LIFE IS A MASQUERADE

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (11-03-22)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

 
     Last weekend we went to a fun Halloween party with our friends Mark and Laurie, and I know what you're probably thinking: "Aren't you a little old for that kind of thing?" And to that I say, "Yes." Here's where you're expecting me to say, "HOWEVER," and say why Halloween is fun for children of all ages, etc. But really, I'm just in it for the candy, plain and simple, plain and peanut.

     The hardest part is figuring out what I'm going to be. Being me is hard enough for people to put up with. Furthermore, any costume I put together has the Dolly llama to be compared with. That was the time when I went as Dolly Parton, with my acoustic guitar as an accessory, except that my face was that of a llama, which I constructed out of my wife's bathroom rug. My llama face had a movable mouth which I controlled with a string, and I could accompany myself on the guitar in a chorus of "9 to 5" or "Jolene." Picture it in your mind, if you will, and if you won't it's probably for the best.

     Two weeks later when my wife asked me if I had any idea what happened to the bathroom rug, I had to tell her the truth. "Honey, I think we may have been robbed. That was probably a Persian rug, and it could have been very valuable. We were no doubt the victim of a cat burglar, my guess is it was a Persian cat."  

     I always think of a better costume the day after the party. I won't tell you what I was this year because it was kind of dumb, but I had to fashion a war service medal, and I needed a metal piece from one of our light fixtures. "No, Honey, I don't know why we always get robbed this time of year, but don't worry, next Halloween I'm going as Sherlock Holmes, and I'll get to the bottom of this."

     I love a good party, but I've always wanted to be invited to a real masquerade ball. You know the kind of affair I'm talking about, with beautiful women dressed as Queen Victoria, wearing an exorbitant wig, holding up a flirtatious eye mask, her husband dressed as a handsome viscount, whatever the hell that is. "So, madame, who am I talking to? All I can see are your eyes, but I feel like they are looking straight through to my soul. It's like you can see right through me, and somehow know that I got my viscount costume at a discount. Did you make that mask yourself?" "No, it's a certified N95 mask I got on Amazon."

     You know that if someone invites you to a costume ball, it's going to be big, expensive, and the food's going to be top-notch. You know this for a fact, because no one wants to be known for their small balls. But if I was invited, would I even go? It could be dangerous, because at every costume ball I've ever seen on television or the movies, someone gets killed. And there are always two people dressed in the same costume as the killer, which creates a whole lot of confusion and mayhem. I guess if I want to play it safe I'll dress as a gangster, carry a violin case, and you'll just have to guess whether there's a machine gun in there or if I'm just planning to kill you softly with my song.

     If you want to enjoy a successful evening I have some tips for you: 1.) Avoid anything served in a cauldron. Yes, it's probably just chili, but if somebody spits out the eye of a newt, you'll think of me kindly for once for warning you. By the way, I see a lot of newts bumping into things towards the end of October, because depth perception suffers with only one eye. 2.) Remember that you're eventually going to have to go to the bathroom. I always manage to overlook that simple fact when designing my costume, and it results in me eventually tearing a hole in something that shouldn't have a hole in it, and then I have to cover it up with something inappropriate that dropped off of somebody else's costume. 3.) Don't drink too much at the party. Have you ever been stopped by the police dressed as a policeman? It's probably not going to go as well as you thought it would.

     It seems like at every Halloween party I've ever been to, I end up watching a Yankee playoff game in a crowded room with a television set. While all the Mets fans are having a good time forgetting about baseball, dancing in the other room, we're looking glum because the Yankees always lose on the Saturday before Halloween. It results in sore dinosaurs, morose monsters, pessimistic pirates and woeful wenches. And there's some sad things known to man, but none truly sadder than the tears of a clown.

BEARLY A SCRATCH

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (10-27-22)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     Habitats are shrinking every day, and if we're not careful there's a species that may soon find itself on the endangered list. And that species is US. When we went into the woods behind our property the other day we noticed a tree missing half its bark from about 3 to 8 feet from the ground. We posted a picture of it on social media and everyone weighed in with their theories: Deer rubbing their antlers (they would have had to find a stepladder); a woodpecker (you'd have to be an awfully big pecker to peck that much wood); a cougar (maybe a cougar holding a woodpecker); a beaver (building a dam in the middle of the woods?); lightning (if lightning struck using a Milwaukee Sawzall); Sasquatch (the most plausible of the bunch). 

