Category Archives: humor

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.)

In the Garden

etc., family, humor, , , ,

My mother’s favorite hymn was “In the Garden,” and my husband’s favorite place to be is in the garden. Every spring he goes wild ordering seeds and saplings from catalogs and truckloads of dirt and mulch from local purveyors. (Actually, he is already poring over the catalogs and asking me when we’ll have enough money for dirt and mulch. And rocks. He adds assorted rocks to fancy up his gardens. There’s a local place where he can take his pick and load them up in the back of our SUV. It doesn’t run terribly well with that much weight in the back. But I digress.)

When he lived near Philadelphia, Dan had a small greenhouse that was attached to his parents’ house. I think it got heat from the dryer vent. He moved away from there over 40 years ago, but I know he still misses it. (Sometimes, when he’s feeling grandiose, he describes himself as a former greenhouse manager. One Christmas long ago, I bought him a do-it-yourself plastic greenhouse kit, but he’s never used it. But I digress again.) But now he has a big yard in the front and a woods for a backyard, and he gets his ya-yas out there.

Most of the time, he plants native wildflowers and assorted trees, including fruit and nut trees. He tries to eradicate invasive species and propagate plants that are good for pollinators, particularly butterflies. He also has birdhouses and birdfeeders (yes, multiple) on the property.

Dan gardens to refresh his soul. He also gets some exercise there, digging and pruning. (He also gets gardener’s butt burn when his pants ride down and his shirt rides up. But I digress some more. Graphically.) He gets much less exercise in the winter and gets the opposite of the Summertime Blues.

When he doesn’t have a shovel or rake with him, Dan always takes a walking stick with him in anticipation of falling down, which he sometimes does when the earth turns to mud. He has multiple walking sticks, some of which he bought in Gatlinburg and Ireland, and others he’s rehabbed from random branches. He also uses them when he tours the backyard, which is still suffering from tornado damage, or the slope on the side of our property.

Am I involved in his endeavor? Not much. I find my ya-yas in other places. Oh, sometimes he asks me where he should plant something, or which color of clematis I prefer, what I want to be planted by my study window, or where to put the aforementioned rocks. I go out, studiously look over the landscape, and offer a completely uninformed opinion. I also look up plants for him online—how big they get, whether they’re good for pollinators, how much it costs to buy them, and so forth. (He’s annoyed that many of the seed places are putting their catalogs online, which makes it harder to flip pages. He did buy some sassafras trees because he knows I love sassafras tea. But I digress even more.)

Of course, Dan’s gardening is an investment in someone else’s future. At our age, he knows that he won’t be around to see the oaks and pines grow to their full height or maybe even the apple and plum trees bear fruit.

For now, though, he’s got his happy place, and he doesn’t have to go to a beach to find it. It’s right outside the door.

Thoughts on Editing

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

When it comes to language, I used to be a prescriptivist, telling others how language ought to be used. Now I am a descriptivist, recording how language is used in practice.

Oh, I haven’t entirely given up my mission to get people to use proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation. I still feel that writing “correctly” can be important to the meaning of whatever it is you’re writing about. And I still cringe when someone (usually my husband) says “foilage” instead of “foliage” or “nucular” instead of “nuclear.” But that’s speech, which is very different than writing.

Of course, an editor can’t really edit spoken English aside from pronunciation. Well, there are malapropisms and misplaced modifiers.

Malapropisms occur when a speaker substitutes an incorrect word for a correct one. One headline that makes the rounds on Facebook is about an “amphibious” pitcher, when “ambidextrous” is meant.

Misplaced modifiers are descriptive phrases in the wrong place in a sentence. The classic misplaced modifier is Groucho Marx’s “Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. What it was doing in my pajamas I’ll never know.” (A misplaced modifier is often confused with a dangling modifier, which happens when an introductory phrase modifies the wrong subject in a sentence: “Painting for three hours, the portrait was finally finished.” Who is painting for three hours? We don’t know, but it certainly wasn’t the portrait. I once worked with a man who described any kind of grammatical mistake, even a subject-verb agreement error, as a dangling modifier. But I digress.)

