Where did my fun days all go?

So you know how weekends work? Friday afternoon is kind of wonderful, and maybe a little bit chilling. As the work day draws to a close, you're on the verge of beginning a weekend that goes on forever and ever. And it hasn't even started. It's like you've got this wonderful dinner in front of you. And you can't wait to dig in. But there's a delicious appetizer first. And you haven't even started the appetizer. You haven't even had anything to drink. And it's all in front of you.

Now, of course, something could happen to stop you from enjoying the beautiful dinner. Something could always stop nearly everything that's really good and fun, which is why I knock on wood quite a bit (with my right hand only -- one of the few bits of religious dogma that my father passed on to me . . . leading me to believe that perhaps his lack of religiousity when it came to Judaism might have been fed by some kind of deeper faith in paganism) I mean, you could not have your dinner because somebody at the table could pass out. Or you could have left the stove on and smell smoke coming from the kitchen. Or the phone could ring.

Actually, that's why I'll never make baked chicken with breadcrumbs, mashed potatoes and string beans again. That was the meal that was on the table, just before I called Ben, his sister and his mother down to dinner. The phone rang. And about six hours later I was in Connecticut hearing that my father had died. So you shouldn't ever really count on the dinner. Or most certainly the desert.)

But let's say, just for argument sake, that the dinner actually get served. And you eat the appetizer, the main course, the desert and then you've eaten too much and you don't feel very good.

That's how the weekend goes. The last few hours of work on Friday is like sitting at the table waiting to start. Then Friday night is the appetizer. You haven't actually consumed any of the weekend and you're already having a good time. The main course takes you through all day Saturday. Sunday morning begins with the last few bites of the main course (which, if you're me, will be the stuff that you like the best, because you saved it for last. If you're Ben's Mom, it will probably be the thing you liked least because you tended to eat the best stuff first). Then Sunday until about five o'clock is the desert. And then, Monday is just around the corner, just one night away (Ben used to ask, "When will it be tomorrow?" And we'd tell him, "After this night.") And when Monday is ready to pounce on you, like some kind of invisible rabid dog who is about to leap out of the shrubbery and grab you by the neck, it's hard to have much fun. I mean you can pretend the dog's not there. But he is. Or you can get cngrossed in stupid television shows, in which case you forget about the dog until he's even closer to pouncing. But there's no way out.) So, Sunday night is like the unpleasant feeling after eating too much.

Only that metaphor breaks down pretty quickly on slight consideration. When you think about it, Sunday night is probably more like getting up from the table when you're still hungry and know you don't have any more food coming for a while.

The preceding observations about the weekend actually stand in for my attitude toward any stretch of time. We're just finishing winter vacation. Sandy, Ben's sister, is starting school again tomorrow. Ben heads back to college on Tuesday. And Ben's Mom and I have lots of work to do this week.

This vacation was a little better than two weeks long. The first few days (until the first Monday of the vacation) is Friday night. Beautiful and bounteous with no end in sight. Then we were in the Saturday of the vacation until about four days ago. We've been in the Sunday morning of the vacation until a few days ago. And yesterday, just about sundown, we merged into the Sunday night of the vacation. Only in this case, it was a very pleasant night, so I saved up all the unpleasant feelings for today. Ben's Mom and Ben are playing with a car racing set as I write this. And it's hard for me to understand how they can be having fun, when the clock is ticking so loudly that it drowns out the sound of the music (what music? I don't know. But don't let the absence of reality stop a perfectly decent turn of phrase. There must be music someplace that the ticking can drown out.)

So, I think I'm going to try to break free from this totally unproductive approach and go play with Ben and Ben's Mom and the cars, which sound really cool and maybe we can get up some kind of a collection. They're Hot Wheels. I never had Hot Wheels. I did, however, have absolutely the coolest racing cars in the world set up on a table in the cellar of my parents' house and I could spend hours upon hours racing one car against the other. It might have been nice if there had been other kids around, but on the whole I had a great time giving personalities to the cars and enjoying the competition between them. The Batmobile car looked like it would be the fastest, but it was slower than this big (meaning about a sixteenth of an inch longer than the Batmobile) brown vehicle that looked really slow, but was a speed demon and could beat all the other cars, even though they had previously abused him for being too slow to race anybody rather like Rudolph the Red-nosed reindeer before he saved the day. Or, at the time. me.