     But at the very top of the damage was a gouge in the exact shape of a paw with sharp claws on it. It couldn't have been more obvious if it had left fingerprints, a DNA profile and a written confession. I couldn't figure out what a bear would want that's inside that tree- was it GOLD? I started scratching into it in a frenzy until my wife calmly escorted me back inside to research the phenomenon. Apparently bears dig into trees when they are desperate for food, and the inner sapwood provides a source of nutrients that is at least, obviously, high in fiber. It made me wonder what the other bears thought of the first bear that suggested eating raw wood. "Wow what a great idea! What wine goes with wood? Hey, look over there- it's a storm drain cover! Why don't you give that a try! It's high in iron! In fact, its... grate!" 

     It seemed a little scary to me that a bear can inflict this much pain on a full-grown tree. I had an image in my mind of bears as a somewhat benign and friendly group. They usually talk, have a hug named after them and sometimes dance. I think of Winnie the Pooh, a bear who likes poetry, speaks in an accent, has a best friend who's an ass, and wears a shirt but no pants. Maybe this is a bad example. 

     Yet they always seemed caring and helpful. When I was a little kid, Smokey the Bear would come on TV and tell me, "Only YOU can prevent forest fires!" And I thought to myself, "Who, ME? What the hell am I supposed to do about it?" I didn't even live near a forest. There was nobody else who could help?

     Even in the story of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears," the bears let her go without so much as a blonde hair out of place even though she was technically guilty of breaking and entering. If I was Goldilocks, and I'm pretty sure she HATED being called that, I would get into the Bears' garbage cans and spread their trash all over the driveway, add a little ironic comic twist to the story.

     Nowadays there is a family of bears starring in their own television commercial, and come to think of it they do not really come out looking too good either. The family has chosen toilet paper as the focus of their budget, and they're trying to cut down. They argue incessantly about how many sheets they should use. Winnie the Pooh never did THAT, and his last name is POOH.

     And of course there were Teddy bears, whose name came from an incident in which Theodore Roosevelt refused to shoot a bear that had been treed and subdued during a hunting trip, deeming it poor sportsmanship. That turned the bear into a cuddly stuffed toy that lived on your pillow. Mine was a kind of scary-looking old soul with only one eye and mangy fur and looked like he shouldn't be left alone with children.

     Bears have other weird habits. There are many reports of them raiding bird-feeders, as if some sunflower seeds are going to satisfy a 500-pound appetite. Does that sound like the work of a sane animal? Also, who, besides my Dad, could spend the entire winter in the den? Maybe my tree-eating bear is the most normal of the crowd. We have a beautiful cherry tree in our front yard and I don't want him getting any ideas about becoming the "George Washington of Bears." Even if he doesn't lie about chopping it down afterwards, it's just as dead either way, and I couldn't bear the thought of it.

UNDERSTANDING FOOTBALL

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (10-13-22)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     Now that we've settled a few weeks into the football season, I must confess that there are still some things about the game that remain inscrutable to me. For instance, I don't understand the running back who just finished running 40 yards for a touchdown. He's tired, that I can understand, too tired to lift that plastic bottle of Gatorade, so somebody runs up to him and squirts it in his mouth. First of all, he has to blindly trust that the guy has good enough aim to get it in his mouth, and not squirt some of it up his nose. Then, as thirsty as he is, he spits it all right back out. How is he going to recharge his electrolytes doing that? Thank god no one offers him a bowl of borscht after the touchdown.

     I don't understand why some of the penalties seem way too severe, and others seem way too lenient. If your kicker kicks a kickoff out of bounds the other team gets to start from their 40-yard line, which seems excessive to me. Yet, right after the quarterback throws the ball, you can pick him up by the nape of his neck, shake him like a squeaky toy, and toss him back down on his head and no one will think any less of you, except the quarterback. 

