Category Archives: humor

Dan’s Only Friend

books, etc., humor, music, ,

The phone rang and Dan picked it up. He held it out to me. “It’s your friend,” he said.

“Which friend? I replied. “My friend Robbin?”

“No, he replied.

“My friend Beth?”

“No.”

“My friend Tom?”

“No.”

“My friend Kim?”

“No.”

“My friend Jean?”

“No.”

“My friend Peggy?”

“No.”

“My friend Leslie.”

“Yes.”

“Geez,” I said, snatching the phone. “You make it sound like I only have one friend!”

The irony was that Dan worked in a place where friends were hard to come by. His hobbies are solitary, like working in the garden, reading about archaeology, and watching old movies on streaming services. He doesn’t like sports or going out drinking. Then he went to a support group, where he made one friend, John.

Whenever John called for Dan, I was truthfully able to say, “It’s your only friend.”

John caught on and was amused. Sometimes he would call and say, “Tell Dan it’s his only friend.”

(Dan also continued the joke with me. Someone would call for me and I would ask, “Who is it?” He would say, “It’s your only friend.” I would reply, “Is it my only friend Kathy?” “No.” “Is it my only friend Mary Jo?” “No.” And so on. But I digress.)

At one time, there were friends we shared. Beth, for example. Dan met her at a job they both worked at. One evening, however, we went to a work party and Dan introduced us. We got on the topic of science fiction.

“You’ve got to meet my husband,” Beth said. “He loves Isaac Asimov. He’s read everything he’s written.”

“Oh?” I replied, without thinking, “He’s written 200 books.” (Later, he wrote even more.)

Then we talked poetry and Beth, abashed, admitted that her favorite poet was Ogden Nash. (He’s considered pretty low-brow, but I can recite several of his poems, which I enjoy for his ingenious rhymes “platinum” and “flatten’em,” for example. But I digress some more.)

Beth was intimidated. (I have that effect on a lot of people for some reason.) But we became friends anyway. Once when Dan was lamenting that he had only one friend, I pointed out that he was friends with Beth before I was. “You stole her,” he replied.

There was a chance that I would steal John as well. He and I had a lot in common, like country music and murder mysteries, which we could talk about for long enough to make Dan feel left out. But instead of one of us claiming his friendship, we ended up sharing custody.

John and Dan would go off together on occasion without me. When I asked where they went, Dan would only reply, “That place.” They would never say where it was. (I figured it wasn’t a strip bar, since Dan had gotten them out of his system in his youth.)

Then John and I started going off on our own, just the two of us. (We called them our “hot dates.” A typical one would be thrift shopping, lunch at a diner, and a shared bag of M&Ms for dessert. We never told Dan what they consisted of. But I digress again.) (Once we went to a tobacconist (John smoked a pipe) and it was all I could do not to say to the proprietor, “My hovercraft is full of eels.” Yet another digression.)

All of us were cool with this arrangement. There was no jealousy or fighting over our outings. But John passed away a number of years ago, upsetting the balance of our friendships. We both still remember him fondly.

Now, I’m Dan’s only friend.

It’s All a Blur!

etc., family, funny things, health, humor, , ,

My history with eyeglasses goes way back—over 60 years, in fact. That being the fashion at the time and me being even then the opposite of a fashionista, I wore many pairs of cat-eye glasses.

My husband, Dan, was only a little older than I was when he got his first pair of glasses. Unlike me, he’s near-sighted. (I’m cross-eyed and far-sighted.) He always tells the story of how, once he had glasses, he said to his mother, “Look, Mommy. Those people on television have faces!” (Although we have different diagnoses, we both require Coke-bottle prescriptions. But I digress.)

By the time I was in high school (when I had at last graduated from cat-eye to aviator frames), all my classmates were wearing contacts, and losing them regularly. I was unable to follow suit because of being cross-eyed and, more importantly, because I can’t bear to even think about anything, including me, touching my eye. I recoil whenever there’s a commercial for a drug that requires an eye injection. (That’s true to this day—both the wireframes and the horror of anything touching my eye. But I digress again.)

When I was a child, I had an ophthalmologist, Dr. Saunders, who was the epitome of gentleness and kindness. When it was time for me to select my own eye doctor, I wanted someone with the same vibe. So of course, I went to Dr. Gary, whom I knew from being in the same martial arts class. (I figured that if he needed to touch my eye for any reason, he could at least subdue me first. But I digress yet again.) When I first visited his office, his partner glanced at me and exclaimed, “You’re a hyperope!” which is the technical term for far-sighted, I learned.

