house designer, and there was scary stuff all over the place. They had this huge monster guy in a corner and when you got too close to him he started talking some smack to you which I couldn't understand because monsters are not known for their great diction. Then he would laugh that evil laugh: Mwah ha ha ha ha! HA HA HA! HAHAHAHAHAHA! As if he just told the greatest joke in the world. Comedy is another thing monsters are not famous for, so I told my notorious penguin joke and got a great laugh out of him.

     I'm a bit of an amateur psychologist, specializing in the analysis of peoples' choice in costumes. I can tell a lot about your personality from the costume you picked, so I had a little fun with some of the party guests. There was a guy dressed as a clown, but I was not afraid of him. A little psychoanalysis makes everything seem less scary. I asked the clown, "Were you lonely growing up? I bet you always wanted to please people but you never knew how to go about it and it seemed like everything you did came out wrong and inappropriate. Am I close?" He said something I can't print here but what he meant was, "Yes."

     This one gal had a great costume, all done up like an old lady. "That is an interesting outfit," I said. "The gray hair, the wrinkles, great stuff. I believe that as a child everyone said you had an 'old soul,' and subconsciously, you always wanted to be older, and that when you got a little older you wished you were wiser. And so by dressing up as a hideous old woman-" "I'm not wearing a costume," she said. "I'm here to pick up my granddaughter."

     It was time for the pumpkin carving contest! Is there anything more scary than people with Jell-o shots, sharp knives and dulled senses poking holes into a fruit with a one-inch thick skin? There were decorations all over the house, things like cut-off bloody fingers, and I wouldn't be surprised if one or two of them were real. I like to carve a "reverse pumpkin," where I remove everything but the eyes, nose and mouth. A pumpkin without any of those has no sense.

     As the evening wore on, all the decorations and costumes were starting to get to me, and I felt a little uncomfortable, like people were looking at me funny. Maybe this whole Halloween thing was a little scarier than I thought. I had to get away, and I ducked into the bathroom to get an aspirin out of the medicine cabinet. I closed the cabinet door, and that's when I saw it reflected in the mirror: a big scary pimple on my forehead, and there's no way I could pass it off as part of my outfit.

     I guess deep down we all really like to be frightened a little bit, it keeps the adrenaline flowing and lets us know we're still alive. I already have my costume for next year: it's me sitting around the kitchen eating a sandwich. I don't know if that will scare you, but I bet it gives my wife a trauma.

HOME ALONE

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (10-31-19)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     My wife told me that she's going away for the weekend to my sister's house in the Poconos. I hope it's not to get in touch with her feelings or anything like that, because every time somebody I know gets in touch with their feelings, it's always MY feelings that get hurt. If I want to get in touch with my feelings I usually just do it by email. However, this will be a great opportunity to do some things around the house that I've been meaning to do, maybe compose a song or, who knows? Maybe I'll write my autobiography. This small sliver of freedom could be a nice change. For instance, I can wear anything I want. If I want to I can wear a T-shirt with holes in it instead of a T-shirt with stains on it.

     I'm supposed to feed the cat, but what do they eat? I had a cat when I was a kid and it used to bring home rodents and mice and all kinds of things, I guess to put in the refrigerator? But our cats don't go outside, because we're afraid that they're too dumb to run away. So I take a look around the pantry, there must be food in the house somewhere for them, maybe some mice in a Tupperware jar. And BEHOLD! There's a container that says "CAT." In spite of the off-chance that there may be a cat inside of it, I open it up and it seems to be cat food, even though it looks more like Cocoa Puffs than anything else. If they ARE Cocoa Puffs perhaps I should add some milk too, but I'm late for a tennis match.

     When I got back the cat had left a nice present for me on the rug under the dining room table. I don't even know which side of the cat it came out of, but it was more than I fed it in the first place. I can see that there need to be some changes around here, and I make a note to put the cat on the Keto Diet. My wife adopted these two black cats from the vet's office years ago, at least she says it's only two- every time I turn around I'm tripping over one of them, and that's why I don't turn around anymore. Who even knows where they came from? Clearly they were from a broken home and would benefit from medication.

     Time to do the laundry. I actually know more about money laundering than clothes laundering, but from what I understand, the key to successful garment-washing is to separate everything correctly. My technique is to separate items that are worn on the top from items that are worn on the bottom. There are some things which I'm not too sure which end they go on, so I put those aside for further testing.

     All I have to do now is feed the dog take and her out, and I'm done for the day. I took Gidget for a walk out back in the woods, and I could immediately see that there was no discipline whatsoever. This dog is obviously used to doing whatever it wants, whenever it wants, wherever it wants because it's so adorable, and that was going to end starting now. From here on out, the dog refers to me by saying "SIR, YES SIR!" In barks or tail wags or whatever, I'll get the picture. And every time you stray outside the trail, BOOM! Drop down and give me 20 push-ups. By the time we got back from our walk, was there discipline? You bet there was, I did everything that damn dog wanted.

