I just turned 38 years old. In my mind, it’s a big age — a whopper! It’s one of those “gettin’ up there” ages, and pretty darn close to 40. Not to mention, it’s a big kid age. A milestone of sorts — one that signals I’m truly an adult (there’s really no point in denying it anymore). As such, I feel like there are certain things I should have accomplished by now, so the other night I made a list. So here it is … Things I should have done by 38 (but haven’t): • Written a perfectly awful novel that has no hope of ever being published — I thought for sure I would have two stinkers collecting dust by now, but it seems I’ve failed at failing this one. Which is a shame because I have some really terrible story ideas just waiting to never bore anyone to pieces. One would be titled, “Bacon fat and onion gravy” … it’s the story of a young Canadian whose only dream in life is to come to the South and learn how to cook in a greasy spoon diner. That’s the whole story right there.
Hack! Hack! Wheez! Wheez! Oh, to be sick
Oh, it sure took me back. All the hacking and wheezing. The cracking coughs that sounded like out-of-balance cement trucks tumbling blocks of granite. The heavy feeling in my chest like somebody was standing on my rib cage. No, like someone had taken up residence in my lungs. Maybe moths. Maybe squirrels. Clogging up my bronchial tubes, fluttering about, making me cough horrible, painful coughs. Good memories of childhood, it was. My daughter has bronchitis, and after two weeks of sounding like Barry White and beginning conversations with, “My darling I … HACK! HACK! WHEEZ! WHEEZ! (pound on chest),” I decided to go see the doctor myself. I hate admitting defeat, and that I can’t cure a cold with OJ and sheer willpower.
‘Great Recession’?!? How about ‘WeBePoor’ instead
I’ve been reading a lot of news stories lately that keep referring to our economic doldrums as, “The Great Recession.” “The Washington Post reports today on a new study highlighting the effects of the ‘Great Recession’ on marriage,” read one such piece, and still another told us, “How to throw the perfect ‘Great Recession’ party with only a few cabbage stalks, a half-used candle and a dusty bottle of peppermint schnapps.” (Or something to that effect.) The more I see it, the more it bugs me that such a tremendous, devastating, unrelenting period in our nation’s (and the world’s) history has such an anemic and pitiful name. “The Great Recession.” Phooey, I say. What kind of name is that? If you want people to stand up and notice — to really shake in their boots and then go trembling into the world ready to do something about it — we need a name that will make the hair on a fat man’s back standup straight. Something that strikes the right balance of fear, trepidation and doom. Like “The Great Morass.” Or “Crappyville.”
What foulness seeps from the kitchen? Ah … homemade dog food!
“It’s the most beautiful day outside,” my wife said this past weekend. The windows to the house were open and she was on the porch eating ice cream and doing things Floridians love to do in January when the rest of the country is shoveling snow. No wonder people hate us. “You can even start to smell spring,” she continued, “which is why I feel especially bad that we’re stinking up the street with the stench of that dog food.” Homemade dog food, thank you. “Can you really smell it outside?” I asked, standing over my special concoction, a clothespin pinching off my nostrils. “Well, I could right before I passed out. Some of the trees have started wilting.”