One of the places I often encounter “faulty” grammar, spelling, and punctuation is on social media. I have to think twice before I share memes with errors in them because I’m afraid someone will think that I don’t know the difference. (I know Lizzie Borden’s name isn’t spelled “Bordon,” but I couldn’t resist the joke: “If you get any messages from my parents, don’t answer them. They’ve been hacked.” But I digress again.)

Speaking of memes, I once saw one that said one shouldn’t look down on someone who mispronounces less-familiar words. It means they learned them from seeing them in print rather than hearing them. One of my dear friends treated the word “sarcophagus” that way and came to me to learn the proper pronunciation. I was happy to oblige. (I’ve also heard of the phenomenon going the other way. Another guy I knew had only ever heard the name Sigmund Freud spoken. He wrote it down as “Froid,” a fair guess based on the sound, but outrageously inaccurate nonetheless. But I digress yet again.)

When it comes to language I do like, however, I love new additions to English. “Portmanteau” words are particularly fun. They’re made up of two words or parts of words smashed together to mean something new. One that everyone knows (but don’t realize is a portmanteau) is “smog,” which comes from “smoke” and “fog.” (I say I like them, but not the ugly portmanteau words that crop up, especially during the holidays. Nothing is simply a sale. It’s always an “aganza,” “palooza,” “bration,” or “thon.” The first million times someone did that, it may have been clever, but the shine has long worn off. But I digress some more.)

Anyway, back to editing. I hereby apologize to everyone whose infinitives I unsplit and whose prepositions I moved away from the end of sentences. I’m really sorry. My bad. Think of me as a recovering prescriptivist. Maybe not fully recovered yet, but I try.

The Whisker Jar

cats, etc., family, funny things, humor, pets,

Cat whiskers are wonderful things. They’re early warning sensory apparatus that let cats know what’s close by. They sense vibrations that indicate changes in air currents, revealing the size, shape, location, and motion of objects or creatures in the cat’s immediate environment. Other sensory organs at the base of the whiskers keep the cat aware of where its body is in space and what’s around it. They supplement the cat’s eyesight. They help keep small particles away from their eyes as well. And their length corresponds to the cat’s shoulders, indicating the width of spaces that cats can get through.

But we know what’s really important. Cat whiskers are adorable. (So are cat eyebrows. Not as prominent as the whiskers by the nose, the eyebrow hairs are wispier. Their function is probably to help protect the eyes but also to give the cat a variety of darling facial expressions. But I digress. I was talking about whiskers.)

Our cat Toby has brittle whiskers. Just when the white appendages start getting long and magnificent like a respectable cat’s, they simply break off, leaving little inch-long stumps. They do grow back, but for a while, he looks like a pincushion instead of a mighty hunter. I guess Toby is just a little less than respectable. (It wouldn’t surprise me. The little dickens.)

We have had cats with properly impressive whiskers. Shaker, a tuxedo cat, accessorized with thick, long vibrissae (to be correct and pedantic). She was very proud of them and clearly thought they were one of her finest assets. They didn’t break off the way Toby’s do, but every now and then, she’d shed one, leaving a fine, thick, easy-to-spot whisker lying on the carpet. Ordinarily, we’d pick up the whisker and store it in a little ceramic pot we called the Whisker Jar. (No, I don’t know quite why we did this. We didn’t do anything with them, like voodoo spells. They just seemed too magnificent to dispose of, and we wanted to see how many we could accumulate. But I digress again.)

Once, however, we decided to have a little fun with one of the whiskers she had shed. We took one of them from the whisker jar and placed it on her head. It stood straight up, protruding from her sleek, black head like an alien antenna. Inspired, we started making boop-boop noises.