Over the years, both my husband and I have been through increasing thicknesses of eyewear and various styles of frames. After all these years, I still prefer wireframes and Dan has come around to my way of thinking. Bifocals were an eventual necessity and I opted for computer glasses as well, since I spend so much time online.

We’ve had a few eye-related emergencies over the years. Mine occurred when I set off a flea bomb in the house and accidentally bombed my face. Fortunately, my glasses offered some protection and there was a bottle of distilled water nearby. Suddenly, I wasn’t so worried about something touching my eyes as Dan held them open and poured.

Dan’s extreme eye occurrence happened when he was driving. All of a sudden, he saw a flash in his right eye, and the vision in that eye became blurry. The next day, he had small, dark pinpoints in his right eye’s field of vision.

A quick trip to Dr. Gary seemed necessary. Dan learned that he had experienced an age-related phenomenon that affects the vitreous fluid in his eye. This information gave me the willies, of course, but Dan took it all in stride. The flash didn’t return and Dan named the largest of the floating points in his eye. He called it “Freddie the Free-Floater.” (Any Red Skelton fans out there? But I digress even more.)

I’m preparing myself for the day when I also see that flash and the dark points in my vitreous fluid. I don’t think I can come up with a better name for them, though. Dan surely wins on that count.

Practical Beauty Tips

etc., fashion, funny things, humor, , , ,

If you want to look like a million bucks, get real! And by that, I don’t mean using all-natural charcoal slug placenta serum on your extremities. No, I’m talking about budget reality. You don’t have expendable income that would cover a single day of Angelina Jolie’s beauty regimen. What you need are practical tips like these.

How to exfoliate. Before you bathe, rub your face vigorously with a dry, rough towel. Take a hot shower. After you do, rub your face vigorously with a dry, rough towel. Your epidermis will disappear in a trice. You’ll have a luminescent pink glow just like someone who has lived through ionizing radiation, without the expense of costly fissionable materials.

How to use bath bombs. If you have a bathtub, the directions on the package will work pretty well, as long as you don’t mix up your bath bomb with the similar kind of bombs that you drop into pots of soup for seasoning. The curry and chili varieties may prove painful or leave your skin an interesting new color. But a bath with your bouillon bomb will leave you with an appealing fragrance that attracts hungry men and dogs.

If you have a shower rather than a bath, wrap the bomb in a piece of cheesecloth like a bouquet garni and hang it from the shower head. (Be careful. The bouquet garni technique may confuse you and make it more likely that you will douse yourself with a miso or onion soup bomb. But I digress.)

How to select a fragrance. Go to the perfume counter these days and you’ll think you’re in the produce section of the grocery store. Natural, vegetal scents are the current trend. Think of lemon wedges, herbs, and any vegetable that can be carved into the shape of a rose. Throw them in your blender and garnish your pulse points with them. If you want, take the leftovers from your lunch salad and whiz them up. Don’t forget to put a sprig of parsley behind one ear. Think of it as a leafy, green fascinator.

How to accessorize. Coco Chanel famously advised that when you’re ready to leave the house, remove one accessory before you go. Lose the brooch. (No one ever pronounces it properly anyway. It rhymes with “roach,” not “cooch.” But I digress again.) Or ditch the parsley fascinator. If you’re wearing earrings, the greenery will be un peu de trop.

How to get an eye-catching tattoo. Text tattoos are always popular. You can convey an important message like “No Regrets,” “Slippery When Wet,” or “FTW.” The important thing to remember is to consult a proofreader before the tattoo machine revs up. Otherwise, you might end up with a permanent message that says, “No Regerts.” (Actually, “FTW” might end up as “WTF,” which could be what you say when you see it. But I digress some more.)

(If you want a Chinese symbol, which is a perennial classic, as a tattoo, it’s even more important to hire a knowledgeable proofreader. Most tattoo artists aren’t bilingual and will happily decorate you with characters that mean “oyster sauce” or “I’m ready for the first man I meet.” Assuming that’s not what you asked for. But I continue to digress.)

Next Week! Follow me for more Practical Beauty How-Tos: Tame Your Unibrow With a Birthday Candle; Get Your Weight-Loss Game on With Turnips; and Use Spackle to Freshen Your Look!