It strikes me that the forgoing is rather a morbid bit of prose, and I suspect that some of you may turn to this corner of the world for a laugh, and I've depived you of that. (By the way, Ben and Ben's Mom are now playing some kind of very cool game with the cars that involves Ben saying, "Motors," then Ben's Mom says, "Motors Away," then there's a sound of cars moving and a crash and they both applaud. Hard to tell from here why the crash provokes a Gomez Adams like response, but it sounds like fun and I've written myself into wanting to join them.)

So, what can I do, without spending much more time, to lighten this thing up a bit?

For lack of anything else, following is a poem I wrote before most people who are 20 years younger than me were born. I don't love it, but at least it doesn't deal with aging or the passing of time:
-------------------------------------------------------
Hitchhiking to Saginaw with Mephisto
by Richard Greene

One day while I was visiting in Italy, far from home
I came across a wishing well, in a hidden corner of Rome
I wished the wish that many wish who are in the human race
That I could be transported to some finer, better place
I didn't look so closely at the image 'neath water level
If I had I would have seen a bas relief of the devil
Six times I put in a penny -- no answer, but I'd wish again.
The seventh time it was the charm -- poof -- I found myself in Michigan.

Finishing thoughts

There's a pretty good episode of Seinfeld, in which Jerry confronts a car rental counter clerk who has no cars available to fulfill Jerry's reservation. He points out to her that taking the reservation is really only half the deal. The more important part, he says, is actually having a car.

While I've always thought Seinfeld was a funny show, rarely did it's star's "observational" humor ever go to a topic which I think has such universal application. Everyplace I go (including in my own little house), I see phenomena that reminds me of this Seinfeld episode.

Take bill-paying for example. There are times in my house when hours are spent in the process of something we inaccurately call "paying bills." The truth is that the real activity is simply writing out checks, putting them in envelopes, putting stamps on the envelopes, putting return addresses on the envelopes and sealing the envelopes. Clearly, all this envelope handling isn't quite the same as paying the bills. Paying the bills actually involves mailing the checks.

That might not sound like a profoundly difficult step. But just take a look at our dining room table (not right this second -- we're not expecting company). What will you find there? I'll tell you. You'll find a glass half-filled with water, some vitamins, a fruit bowl with fruit in various stages of ripening and decaying. . . . and you'll find unmailed envelopes containing checks.

Trust me, the nice people from Mastercard differentiate between actually receiving a check and assurances that it is written. Our process doesn't even qualify for the hackneyed "Oh, sorry, the check is in the mail." You just don't get anyplace explaining that the check is on the table next to the vitamins.

This is just one example. Actually, if you had trouble computing that yourself, then you've been skimming. I only say "this is just one example," because it's a way of getting to another example, without having herky-jerky prose. Transitions are always difficult, both in relationships and writing.

And now, in the interest of making an acute statement about transitions, I've blown the last one and there's no good way for me to get to another example of what I was talking about in the first place. I could say "Meanwhile." That word almost always works when I can't come up with some way to get from one thought to another, both in spoken and written prose. In fact, that seems like just the ticket.

Meanwhile, I've taken US Airways quite a bit lately, and I've found that their wonderful little kiosks that give you a boarding pass have the same kind of difficulty differentiating between activity and result. It tells you, after you've swiped your credit card that it is "searching" for your reservation. On the whole, this "searching" process seems like it's none of my business. I don't really want to know that it's searching. I want to know that it's actually "finding" my reservation. Note to US Airways: Please change your kiosk programming to read: "Please wait while I find your reservation."

There's more both from the outside world and my own life. Here's one of each.

From my own life: We seem to have difficulties with manilla envelopes. We use manilla envelopes from time to time (not in any kind of zealous fashion. We are not compulsive users of manilla). Nearly every time we need a manilla envelope, however, there are none to be found. We search for a little bit until Ben's Mom and I have a little fight about it, which is resolved generally with a few moments of tension and then the settling realization that manilla envelopes aren't important enough to either of us to risk disturbing the peace and equanimity we both crave. And then I order more manilla envelopes from Staples.