     I'll admit I can waste a lot of time doing dumb things. For instance, I can easily spend 20 minutes scraping all the mayonnaise out of the bottom of the jar, not because I'm so cheap that I can't just buy another jar, it's because I don't want the mayonnaise to win. But I can't fathom the amount of time people spend playing fantasy football. My friend Paul says it's not a waste of time, he won $100 last year. He said he's been doing it for about six years, and it only costs $200 a year to get in. We have different ideas about some things I guess, because I'm pretty sure there aren't any guys at all on MY fantasy team.

     Sports betting has spawned a whole new industry of stat-keeping, if you can understand the bets themselves. You can just choose your favorite team and bet the spread if you want, and either give away points or take points, based on who is projected to win. If you're feeling frisky you can choose a parlay bet, explained in simplistic terms on the internet as, "a single bet on three or more unrelated events. Each of those events is referred to as a ‘leg’ of the bet. The entire stake is applied to the first leg. If it wins, the total return from that first leg is used as the stake for the second leg." A picture is worth a thousand words, but that's going to require a two or three thousand-word picture.

     They have something called "sabermetrics" for baseball, which means: the quantitative analysis of data relative to the comparative performance of individual players. Before I knew what sabermetrics meant I was totally against it, because it sounded like an exercise class that my wife might try to shame me into taking. But now that I've seen the definition, I have even less idea what it actually is than I did before.

     I don't understand the need to see a player sustaining that gruesome injury in super slo-mo, over and over, from different angles. Players have gotten so big and so fast that they can cause the human body to twist in directions that are not represented on the average compass. If someone's knee ends up looking like a German wurzelbrot, I do NOT want to see how it got that way. In fact, even if you invite me to dinner and cook a German wurzelbrot, I do not want to see how it got that way. 

     I don't understand why anyone plays the game at all. Through the years, safety equipment has come a long way, but helmets still have those guards around the player's mouth to prevent them from biting anybody. And today there is much stronger attention to brain injuries, which can be hard to diagnose. The symptoms can mirror other conditions such as amnesia. If a player forgets who he is after a blow to the head, it can be time consuming to narrow it down using the process of elimination. 

     I'm six-foot-two, and if I enter any home built before 1955 I will definitely knock my head against a low-flying beam at some point during the visit, possibly damaging the structural integrity of the house. When that happens, I want you to administer the following test: Ask me what a parlay bet is, and if I answer it correctly, please have me airlifted to the nearest hospital.
 

A FIRE-STRUM OF ACTIVITY

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (10-20-22)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     Last Saturday I attended a "friends hootenanny," where a bunch of us get together with our guitars and some percussion instruments and see if we can get the neighbors to call the cops. There was no square dancing, and if there was dancing I'm quite sure it would have been in a shape that Pythagoras would need a new theory for. There was no barn with bales of hay to sit on, and the only cowbell there did not have a cow attached to it, which made it much easier to play.

     There were no jugs of bathtub hootch, but there were plenty of libations in keeping with the spirits of the occasion. There was a full fall lineup of mulled cider, mulled wine, I think there was even mulled water for those mulling a long drive home. I brought my own domestic, mass-produced light beer with me so that if I get stopped by the police on the way home, they're not going to ask me if I've had too much to drink, but if I've had enough. People assume that I am glum drinking such banal brew. "Wouldn't you be happier with one of these full-bodied, hoppy IPAs?" No one bothers to ask the IPA if it would be happier with ME. "It has hints of chocolate and cherry-wood!" I don't need any hints, I'll get it my own. "This one is so bitter it will make your uvula furl up. I hate it! I've had three already!" "This one is a white-coffee stout. It's very well-balanced, like a really good checkbook." "This one doesn't even have a label, but I add a little to my gas tank every now and then and it cleans out the carburetor." I'm good, thanks anyway.     Our host Athina prepared a wonderful outdoor supper. When people go to great lengths to cook nice food for their guests, I try to slow down my devouring process so that I can appreciate it more. Usually I'm like a raccoon with an eating disorder, rummaging through the refrigerator looking for something that seems lonesome, and I eat it before I can positively identify it. 