The Good, the Bad, and the Others

books, etc., film, humor, literature,

The Wicked Witch used to be a villain. She tried to kill Dorothy and her companions. She enslaved flying monkeys. She wanted revenge for her sister’s accidental death.

Now she has her own musical and movie.

The elevation of villains is a thing now. Personally, I blame Star Wars. I was once visiting some friends who had a young son. He held up his Darth Vader action figure and said, “This is my friend.” (This was in the days before the proliferation of Star Wars movies culminated in Vader’s redemption at the last possible second. But I digress.)

My theory is that villains have power but few limits. It’s no wonder youngsters view them as positive influences. When Darth Vader is your friend and protector, you share in his power. You fear nothing.

Maybe this rise of the villain started with the rise of the anti-hero. Let me explain. And let me use Buffy the Vampire Slayer (one of my favorite TV classics) as my vehicle. (Actually, I’m going to do it whether you let me or not. So there. But I digress some more.)

Here’s the backstory, for those not familiar with the Buffyverse. Buffy’s first love was the vampire-with-a-soul Angel, and he was a Byronic hero, a type that became popular when Byron (duh) was writing poetry. Byronic heroes are tortured souls who waft around in black clothes and clouds of pain. They’re never cheerful. They don’t crack jokes. They suffer from existential angst. They have troubled pasts and isolate themselves from society. (Other Byronic heroes include Batman holed up in his Batcave, grieving over his dead parents. The Brontes knew their Byronic heroes, too. Mr. Rochester and Heathcliff are classics. But I digress yet again.)

In opposition to the Byronic hero, we have the anti-hero. They don’t behave according to the heroic model. They’re “bad boys” who manage to dominate the plot and achieve their goals despite being misunderstood or refusing to follow convention. Think Han Solo, Captain Jack Sparrow, or in the case of Buffy, Spike. He’s never going to be Buffy’s Great Love, but he has his uses in her world. (Deadpool and Robin Hood are two other examples who would never have a beer together but occupy similar literary spaces. I suppose Dexter would be the ultimate anti-hero. Still more digression.)

No, wait. Satan is the ultimate anti-hero. Take a look at Milton’s Paradise Lost. Lucifer has agency and is the more interesting character. At some level, the reader roots for him. They know God’s going to win. That’s a given. But Satan’s quest, while reprehensible, is also on some level noble. (I’m talking literary characters here, not theology. But I digress again. And as Jean Kerr said, in reference to the story of Adam and Eve, the snake has all the lines. But I continue digressing.)

So, what makes the bad guys more interesting guys? For one thing, they’re deeply misunderstood. They’ve often been victims of bullies or of an uncaring, unfair society. They touch the darkness, the “shadow self” that lives within each of us. We recognize ourselves in them, identify with them in ways we simply don’t with standard heroes. We’d like to identify with heroes, but we know they’re better than we are.

Standard heroes require supervillains to make them at all interesting. Without Lex Luthor, Superman just flies around foiling ordinary bank robbers. Without Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes is simply Columbo. (I could say that without elusive diagnoses and the looming specter of death, House is basically Doogie Howser, but I won’t. That would be ridiculous. There’s also misanthropy. But I digress some more.)

Personally, I respond more to anti-heroes than Byronic heroes. Pure villains don’t interest me, but neither do sanctimonious heroes like Galahad (“My strength is as the strength of ten because my heart is pure.”). But when it comes to the villains and heroes in the wrestling ring, I don’t give a fig for any of them. Besides, they change places so often that you need a scorecard to tell which is which. (Don’t assume that this means I watch “pro” wrestling. I learned about their ethical switches from the New York Times. Go figure. But I have finished digressing. For this week.)

Mixed Emotions

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I know we cuss our computers with astounding regularity. I know the sound card stops working when you have a Zoom meeting or a file disappears in a cloud of mist or they suddenly, stubbornly stop working altogether. They haven’t ushered in a paperless society. They rat out your driving habits. They haven’t automated mundane tasks so that we all have the time to be creative. They blast blue light into our retinas, addict us to sites and games that actively lower our IQs, and listen to our conversations in hopes of hearing their names.

Rather than them working for us, we work for the obstreperous, silicon-infused creeps.

(I was introduced to computers in the eighth grade, when we shared time on a teletype-style computer that ate punched tape and could be made to respond to whistling. They weren’t much better then, but at least they didn’t screw up prescriptions at the pharmacy or go down when they should go up. But I digress.)