And here's the disconnect. When I order the envelopes I believe, in my heart, that I have now procured them. Actually, all I've done is ordered them, paid for them, and eventually picked them up from the doorman who doesn't want the box crowding up his little closet. But it's the next step that's problematic. Frankly, I don't know what the next step is. All I know is it doesn't lead to actually having a single damn manilla envelope the next time we need one. Perhaps one of us chronically mistakes manilla envelopes for a dead plant and we throw them away (See "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat," for insights into a similar malady). Or perhaps one of us is playing some kind of a joke on the other one. Or perhaps there are night visitors (yikes) who sneak into our apartment for the express purpose of stealing stationery supplies.

Don't know. Only know that this is the same kind of deal.

As for the last real world example, the one that probably give me the greatest level of agitation takes place in restaurants, where the server confuses the ordering of the food with the delivery of the food. If given a choice between these two operations, I'd far rather that someone bring me a random sampler of foods than someone who takes my carefully considered order and then brings nothing to the table for an indeterminate period of time. Once, Ben's Mom and I were in a restaurant where the hungry gap between order and food took so long that we inquired of the restaurant manager, who informed us that, actually, the waiter had quit after taking our order. It seemed odd that nobody else in the restaurant thought about picking up on the waiter's unfinished work. It also troubled me somewhat, not knowing what caused the waiter to quit. I could develop mental images ("Listen, Boss, I'm not going to give those nice folks at Table 3 that fish. It's putrifying.")

In truth, this is just my idea of a funny thing for the waiter to have been saying, that I just came up with right now. Mostly in order to use the word putrifying. I don't recall what we thought at the time, except to hope that the waiter hadn't left on account of something we said.

You wanna come back home. . .

MAIL USED TO BE so special when I was little. There were actually two deliveries a day. At some point, it was cut to one. But the arrival of the mailman was a big deal in any day (note: they were all men in those days. If I were speaking of current days, I would most certainly describe the job as that of the postal carrier. But if you had told the eight-year-old me that the "postal carrier" has arrived, I wouldn't have known what you were talking about.)

In college, mail was the high point of the day. Even as I approached the rows and columns of mailboxes I'd try to guess whether mine seemed to be slightly bulgier than the rest, thus indicating that it had something inside. My grandmother often wrote to me, always ending her letters with the helpful admonition, "dress accordingly." Over the years, her letters grew somewhat depressing in content, and I wasn't so excited about reading them. But I'd sure like to get one now. (Actually, she was born in 1903 -- same year the Wright Brothers took off from Kitty Hawk -- and she lived well into her 90s, so I've got nothing to kick about on that front.)

I still love the arrival of the mail. There might be magazines, or a check, or that long-awaited letter from the Nobel Committee (I don't know quite what I've done to deserve the Peace Prize, but I live in a state of eternal expectation, and maybe the Nobel people have noticed something about my activities that somehow eluded me, but made me eligible for the Prize.)

And college-related arrivals (fat envelope? thin envelope?) have gotten my kids interested, at least for a while.

But it feels to me that e-mail has taken the wind out of the postal carrier's sails. Most of the really interesting news from friends and colleagues comes to me that way, not in a neatly sealed envelope. And I suspect that for many people -- who get their checks direct deposited, don't love magazines and lack the capacity to fantasize about the Nobel Peace Prize -- the mail has become little more than a bothersome way to get bills and junk.

I feel sorry for them. It's really rather lovely to get a little sealed surprise every day. Doesn't matter whether there's anything worthwhile. It's the surprise that counts. And e-mail just can't take its place, thanks to the frequency of arrival. If I were to get up that little extra churn of stomach acid that signals pleasant anticipation (what? you feel anticipation elsewhere?) every time I checked e-mail, there'd be a little gastrically-induced hole in the cavity that once exhibited my naval (a naval destroyer!).

OK, here's a poem I wrote about a year ago. As I may have mentioned some time ago, getting poetry published isn't something I've ever pursued, particularly. But this venue is pretty satisfying.

UNTITLED

Hickory dickory dock, the mouse ran up the clock,
Be careful little boy,
Of that thing they call
Unconditional love

For when the clock strikes one (or two or three) down you’ll come
If you’re not good
Enough to deserve
Unconditional love

But the solution is simple; it’s clear as can be
Wash your hands,
Clean your room
Learn your ABCs

And when you’re in the way, anyone’s way
Move along fast
And remember
To put your shoes in your room.

It’s worth it, though, tell yourself that
Because you’re saving love
Like the load of pennies
In your glass piggy bank

You can never open your piggy bank of course
Because it would require
Smashing the glass
Into a million sharp shards

But you could, you could, if ever you should
Need pennies of love
(Even nickels or quarters)
Then it would be OK.