     When the sun went down the guitars came out and the fire blazed. We came together over music and friendship. There were Republicans, there were Democrats. There were no Independents that I know of, and if there were we would have brow-beaten them until you could hardly recognize their eyebrows. I'm just kidding about the eyebrows. If you can't put your differences aside around a campfire, then where can you put them aside? "Are those your differences over there next to the woodpile?" "Yes, that's them." "You didn't put them very far aside, I can see them from here. Tell you what, I'm going to put mine over there too, and if we want to stoke up the fire we're going to have to get past our differences."

     The only argument we had wasn't even about politics, it was about what key the Beatles' "In My Life" is in. I say it's in the key of A,  and Phil insists that it was recorded in A-flat, and sped up to A. My suggestion that we play it in A and do it slower was met with scorn. I ended up playing it in A while Phil did it in A-flat, and as a result we discovered how jazz was invented. We also did one of my favorite Springsteen songs, "I'm on Fire." The whole time I was tapping my toe I didn't realize how close it was to the flames, and as a result I nearly discovered how "I'm on Fire" was invented. The music chugged on.

     It reminded me of sitting around the campfire telling ghost stories. You try to scare each other with the most chilling tale you can think of. I don't remember ever doing that, but I'll get my chance after I'm long gone, and I sit around the campfire with my friends telling stories about people who are living. They're much scarier than ghosts could ever be. If I ever want to frighten people at a campfire I'll just tell them that at one time I was thinking of becoming a teacher.

     I hope we can pass the tradition on to the next generation. The thought of a bunch of DJs sitting around a campfire mixing snippets of EDM together makes me want to root for the fire.

     Was my guitar out of tune this whole time? I used an electronic tuner, but apparently I had it set to "oboe." It didn't matter. It was just another thing to laugh at. And if you can't laugh at yourself, anyone of the people there would be happy to do it for you. Remember, you can pick your friends, and you can pick your guitar, but you can't pick your friend's guitar.

COMMERCIAL INTEREST

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (09-29-22)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     Sometimes I feel that Madison Avenue and myself are not on the same planet. I'm not criticizing the entire avenue, there are certain street corners that are entirely blameless. I'm talking about the Madison Avenue that used to be known as the advertising industry, which is probably not even Madison Avenue anymore anyway, but somebody's living room with a guy in shorts and a tee shirt. And that guy, wherever he is, is out of touch with my needs.

     He could very well be a "she." One very annoying lady who looks like she shot her entire commercial with a selfie-stick, proceeds to inventory all the human body parts that might create odor, and what she intends to do about it. Her face is in such a tight close up that no matter how far away I am from the screen she feels like she is invading my personal space, evaluating my odors. She seems like she is on a personal quest to remove any sense of mystery related to women. In order for there ever to be mystery again, a woman is going to have to kill me and leave very little evidence. Whenever I see a commercial like that I thank god that poets probably never watch television.

     Another overzealous pitchwoman is out to convince you that you have more bags under your eyes than the claim carousel at JFK, and she has the "hottest videos on social media" to prove it. Using only people who looked like they went to the trouble to escape from prison to test out this magic cream, she gleefully extols the virtues of a product called Plexaderm, which sounds like either a dinosaur or something that caused their extinction.

     Emeril is a television chef who is most famous for yelling the word "BAM!" while he's preparing dinner. My Mother-in-law was a great cook, but if I ever heard her yell "BAM!" from inside the kitchen I would begin to wonder if whatever she was cooking was even dead before she put it in the oven. Anyway, he's back on TV selling something called the French Door Air Fryer. It's a cooking device that has French doors, so that you can look inside from its balcony and see if the food is comfortable. If I peek in and see that my rump roast is not reclining on the cabriole sofa underneath the chandelier that I provided for it, I will be disappointed. Très contrarié.

     In another commercial a group of people at a grocery store have cornered an insurance salesman in the produce section. "You're Jonathan, from the TV commercials," they exclaim, giddy with the excitement that comes from being in the orbit of insurance salesmen. Soon, the entire clientele of the supermarket is firing questions at the poor guy from all sides abandoning any interest they once had in cauliflower. I've never actually felt sorry for an insurance salesman before, and it gave me a weird feeling inside, as if I may now start also having feelings of compassion towards television psychics and lawyers who have overestimated the amount of time I've spent at Camp LeJeune. I don't have the heart to tell my lawyer that when I was there I only drank bottled water ("You did WHAT?").