Shaker was deeply offended. She was a cat with a great sense of dignity. (Except when she rolled over and showed her fluffy white belly, inviting a belly rub. Then she looked like a chubby black-and-white kitten, which I suppose she used to be. (We got her as a full-grown cat. But I digress some more.)

Anyway, Shaker clearly objected to having her aplomb assaulted in this fashion. She sensed that we were making fun of her (we were) and she expressed her displeasure—and not by leaving an unpleasant deposit somewhere for us to find unexpectedly when we were barefoot. Instead, she used the power of her remaining whiskers. They turned down in a disapproving manner, rendering her face a veritable mask of scorn.

Then we laughed uproariously, compounding the offense. Shaker retreated in high dudgeon, shaking her head indignantly and dislodging the whisker as she went.

We picked it up and put it back in the Whisker Jar. You never know when you might need another belly laugh.

Let Your Freak Flag Fly

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To those of us who were hippies back in the 60s and 70s (and are now in our 60s and 70s), letting your freak flag fly meant something special. If I had to define it in two words, it meant Weird Pride. The straight world viewed us as weirdos, and, rather than being insulted, we embraced the title.

A lot of the controversy had to do with hair—specifically, long hair on men. I know it’s hard to believe now, in a time when anyone can do anything with their hair and not have anyone bat an eye, but back then it was a form of rebellion and a cause for discrimination. (There was a time when long hair was considered a job-killer. Beards too. Now about the only job-killer appearance I can think of is face tattoos. But I digress.)

It’s hard to let your freak flag fly anymore. There don’t seem to be any more freak flags. Not even hairstyles. Mohawks are passé. Shaved and partially shaved heads are accepted, even for women. Grandmothers are dying their hair green, pink, and blue—and not the kind of blue that used to be called a blue rinse. (Though many old ladies called it a blue wrench. I’m not sure why. But I digress again.)

It seems like the only way left to have a freak flag is based on your clothing. Even then it’s hard to do. I’m not talking about tie-dye, either. That can be worn by anyone, not just Deadheads. Mismatched, colorful socks won’t do it, and (unless you move in Martha Stewart’s orbit (which I don’t, needless to say) neither will wearing plaids with polka dots. (If you’re wearing a suit, the mismatched striped socks thing might work, but anything unusual worn with a suit would count as a freak flag (except an AR-15 pin, and maybe not even that in some surprising circles). Business suits are still an indicator of a non-freak. But I digress some more.)

Even non-clothing freak flags are getting more permissible. Psychedelic music is now on the oldies stations. Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In hasn’t worn well, even though you can find it on a streaming channel. Marijuana is legal in many states (does anyone still say weed, pot, Mary Jane, blunts, roaches, etc.?) and used for relief from physical pain and illnesses. Psychedelic and party drugs are being used for psychiatric illnesses.

Protest songs don’t even exist anymore, though they’re sorely needed, if you ask me. Vulgar and obscene t-shirt sayings barely rate a blink. There are places to go if you’re a nudist, gay, or kinky that don’t get raided. Bare feet are about the only things that can get you tossed out of restaurants.

There are no freak cars anymore either. People don’t paint their VWs with flowers. A VW bus is more likely to belong to a soccer mom than a commune. And when it comes to travel, no one has to go to Canada to evade the draft. There are no draft cards to burn. Teenagers don’t even know what the draft was, and Vietnam vets are old men and women.

Now I’m not saying these new sensibilities are bad things, not at all. It’s probably a good thing that more styles are not only acceptable but non-controversial. It’s great that people can express themselves more freely. Whenever my husband wears his Jerry Garcia t-shirt, people think it’s far out. (I know people don’t say “far-out” anymore. Or “groovy.” I can’t keep track of what they do say. Plus, my husband’s t-shirt usually draw remarks that he looks like the picture. But I digress yet again.)

Basically, if you can find a way to let your freak flag fly, do it!