By now, you’ve decided that the headline of this post was deeply ironic. But no, I do love computers. Really. I couldn’t do without my desktop, my laptop, my tablet, and my e-reader. I plan to take them all with me to Florida when I go. (Well, obviously not my desktop. It would take up my entire luggage allowance. But I digress again.)

Mostly what I love about computers is their memory. My own memory is almost shot (and getting shotter every day) and my electronic friends pick up the miles of slack. They keep track of my appointments, bank balance, and correspondence. They allow me to send those all-important messages and memes to friends. I can like something without even nodding my head.

But what I love most about computers are Mr. Google and Mr. Wikipedia. Google provides intel (sorry, not sorry) on words that I can never remember how to spell. (Back in the day, I worked for a magazine and created a line of cover copy for a talking computer (which back then was a novelty). It was to say, “Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking.” I must have checked 20 times on the number of C’s and another 30 on the number of M’s. I still have to check that word or trust Grammarly (which isn’t all that trustworthy). But I digress some more.)

I also have to use my Google-fu to look up songs for my husband. It’s like a game. He gives me a single line from an obscure song and notes how long it takes me to discover what the song is, who sang it, who wrote it, who has covered it, what album it’s from, and the name of the drummer. Then I find a video of the song and play it for him.

Another game we play is “What else has she been in?” He points out a performer and I get to find out what her name is, who she’s married to, and whether she’s had any other roles in shows Dan might have seen. I also find pictures of her, what she’s done lately, and who she’s co-starred with that Dan might know. This requires not just Google and Wikipedia, but also IMDB, which I highly recommend. (I also like The Urban Dictionary for when I come across an unfamiliar word or phrase like “rizz” or “no cap.” But I digress even more.)

But there’s one thing I wish my computer would do for me. I wish that pressing Control-Z would correct my errors in meatspace as well as in cyberspace. Add too much paprika to the stew? Control-Z! Forget to add soap to the laundry? Control-Z! Take a wrong turn trying to get to my newest doctor’s appointment? That’s right—Control-Z!

But stubbornly, it won’t. Maybe on next year’s model…

P.S. Don’t even get me started on printers!

Learning From Mistakes (Or Not)

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When I was young, I was supposed to learn from mistakes. Other people’s mistakes, not my own. My parents were devotés of the “No one is so worthless that they can’t serve as a bad example” school of thought. (This, combined with the Girl Scout Law, produced fodder for my innumerable therapy sessions. I thought that only bad people (like my cousin Callie Jo) had to learn from their many mistakes or serve as bad examples. I wasn’t supposed to make mistakes to learn from. Did this make me a Goody Two-Shoes? Yes. Yes, it did. But I digress.)

Since then, I’ve learned through years of psychological treatment that this school of thought is BS. The only way that anyone, good or bad, learns is by making mistakes. Now that I’ve learned that, though, I’ve made some whoppers. I’ve taken up with the wrong boyfriends. (Including one who my parents said proved their point about no one being so useless that they couldn’t serve as a bad example. He was a tow truck driver and knew all the secluded spots where people had run off the road. That wasn’t useless. It proved handy for al fresco entertaining, which my parents didn’t know about. But I digress again.)

Marrying my husband, however, was not a mistake. But, I must admit, I’ve learned from Dan’s mistakes. Sometimes I’ve learned that I’m right, even on subjects that he’s supposed to be better at, like spatial reasoning. When there’s a piece of furniture or a mattress that needs to be transported from one place to another, he continues to rotate it on every axis several times and shove it into the car, while I watch and say, “That’s never going to fit.” When I prove correct, he says, “Well, I had to try.” I reply, “No, you didn’t. You could have listened to me.”

Another time I had to bail him out was when he was fixing to put cement in a hole in the lawn destined to hold something decorative in place. He had to mix several cups of water with the cement. Unfortunately, he used a coffee carafe to measure the cups. I pointed out that those weren’t the same kind of cups that a measuring cup measures. He was flummoxed. I had to do some quick math (including a visit to my study for computer consultation) to determine how many ounces Mr. Coffee thought was a cup and how it compared to a regulation cup. Then I had to figure out how many actual cups of water he needed to add to what he had already put into the hardening cement.