     Everyone is talking about nasal irrigation! At least that's what they're saying on the Navage commercial, and if true, is certainly no dumber than some of the other things I've heard everyone talking about. Did you know that germs and allergens can enter your body through your nose? Once you irrigate them with a nasal cleanser how can you be sure they won't grow and thrive like last year's avocado crop?

     Two-thirds of all automobiles sold in the United States will need a major repair during the first seven years of ownership. Ever since I made up that statistic I've been hearing noises coming from my engine. I don't think it's anything important but a light started flashing on my dashboard recently that says, "PURCHASE NEW CAR." Plus, every time I applied the brakes I heard a squealing sound (that turned out to be my wife; I was going a little fast). I was told by my mechanic that I needed a complete overhaul of my car's endocrine system. I asked him where exactly that was and he pointed in the general direction of my car. So, it's obvious that I should have gotten Car Shield after all.

     Maybe Madison Avenue does have my best interests at heart. Maybe I do need my car protected, my nose irrigated, my life insured, my air fried, my dark circles reduced and my odors neutralized. But I'm not going to get any of that done unless I ACT NOW. So if you see me later and wonder what exactly I'm doing, I'm acting.

ENDLESS SUMMER

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (09-22-22)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     My friend Paul hates the heat and wants nothing more than for summer to be over a couple weeks before it begins. I, on the other hand, want to prolong the balmy weather for as long as possible. I want to wear white long after Labor Day, knowing full well that I will spill spaghetti sauce on it as often as necessary. My fall season consists of keeping summer alive on life support, applying warm compresses to its forehead and whispering words of encouragement in its ear. At least I HOPE that was its ear. I'm not ready for the last hurrah of summer, so if you hear me say "hurrah," you'll know it was for something else.

     So we headed upstate to our favorite little town on Lake Oneida for the Labor Day weekend to scratch out a few more golden rays. The drive up was pleasant, I was daydreaming a bit, and when I woke from my reverie I found I was behind two motorboats, and they were going pretty fast. If I'd have known you could go that fast on land I never would have put my boat in the water. We arrived just in time for a beautiful sunset over the lake. 

     The weather was perfect for outdoor dining at the cafe. There's still a drought going on so restaurants were serving only dehydrated water. A musician was playing guitar and singing, and he also had a drum machine, a harmonizer, keyboard tracks, bass tracks and a truckload of reverb and guitar effects. One of these days all that technology might eventually get together and decide that he is superfluous. He did look a little lonely on stage; without anyone to fight with what's the point of being in a band?

     Next day we settled in at the shore beach, and I found an AM station on my transistor radio that brought me right back to my childhood. I was afraid it was going to leave me there with only a paper route as a means of support. It was a time when Jeremiah was best known for being a bullfrog, a time when you could walk like a man, talk like a man, even while singing like a girl in falsetto. It was a time when love grows where my Rosemary goes, and I wish I could get her to stand on my lawn for just a few seconds, so at least SOMETHING would grow there. It was a time when music was really, well actually it was not as good as I remembered it. But it was the feeling that that it brought was very comfortable, which was a refreshing change from my beach chair. Who knew that you could still find such a station on a transistor radio? Who knew you could still find a transistor radio?

     About 30 boats were tied up together in a festive flotilla. I don't have my boat anymore, and it's a good thing because it would have been ME who waved farewell to the other rowdy revelers after my picnic, put my throttle to the metal, only to remember too late that I was tied to all those other boats. What a coincidence that we're all going to my slip! I waded closer to the boats from shore to see their names. One was called, "Ya Gotta Love It," it doesn't say what, so I decide to just play along and love everything. One was called, "Go With the Floo" (there is no spelling test to get your boat registration), there were TWO named "It's 5 O'clock Somewhere," so between the two of them I guess it's 10 o'clock somewhere. There was one named, if you didn't already guess, "El Duderino." If your boat is named "El Duderino," you've already told me everything I need to know about you.

     At night we went over to the casino. Even though we are not gamblers, we love the energy and the selection in restaurants and nightlife. We settled on Chinese cuisine, there they wait on you hand and feet, even though I don't need my feet waited on. Asian chefs and I disagree about the actual minimum daily requirement for celery. I feel that celery is good for demonstrating the principle of capillary action to grade school science students, and for stirring bloody Marys, and that seems more than enough. At the end of the meal I ask for three fortune cookies, in case I have to break a tie.