Fraidy Cat

cats, etc., humor, pets,

I’ve read that if you surreptitiously place a cucumber or zucchini behind your cat, when the cat notices the vegetable, it will jump straight up in alarm (the cat, not the cucumber). I’ve never tested this out because I’ve also read that the cat thinks the cucumber is some kind of fat, short, immobile but threatening green snake and is genuinely terrified. Some people thought it was cruel to put a cat through this unexpected terror. (Though no one seems to care that the whole red dot thing puts a cat through unrelenting frustration. We think it’s funny, so that’s okay. Actually, the whole cucumber thing was supposed to be amusing, too. Go figure. But I digress.)

I’ve never tried the cucumber trick on any of our cats. They have enough things that they’re afraid of already.

Knowing that I’m a cat lover, my friends often give me cat-related gifts—cookie jars, Christmas ornaments, earrings, mugs, and so forth. One year, someone got me a pair of cat house slippers. They were very lifelike, a pair of puffy, furry, black-and-white cats with little pink noses. Basically, they were adorbz. (Yes, I know that “adorbz” is years old and probably as horse-and-buggy as “horse-and-buggy.” But I like it, so it stays. It’s not like a piece of slang that no one can figure out what it means without context (or maybe even with) like “rizz.” But I digress again.)

At any rate, the first time I walked down the hall wearing them, our cat Shaker (who was also black and white) saw the pair of mirror-image cats shuffling toward her, she turned tail and ran. (The same thing happened when Dan “walked” a 3 1/2-foot-tall plush rabbit down the hall. (Dan won the rabbit at a carnival. He had fun driving home from Pennsylvania with it. He strapped it in the passenger seat and enjoyed seeing children waving at it. It didn’t go with what we graciously call our “decor,” so we gave it to a friend with a young child. The child appreciated it, but the mother didn’t. Didn’t go with her decor either. But I digress some more. (Embedded. Are you impressed?)))

Another cat we had shared with most other cats a love of plastic bags. (We once met a cat in Dubrovnik who tried to climb into our souvenir bag and come home with us. But I digress even more.) Anyway, Jasper, who was a little skittish anyway, got tangled in a plastic grocery sack, which was enough to alarm him. What he didn’t realize, however, was that the bag contained a CD in its case (CD = a horse-and-buggy item). Startled, Jasper tried to get away from the thing by running upstairs. But the bag was caught on his leg and chased him, thump, thump, thump, all the way up. He couldn’t get away from it. Unlike a cucumber, it wasn’t stationary. Like a cucumber, it terrified him.

Our current cat, Toby, is afraid of water. No, not his water dish. Not rain. Not even the water in the shower (he likes to sit on the shower seat, though not while the water’s running). No, he’s afraid of bottled water. The fizzy kind, anyway. If I crack open a bottle and it makes the fizzy sound (which it always does), Toby does that cat thing where he levitates three feet off the ground like he’s spring-loaded. I don’t know, maybe fizzy water sounds like another cat hissing.

I suppose it’s wrong of me to laugh at the fraidy cats. They don’t laugh at me when I run screaming from bees and wasps. Or at least I don’t hear them. (Maybe they’re polite enough to snicker behind my back.)

That Hoodoo That You Do

arts and crafts, etc., family, humor, ,

Having the in-laws visit is a situation that is fraught with peril. There’s the frantic pre-cleaning cleaning, the cleaning, the post-cleaning cleaning, and the tidying up. There’s the delicate balance over what foods to stock up on and whether or not to go out for a meal or meals, and other aspects of potential entertaining. And, for those of us who don’t have the luxury of a guest room, there are the sleeping arrangements.

But the particular challenge that I want to discuss is when my MIL visited us.

We cleaned, of course, though perhaps not up to her standards. We loaded the pantry and the fridge with the mineral water, breakfast items, and snacks she preferred, plus more than our usual supply of staples, meat, vegetables, bread, fruit, and beverages.

No guest rooms chez nous, but at the time, we had a pull-out sofa bed. Being at least aware of one or two of the social norms, Dan and I would take the sofa, giving up the bed to Mom. We made sure there were clean sheets, blankets, towels, and such.