Not that he’s the only one who makes mistakes. In addition to the boyfriends one, I’ve forgotten that we asked the contractor to put in an extra half-step leading up to the front door because the sill is too high for my increasingly unreliable legs. Just the other day, though, I forgot all about it and stumbled over my own feet, only narrowly averting potentially bloody disaster by catching myself on the railing we also insisted they install. (The half-step was necessitated by a fall I suffered during the construction, which I wrote about in “Gravity Is Not My Friend,” a post from 2020. But, being a mensch, Dan didn’t rub my nose in my awkwardness. He said, “Be careful, honey,” (I don’t know why people only tell you to be careful after you’ve taken a fall. But I digress some more.))

But the topic (way back there somewhere) was learning from mistakes. So, what should we have learned? Well, in Dan’s case, it should be: Listen to Janet. (Though I’m afraid that will never truly sink in.) For me, it’s: Avoid complicated men (or so my shrink said). And watch your step. (I’m afraid that hasn’t sunk in either.)

But there are plenty of fresh mistakes to be made, and I’m sure we’ll make our share of them. Or more, more likely.

Go. Be Funny.

etc., funny things, humor, writing, , , ,

Once the boss editor gave me an assignment. “Go,” he said. “Be funny,” he said. “Come back in an hour.” We were preparing a calendar with amusing sayings and odd observances on various dates.

Now, most writers would be daunted by this sort of thing. I know I was. But in an hour, there I came, quips in hand. “Is this job too easy for you?” he asked.

Actually, writing funny stuff is not easy. I was just feeling quirky that day. (“Dying is easy. Comedy is hard” is a quotation that’s been attributed to any number of those shuffling off the mortal coil, from actors Edmund Gwenn to Jack Lemmon to Peter O’Toole to Meryl Streep (who, not having died yet, almost certainly didn’t say it on her deathbed). But I digress.)

The geniuses of Monty Python certainly seem as though they created comedy easily. And I know a man who can write a funny song, a la Weird Al, in 15 minutes or less. But for most of the writing world, humor is the hardest form of writing. (Except possibly the sestina. Or the humorous sestina, come to think of it. But I digress again.)

How do you build up your humorous writing muscles to the point where you can flex? I recommend hanging out with silly people, like the aforementioned songwriter. (If you’re tempted to use AI, forget it. I asked ChatGPT to write a joke about a cat. It replied, “Why did the cat sit on the computer? Because it wanted to keep an eye on the mouse!” Asked for a joke about a dog, it said, “Why did the dog sit in the shade? Because he didn’t want to be a hot dog!” Apparently, ChatGPT writes at the level of a five-year-old. And when I asked for a humorous sestina, it created one about a knight named Sir Guffaw and his tap-dancing horse. But I digress yet again.)

My next piece of advice is to have a cat or a spouse. Cats are not dignified, contrary to their reputations. One of our cats tried to escape from the vet and bonked her head on the glass door to freedom. And my spouse does and says funny things, or prompts them from me. For example, I once took a picture of him in a tweed cap and turned it into a meme (seen here, as you can no doubt tell.)

You can also turn trauma into humor. I once found myself having to get rid of a dead possum, which certainly traumatized me. Another time I almost offed a friend with a bay leaf. Those alarming events worked their way into killer posts, so to speak.

Reading humor can help, too. Think David Sedaris and The Bloggess. For irreverence, there’s Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal, by Christopher Moore. For vintage humor, there are James Thurber and Erma Bombeck. (Given the example of Thurber and Bombeck, being from Ohio helps too. But I digress some more.)

Then there are humorous movies. Personally, Airplane can still make me LOL. (So can Zero Hour, the film from whence Airplane‘s plot and many lines of dialogue came, only deadly serious. It’s impossible to watch without flashing back (or forward, since Zero Hour is the older movie). But I digress yet again.)

But for myself, I like a good catchphrase that didn’t come from a TV show or movie. It came into being because I wanted to write little asides and put them in as footnotes. But I couldn’t figure out how to make WordPress do that, so I turned to my grammatical friend, the paren. (Not really my favorite mark of punctuation, which is the semicolon. But I digress for the last time this post. I swear it.)

Music and Me: The Saga Begins (and Ends)

education, etc., family, humor, music, , ,

It all started with my sister’s cornet and sibling rivalry. My parents rented the instrument (probably already having an inkling of the outcome). She attempted to learn to play it for school band class. It was not a success and the next year, when I was old enough to be in band class, my parents did not rent an instrument for me. I never got over it, so when I graduated from high school, I saved up and bought myself a cheap guitar. (And a sword. I was deeply influenced by The Lord of the Rings.)