     I can see why people fight so hard for freedom- it's intoxicating. I get to eat whatever I want for now, but I know I'll have to answer questions later. When my wife comes home she'll ask me with a smirk, "So what did you have for dinner?" In my defense, I would bet that there is a diet out there somewhere that allows you to eat exactly what I did, and you lose 40 pounds in one week during a hospital stay. After dinner I can watch episodes of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" until even Alexa can't take it anymore and tells me she needs some time alone to get in touch with her feelings. And it's not until you are a male alone at home for the weekend that you experience what a truly remarkable and powerful resource that the internet is.

     I was getting a little stir crazy by myself so I decided to go out, see a band, support live music. It was pretty crowded at the bar, and judging from what I could see, designated drivers had yet to be designated. The lead singer declared that they were going to play 50 songs in 50 minutes. Either they were going to play them four times faster than usual, or this was going to be one of those annoying medleys. I guess that bands probably figure they're doing me a favor and saving me some time with those medleys, but just when you get to the part of the song when something good happens, they're onto the next one. And nothing says, "My lead guitarist sucks!" better than a medley. "Hey guys, just wondering, how come at the end of every second verse when my lead break is supposed to start, we switch to another song?" "Oh wow, really? Gee, I hadn't noticed that. Any of you guys notice anything like that?" Nobody makes any eye contact. Then the singer opened this big canister that looked like a live torpedo, and all this blue smoke came out, and I could see the ozone layer depleting right before my eyes. I had to get out of there before the sea level started rising.

     Back home I was getting a little lonely watching Forensic Files, and the dog and cats were asleep. I'm beginning to realize how much my wife actually does around this place- I wonder if she would take a lateral promotion? I hope she's not having a good time without me, but I fully believe that she will come back. After all, home is where the heart is. It's also where a huge mess is, that one end or the other of the cat left under the dining room table and that I'm pretending not to notice. I never got around to writing my autobiography, but isn't that the story of my life?

HAVING A BALL IN BALTIMORE

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (10-24-19)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     The last time I visited Baltimore the Orioles were a winning team, so that shows you how long ago it was. It's also the last time I visited my brother Mike, who lives near there. He is a version of me multiplied by an exponent, and since he's older than I am, he must have been the model for my shameless habit of aiming humor at everything and unloading with both barrels. I couldn't have learned it in school, because what I learned in school STAYED in school. I probably should have known what an "exponent" is without looking it up.

     We spent an afternoon with him and his wife Kari, and they showed us around the lovely town of Annapolis. It's named after Anne Arundell, the wife of Cecil Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore of England, who never actually visited America. King Charles I awarded Calvert the province of Maryland (named for his own wife), which was founded as a haven for Catholics who wanted to escape religious persecution in England. Back then kings named things after their wives, but if it was Larry King the state would have been called Frada/Annette/Alene/Mickey/Sharon/Julia/Shawn-Land. Larry King always writes the name of his wife using a pencil with a good eraser.

     The place is steeped in American history. We walked by the Maryland State House, the National Capital for one year in 1783, where General George Washington resigned his commission as Commander in Chief to a fledgling government that was untried and untested. Many wanted him to be king of America, and pave the way for future self-appointed kings who might want to come along and steer the country into a ditch and enrich themselves along the way at the peoples' expense, and when called out by the public, retreat to a twitter defense of, essentially, "I know you are but what am I!" But Washington refused, perhaps his most important public deed.

     We continued along Main Street, where you can do a little shopping, get yourself a bite to eat or do some people-watching if you don't mind watching people getting a bite to eat or doing some shopping. We stopped into an art gallery where Mike knew one of the artists and had a look around. I asked if there was a fitting room in case I wanted to try something on. Afterwards we stopped into an ice cream shop to get the real scoop. It takes me a long time to eat ice cream because I had so many fillings as a kid, and it takes even longer to order the ice cream, since there are so many flavors. There is Blue Angel Blueberry, there is Vanilla Nutella, there is Sugar Plum Cheesecake, there is Peppermint Stick Oreo, there is Oatmeal Cookie. It took me about 10 minutes of reading down the list to find out that they had chocolate ice cream. If I liked oatmeal cookies so much I would just go get an oatmeal cookie.

     While we were talking and walking I wanted to pick Mike's brain on the subject of our childhood. He remembers details about things that I guess I must have blocked out because they were so traumatic to me at the time. For instance, our Dad coerced us to do homework during evening hours when we could have been watching television. I feel like I missed out on so much during those years, episodes of "Get Smart" and "F Troop" that I wouldn't be able to experience until years later. The abuse was all starting to come back to me. We were forced into years of manual labor, mowing the lawn and doing chores around the house. We had to go to church every Sunday, and it made me want to move to England to escape religious persecution.