     At the bar a country band was playing, so at least I knew I would not be hearing any Britney Spears for the evening. That observation held true only for two more songs, and then oops, she did it again. The country band may not have been from this country. We wandered back out to the slot machines to try our luck, and we beat the one-armed bandit. If he had had two arms I'm sure he could have taken us. We won just enough money for two more drinks to toast a summer well-spent.

THE EMPTY NEST SYNDROME

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (09-15-22)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     It's now September and as I sit in my car, stuck behind a school bus that stops at EVERY kid's house, I have plenty of time to think that if I only had children, at least the bus driver would probably be yelling at my kid, saving me the trouble of doing it myself, and I'd actually be saving time right now. When I was that age I had to walk a good half mile to the bus stop, and usually the half mile wasn't even that good. 

     Sometimes somebody asks me, do you ever regret not having children? There are pros and cons. To bear children is to cultivate a source of cheap labor, and maybe you can eventually get them to mow the lawn, but these days, kids expect to be paid for it. From the time your children are old enough to babysit for each other, you can expect their Venmo account name to come up during any conversation they have with you. 

     I was never asked to babysit when I was younger, even though I was extremely responsible. In fact, if you were to ask my parents, they'd tell you that everything bad that ever happened in our house, I was responsible for. We didn't get paid for the work we did, instead we were given an "allowance." Which was ironic because we weren't allowed to do anything.

     What if my kids ask me to play sports with them and they learn I'm not that great at it? "Dad, can we kick around the soccer ball? I have a game on Saturday." "Tell you what, Son, I have a project coming up at work, why don't we kick around a few ideas instead? Or how about Scrabble? I was quite good at it when I was in better shape. I was going to go out for football but my feet weren't as athletic as the rest of me wasn't." "Dad, my sports are soccer and lacrosse- you should know that by now." I say, "Ah, lacrosse, I am quite familiar with it. That thing that looks like a stick with a jock strap attached to it. The game was actually played by Native American tribes and named by the French colonists. In French, 'lacrosse' means 'the crosse.'" Eventually the kid leaves and I win father-of-the-year AGAIN.

     What if they ask me to help them with their homework? "Dad, can you help me with a math question?" I say, "Of course I can, son. What is the answer to y=7x?" "Exactly Dad, what is the answer" "I have no earthly idea, you only asked me to help with the question." I guess I could instruct him in English, since I am sort of a writer, right? "Son, just remember this rule: 'i before e, except after c.' It carries a lot of weight." "What about the word 'weight?'" "Okay, Son, well if you're not sure just look it up in the dictionary. It's the big fat book over there with all the dust on it." He says, "How can I look up how to spell it if I don't know how to spell it?" If kids are already so smart what are all these school taxes for?

     What if I have to have "The Talk" with my son? "Why don't you ask Mom?" I ask. "Mom told me it's a Father/Son thing so ask YOU." Nobody had "The Talk" with me, but mostly my Dad yelled at me, so he might have yelled "The Talk" at me at some point. "Here: why don't you watch this movie." I hand him a DVD. "Dad this is the movie, 'After Hours.' It has nothing to do with any of this." "I know Son, but it's a really good movie. Do me a favor and let me know if you think Teri Garr and Rosanna Arquette are hot in it. If not, we'll need to have a completely different Talk."

     I always hear parents say, "I love my kids to DEATH," and they don't seem to be just kidding. I'd like to think that it's no reflection on how much my parents loved me that I'm the one who's still alive. I'm sure they somewhat loved me, but I also know that children are like burritos; the further you are removed from your experience with them, the better they seemed.

     I'm in the process of making out my will, and I don't have any kids to leave my fortune to. Come to think of it, I don't have the fortune either. But there's something slightly comforting about the fact that no one will be that upset when I spend my very last dime on a really ugly and expensive watch that confirms everyone's suspicions that I was senile.

     People used to ask me if we were thinking about having children, and I would say, maybe one day. At the end of that day I wouldn't be surprised if they asked to be put up for adoption.