I started taking guitar lessons. Then I ran out of money after learning the “Cocaine” song by John Martyn (not the other one). (The sword lessons came much later when I was studying martial arts (ninjutsu, to be specific). We practiced with a wooden katana, so I wasn’t able to use the sword I had bought. But I digress.)

Later, I took guitar lessons from a guy who was the cousin of my rotten then-boyfriend. Later still I bartered with a guitar teacher who needed his dissertation proofread. (He actually learned some aspects of grammar rather than just letting me do all the heavy lifting. (He thought it was hilarious when I told him to “check your apparatus.”) He’s still a Facebook friend. But I digress again.)

I took a break from guitar lessons when I took singing lessons. I’m a terrible singer, and the lessons didn’t help. I also took piano lessons because the teacher gave a discount if you took both. Turns out I’m a terrible piano player too. (The pedals befuddled me just as badly as the pedals on the car when I was learning to drive stick. But I digress some more.)

Later still, I entered what was called a “Pick-a-Thon,” a marathon guitar-picking contest that lasted for days. You didn’t have to play actual songs, which was a good thing in my case, just keep making sounds with the guitar, which was a mercy when you had to visit the facilities—just squat and strum. By the time I had made it through 24 hours, my boss (who was also my friend) gave me time off. I made it to the final two pickers, but I finally gave in (I was hallucinating by that time). My final time was 68 hours and 7 minutes. The music store where this was held gave me a fantastic deal on a really excellent guitar as a second-place prize.

I still couldn’t play it much, though. More lessons ensued, this time with a woman who was: a twin, a former army officer, a pilot, and left-handed. I liked her a lot, but it was kind of weird trying to learn when she played her guitar upside down.

I finally figured out the reason for my lack of progress on the guitar (and the banjo). When I had the money for lessons, I didn’t have the time, and when I had the time, I didn’t have the money. (I briefly had a harmonica, which was inexpensive and didn’t require lessons. I learned the intro to Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Way I Feel” but it made my mouth hurt. But I digress yet again.)

I’m also trying to learn how to whistle. At least I don’t have to buy an instrument or take lessons for that. (So far I can whistle the sound that Wile E. Coyote makes as he’s plunging from a cliff to the ground. Not that there’s much call for that sort of thing. But I continue to digress.)

Right now, I’m in a time-rich and money-poor state. Plus, I don’t have a guitar or a banjo. I’ve never had a piano and still have a terrible singing voice. What I do have is iTunes (or Apple Music as I guess they call it now), 8,000 songs, a study I’m alone in all day, and a house far enough from the neighbors that I can’t be heard when I sing along off-key and loudly. And that’s enough to satisfy me.

Saint Dan

etc., family, funny things, humor, travel, , ,

Once upon a time (as all good fairytales begin), a coworker of mine started referring to my husband as “Saint Dan.” I regularly told tales of how he treated me with love, understanding, humor, and sensitivity. (This was not in the immediate runup to our marriage (during which we had been disgustingly romantic, to the extent that our friends claimed they needed a jolt of insulin when we were around), but after we had been married for years. But I digress.)

Some of Dan’s displays of love seemed to my friends to be extravagant. For instance, when I went on a business trip, he left little notes of love and encouragement in my belongings—not just in my suitcase or pockets, but everywhere. There was even a note under the cap of my deodorant. (There was also a piece of paper with a few cat hairs taped to it, to remind me that the cat loved me too. But I digress again.) My travel roommate was somewhere between impressed and unbelieving. And possibly nauseated.

Another example is the story of how Dan once walked upstairs behind me and said, “Those jeans are loose on you. You should get a new pair.” “I hope you turned right around and gave him a big kiss,” my coworker said. Given the difficulty of turning around and bending over to kiss on the stairs, I waited until we were both at the top.

Dan is also great at giving presents. When he was in charge of the budget (It’s my responsibility now. We have different ways of approaching it that appall each other, so we take turns. But I digress in the middle of what I was going to say.), he used to follow me around at stores and conventions, making note of anything I expressed an interest in, then going back later and buying it for me. Once he noticed that I liked a certain dress, managed to slip away, buy it, and hide it in the trunk of the car before I noticed he was gone. Another time he bought me an amber carving of a rabbit that took him months to pay off, so I had forgotten all about it by the time he gave it to me.