But upon seeing the sleeping arrangements, Mom announced, “I won’t sleep in that bed!”

“What’s the matter?” we asked, puzzled.

“That … thing. The one hanging over the bed. It’s a hoodoo. I can’t sleep under that.”

Now, Dan has been to Africa, where he encountered some shamans, and I have been to Jamaica, where I failed to encounter any voodoo priests, but in all our travels, neither one of us had ever acquired a hoodoo. (I did encounter lepers in Jamaica once (or persons living with Hansen’s Disease, as we would say now). (I was there reporting on charity work.) The residents’ cases were no longer active, but they lived apart in their own establishment (aka “leper colony”). They liked singing religious and folk songs, and when I asked if there was anything they needed, one man asked for new guitar strings. But I digress.)

At any rate, no hoodoos were acquired from anywhere.

The suspected hoodoo was a small wicker circle with various objects attached: a piece of red yarn, a bean from the castor plant, a cat whisker, a small bag of polished stone chips. It hung over my side of the bed.

What it was, of course, was a dream catcher.

I have nightmares from time to time. (I also have the usual anxiety dreams about being lost in a hotel, missing a plane, and not being able to find a clean toilet. Now that I think about it, as much as I love it, travel makes me anxious. But I digress again.) During one particularly bad spell, Dan made me the dream catcher. The items attached to it were ones that had special significance to me. The red yarn was a scrap from my mother’s crocheting. The stones were for my love of the semiprecious variety. The cat whisker—well, do I have to explain that one? (No, I never tried to kill anyone with a castor bean. It was a plot point in a mystery novel I was writing, though. But I digress yet again.)

It was a whimsical, tender memento that held no special power but that showed how much concern Dan had for me and how much he wanted to relieve my distress.

What it was not, was a hoodoo. (I’ve never seen an actual hoodoo, so I don’t know what they look like. I guess I can see how a dream catcher could be mistaken for one by someone who has no idea what a dream catcher is but is well up on hoodoos. But I digress some more.)

Our choice was obvious—remove the hoodoo or banish Mom to the sofa bed. It was a tough decision, but we removed the offending object (the dream catcher, that is) and Mom agreed to sleep in the bed. The dream catcher went right back up after the visit ended.

No sense wasting a perfectly good hoodoo.

How to Start a Conversation

books, etc., fashion, humor, , , , ,

I never used to be any good at small talk. I would stand there, tongue-tied, while conversation went on around me. I was afraid I had turned invisible.

Then I met Erma the Armadillo, pictured here. She’s a purse that my mother bought for me from a catalog called, appropriately, What on Earth. This was back in the 90s, and I don’t think she spent more than $25 on the purse. When it came time to scare up a photo to go with this post, I found that today Erma is considered “vintage” and sells for as much as $140, used.

(I have a thing about armadillos. I fell in love with them when I learned that their main defensive technique is to jump straight up two feet, and their main natural predator is the automobile bumper. My defense mechanisms are like that, too. But I digress.)

Erma was actually a lousy purse. She was stuffed with cotton and had only a small zippered slot that would barely hold a driver’s license and a little cash. I had to carry anything else in my pockets. But what she was good at was starting conversations. Not that she spoke, but when other people saw her, they did.

People were fascinated. They always remarked on what an unusual purse Erma was. I would point out that she even had little tiny toenails printed on her stubby little feet. They’d ask where I’d gotten her. They’d ask why I wanted an armadillo purse. They’d ask more questions and share about other purses they’d seen or owned. Children were especially captivated by Erma. They couldn’t get over the fact that she wasn’t a toy and that she had handles. They always wanted to touch her, and I always let them.

When it comes to starting conversations with strangers, I always recommend accessories. My jewelry collection has some peculiar specimens. I have a sushi necklace that my friend Leslie made for me from air-dry clay. I also have a pair of bacon earrings, though I never mix cuisines in an outfit. Another set of earrings that people found amusing were the ones that looked like the planet Earth, complete with continents. (When I wore them, I liked to shake my head violently and shout, “Earthquake!” But I digress again.)