     We made it back to Baltimore to ride our bikes over to Little Italy for dinner. That's when I discovered that someone had stolen my bicycle seat. It costs about a $15 dollars, not the type of thing you could fence for a lot of money, even if you had amassed a collection of these precious items that have been touched only by peoples' butts. So it could could be a prank, or the desperate act of someone who just had their bicycle seat stolen. Either way I wasn't going to stand for it, except that I had nowhere to sit now. We went back inside the hotel to file a report with Security. When I was in elementary school I could finish a report in about three minutes by copying it out of the World Book encyclopedia, but as an adult a report takes considerably longer. A fellow with a walkie-talkie assured me that they had contacted the Baltimore Police Department and that they had prioritized the situation and should be there within the week. Instead I decided to organize a search party- how far could they have gotten on just the seat? If we fanned out we could cover more ground, so we decided to fan out together in the direction of the Italian Restaurant, where I could drown my sorrows in Bolognese sauce.

     I realized I must have absorbed more from my brother than I thought. An abiding curiosity of history, a love of team sports, a bit of a rebellious streak, I probably got some of that from him. I guess you never really know what you're picking up from the people you've spent time with, and if you really want to spend time with them, go out and get some ice cream. Add a few toppings like hot fudge, sprinkles and a bicycle seat. And if you haven't seen your brother in a long time, now is as good a time as any find an excuse to do it. Baltimore is not that far away.

AROUND THE CAMPFIRE

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (10-17-19)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     Every year my friends Phil and Athina host an old-fashioned hootenanny, where we gather around the fire with a bunch of guitars, sing some songs, tell some jokes, break bread and have a cocktail or two. If all the politicians could get together and do the same thing once in a while, I bet we could make America great again. Force them to sit down in a field somewhere and play, "This Land is Your Land" until someone comes out to tell them that they're trespassing and have to leave.

     I can just imagine the hootenannies we used to have if I grew up as a poor boy in the South, where we'd get out the banjos and fiddles and pick us all the old songs. That's the way we did it up in the hills of Kentucky. "When will she be coming 'round the mountain?" I ask the grownups, for the 45th time. "WHEN SHE COMES!" "OK. But why would you come all the way from Alabama with a banjo on your knee instead of carrying it in a case? And what are we doing up here in the hills of Kentucky when we live in the valley?" As a kid I had more questions than answers. I guess I figured that as an adult I'd have more answers than questions, and that it would all even out.

     It was such a perfect autumn day, I really felt like harvesting something. If I could just get out into the fields with my bare hands and bring in nature's bounty, I thought I might be at peace with the world. I saw some berries growing at the edge of the property, so I went over to harvest them, and perhaps Athina could make a wonderful compote out of them. And perhaps she could tell me what a compote is. She's a fantastic cook. "Put those down, they're toxic!" Somebody yelled. "And you're standing in poison ivy." I thought I saw something moving down there- it might have been a snake trying to harvest me for a compote, so I beat it back to the gazebo where the guitars were.

     We had a beautiful meal. She had made butternut squash soup for everyone, and man was it good. I didn't even know that butter HAD nuts, so I continue to learn something new every other year. After a tasty pot roast we were ready to strum some songs from the modern American songbook.

     We all knew about half the chords to a of a bunch of songs that each other didn't know. We settled on "Honky Tonk Women," because everybody knows that one and it starts with a cowbell solo, so technically even a cow can play it. When we get to the part where we sing, "She blew my nose, and then she blew my mind," it made me stop and wonder what the hell the Stones were up to back then. I don't care how good-looking a honky tonk woman might be, I can't imagine her that cordial with my honker.

     "Let's do John Denver: 'Country Roads!'" Somebody launches right into it before I've even completed my pre-flight check-in. "WHAT CHORD ARE YOU PLAYING?" I shout over the din of four guitars blaring away. "D!" Everybody shouts back. "DID YOU SAY B?" "NO, D, BUT NOW IT'S C!" "DID YOU SAY G?" "NO, C, BUT NOW IT'S E!" "DID YOU SAY E?" "YES, BUT WE'RE BACK TO D!" This used to be a beautiful song. I'm not sure what happened to it, but by the time it's over I can recite most of the alphabet out of order. "Crap! I think I finally have all the chords now- can we do it again?" "Dude- the country roads already took us home to the place we belong and we're not going back."

     I play everything with what we guitarists call "bar chords," meaning that I learned them at a bar. They sounded a bit different once I sobered up, but using an array of these cleverly applied chords I can transpose any song from the key that it was already perfectly happy in, to one that sounds much worse. And if I don't know the song on guitar, I just switch to percussion. All you need is a spoon to whack on the side of a beer glass and you have instant percussion, and butternut squash soup all over everything (I forgot to wipe off the spoon).

     "Maybe we should sing some protest songs," I say. "Aren't people dying every day, some of old age? What about all the injustices in the world?" I'd like to play something that calls out the wrongs that were visited upon me growing up as an upper middle-class child in Chappaqua, where my family had to fight for a decent table at a restaurant. What about the trials and tribulations I had to face as a straight, white kid who was not particularly good at math? Is there a song I can sing about that? Once again I had more questions than answers. And it seemed like there might be more problems in the world than we could solve on a beautiful fall afternoon. But thank god we knew enough songs to help us forget about them for a little while.

     Is there any drug that can make more miracles than music? The answer my friend, is blowing in the wind. And if that's really true I should be able to generate enough answers to blow a sailboat all the way to China.