He has a sense of humor, too. Sometimes he even gives me a perfect straight line. Once, the movie Gunga Din was coming on and he innocently asked me, “Honey, do you like Kipling?” I almost choked to death as I gasped out, “I don’t know. I’ve never kipled.” He can pick up on a straight line, too. Another time, we went to a Japanese restaurant for our anniversary. I complimented him on how well he was using chopsticks for the first time. “Jan,” he said, “I’m a compulsive overeater. If I had to learn to eat with my elbows, I would.”

Of course, Dan is far from perfect. Once I had to say to him, “Please don’t use power tools after I’ve gone to bed.” (It was one of those things you never expect to hear yourself saying, then one day there you are. But I digress some more.) And he’s not good with directions. When I draw him a map to somewhere (he can’t use a GPS), I have to draw another map on how to get back (he can’t reverse directions either).

(As I was writing this, it occurred to me that there might be an actual Saint Dan. A quick visit with Mr. Wikipedia revealed a few possibilities, the most likely of which seemed (to me) to be St. Daniel of Padua, feast day January 3rd. Possibly of Jewish lineage, he was martyred by being dragged behind a horse. He is called on by women whose husbands are away at war and is often depicted carrying a towel, which might make him the patron saint of Douglas Adams fans. So now that’s something we all know. And I have digressed pedantically for the last time this week. See you next Sunday for more stunningly useless info and digressions!)

The Acceptable Addiction

etc., health, humor, , ,

Once upon a time (okay, it was in high school), when I still had aspirations of becoming a poet, I took a creative writing class. (The teacher, Mr. McKnight, was the school’s football coach, which gives you an idea of what esteem creativity was held in. When I graduated, he wrote in my yearbook that I was the “raison in his bowl of flakes.” I wanted to believe that he was making a pun based on the fact that “raison” is French for “reason,” but I couldn’t really convince myself. But I digress. Already.)

Anyway, to get back to my point (and I do have one), the teacher/coach was convinced that, like his father, he would die of heart problems at age 50. So, when he turned 49, he gave up coffee, the idea being that it was bad for his heart, which is true. We, the class, had to put up with his pacing, irritability, and generally jonesing for coffee. He was going through withdrawal. He was a caffeine addict.

We have 12-step groups for alcohol and drugs. There’s Gamblers Anonymous. There’s even an Overeaters Anonymous program. And while I don’t know of any 12-step programs for nicotine addicts, there are plenty of products that aim to curb the cravings. The power of negativity comes into play, too. Cigarettes have a warning on the package. (No one reads it, any more than they read “Drink responsibly” written in tiny type on the alcohol commercials or the 1-800 number for gambling addiction on the ads for betting services and casinos. But I digress. Again.)

Social disapproval also comes into play. We have M.A.D.D. to combat drunk driving, one of the most successful campaigns ever to change public opinion. Smoking is banned in public spaces and even frowned at outdoors. (There is still such a thing as smoke breaks at work although, I must say, no crossword breaks for those of us addicted to them. But I digress yet again.)

But there is no social disapproval, advertising, warning labels, or 12-step groups for caffeine addicts. In fact, people seem to pride themselves on how many cups they drink per day. Think about all the memes and cartoons you see about an absurdly giant coffee cup that says “I only drink one cup a day” or wishing you could get a coffee I.V. (Coffee I.V.s are a bad idea. There is such a thing as a coffee enema, but I really don’t want to know any more about it. But I digress some more.)

Personally, I get my caffeine through iced tea or Diet Coke. I drank coffee when I had a regular job and there was always a pot in the breakroom. And I will have coffee with cream and sugar—or an Irish coffee—for dessert once in a great while. (I do insist that the Irish coffee be made properly, with Irish whiskey. If the bartender thinks it means coffee with Bailey’s, I send it back. In fact, I’ve been known to ask bartenders how they make an Irish coffee before I order one. Not that coffee with Bailey’s is a bad thing. It’s just not an Irish coffee. But I digress even more.)

Should caffeine be regulated? Well, maybe. It does have hazardous physical effects: increased heart rate, high blood pressure, and heart palpitations among them. Mr. McKnight was right. He’s still alive today and one of my Facebook friends. But I can’t picture a 12-step group without the ubiquitous coffee urn, a warning label on Mr. Coffee machines, or a public campaign called Stop Coffee Addiction Now (SCAN). As far as I can see, coffee addiction is likely to remain nothing to rant about. (This is not a rant. It’s a calm, reasoned exploration of the topic. So there.)