Conversation goes both ways, of course. “That’s an awesome (fill in the blank). Where did you get it?” is a good start on a good chat. People love to tell stories about their possessions, gifts, travels, etc. From there, conversation is an easy two-way street.

(It can fall flat from time to time. I once shared an elevator with a woman who had itsy-bitsy feet. I felt like I might have been staring at them. So I cleverly said, “Those are great boots! They make your feet look really small!” She replied, “They are really small.” After that, the conversation, and the elevator ride, ended. But I digress some more.)

I don’t know how people who don’t have unusual accessories start conversations. “Is that a good book you’re reading?” is one ploy, but it hardly ever works. Most people don’t read books in public, and if they do, they don’t like to be interrupted. And when I read books in public (which I do), I read them on my e-reader or phone, so the general public just thinks I’m doom-scrolling (which I don’t do).

Erma is no longer with me. Her handles wore out and Dan was unsuccessful at replacing them, which he tried to do. I don’t go out much anymore but when I do, I miss her. And the conversations.

Let’s Talk Boogers

etc., health, humor, ,

That’s what my writing friend Denise and I were doing the other day. She had seen a “hillbilly” truck with a bumper sticker on it that referenced boogers. She marveled at the grammar and punctuation, which was all correct, considering that the truck owner was clearly a hillbilly who used the term “booger.”

“What do non-hillbillies call boogers?” I asked. I thought it was a valid question. Offhand, I couldn’t think of any synonyms.

Denise admitted that I had a point.

“Snot,” someone else suggested.

“Doesn’t work for me. Snot is more liquid-ish. Boogers are a bit more solid-ish.” We left it at that.

(There is one bodily substance that can appear as any of the three common states of matter—gaseous, fluid, and solid. (We’re not going to discuss plasma or non-Newtonian fluids or other such foolishness here. If there are bodily substances like that, I don’t know about them and don’t want to.) I leave the identification of the aforementioned bodily substance as an exercise for the student. But I digress.)

Another encounter with the word “booger” occurred when I was wanting to know what the little crusty bits that accumulate at the corners of your eyes are called. Most of my friends called them “eye boogers.” (Even my eye doctor did.) But I refused to get on board with that. I had been calling them “eye crunchies,” but, while it usually got the meaning across, it seemed too casual.

Thanks to Mr. Google, I found that the technical term is “gound,” though the little buggers are also known as “dried rheum.” Neither of those is useful for general conversation. (I can just picture myself remarking, “I had a lot of gound when I woke up this morning.” The response, of course, would be “Huh?” and probably a sad headshake. But I digress again.) I guess I have to stick with “eye crunchies.”

Speaking of boogers, one of my odder friends wrote a song called “Rhinotillexomania.” This is Latin, from the words for “nose,” “pick,” and “obsession.” You see where this is going. It was a sprightly little ditty that became a sing-along. (It contained the memorable line, “When it comes to filthy habits of the solitary sort/Rhinotillexomania is my second favorite sport.” But I digress some more.)

I was sorely tempted to call in sick to work one day and say that I was suffering from rhinotillexomania, but I worked in an office of intellectuals, most of whom had at least a smattering of Latin, so that was a no-go.

Speaking of boogers and illness, my husband recently alerted me to a study that says rhinotillexomania can be a contributing factor to Alzheimer’s disease. The theory is that you introduce bacteria and other unfriendlies into your nose that make their way to the brain and cause inflammation. It’s just a theory at this point. (There haven’t been any human studies yet. I imagine it would be hard to recruit test subjects who admit to obsessive nose-picking.)

Did I ever think I would be writing a blog post about boogers and nose-picking? I can’t say that I have. On the other hand, I wouldn’t have ruled it out. (Well, it’s evident that I didn’t.)