Tell yourself that, as you pray by your bed
That it’s good to be good
And the pennies
Will always be there

Tell yourself that, for better or worse.
Although it’s a lie
Of course.

For those who wait. . .

THE PERFECT is the enemy of the good, they say. And that's why this blog has been unattended for months. I didn't want to knock out a quick little poem ("Roses are redish, violets are bluish, I feel guilty, because I am Jewish."). And I didn't want to aim at short-style prose that makes up in illusory profundity for what it lacks in real meaning ("Time is what you lose when you have too much of it.")

As a result, I wrote nothing. Not nothing, really. I've been writing a lot of stuff about states and cities and Walt Disney, which is much of what I do to make a living. But nothing bloggish.
Apparently, there are two or three readers who actually noticed my absence. This either makes me feel good for myself (in that I must have been writing something that someone would want to read) or bad for them. Either way, I hesitate to say I'm back, because that implies a certain amount of permanence, which I can't promise. I can't even promise that I just spelled permanence properly.

Still, I am chock full of things I've been wanting to write about in this space. And so, without much further clearing of my literary throat, I want to write about how much I need to be defragged.

By this I do not mean that I have shrapnel in my hide (actually, I was eligible for military conscription the very last year of the draft for the Vietnam War. The lottery number that came up for my birthdate was reasonably high, and there was never much of a chance of my being called up. This was, I thought at the time, a good thing. What startles me, on reflection, is how little I thought of it.)

No, by defragged (still with me?) I mean that I want to have all the spaces between my synapses cleared out, in the same way that one does with a computer (which may or may not have synapses, but does have something very much like them, only made out of some kind of non-carbon-based material).

My problem is pretty straightforward. I spend a great part of my day listening to people or reading what people have to say. And I have something over a thousand built-in knee-jerk responses (or, more precisely, mind-jerk, but there's an implication to that newly coined phrase that sounds a trifle harsh). It's probably a little tricky comprehending the forgoing, but examples should help.

Let's say someone uses the word "curiously," in a sentence. A perfectly good English word, right? But I immediately have to think "curiously glancing at his toupee," because that's a line from a Simon and Garfunkle song, the name of which I can't recall. So, you say "curiously," and I think "glancing at his toupee."

Or let's say that somebody asks you if you want to do something, and in my presence you respond by saying, "I'm game." I spontaneously -- and unstoppably-- think "So he shot her."

This is from a not-very-funny joke in which the hunter enters the woods, and spends many hours in search any kind of game. He'll take lions or panthers or cheetahs. As long as it's wild game. He gets increasingly frustrated. And then, he enters a clearing. It's the most beautiful clearing he's ever seen, with streams of sun bathing a cushion of soft grass in a light that imbues the red, yellow and golden flowers with an unbelievable luminiscence, as though the light shone from within. He's struck by the beauty of it all. And then, from the other side of the clearing, strides out the most beautiful young woman he's ever seen. As she approaches the middle of the clearing, she disrobes. In the middle of the clearing, she announces to him. "I'm game. "
So he shot her.

See?

This would be OK, if the little voice within could keep it's mouth shut. But it's seldom quiet. You say "I see," and I think "So, he picked up his hammer and saw." (The end of a little jokelet about a blind man.)

I figure that if I could only stop ("in the name of love") these bits and pieces of language from interrupting my mental processes, I could get a lot more thinking done in a day. Just imagine "there's no heaven") how much more pleasant my life could be.

Not that my life isn't pretty pleasant as is.

I was just about to give an example of how pleasant my life is, when I stopped myself. This is because I really believe there is an evil eye out there which will punish me if I admit to being happy or relax in the notion that something is going well. (The same, by the way, could happen to you, so better watch it if I say "You're looking pretty good," because you may be just a breath away from awful disfigurement).

The roots of this kind of thing lie not just deep in me, but deep within the cultural heritage of much of mankind. This is why we knock on wood. And why many Jewish people (but fewer and fewer as time goes on) say "Kayn Ahora." That's the transliteration, at least. People use it to throw the evil eye off their path, after something positive has been said.

I'll be back.

Thursday night at 10:31 and 24 seconds

One of the best presents I've ever received is my "atomic watch." Through some mechanism that I don't entirely understand, it gets radio waves from someplace which ensures that it always registers the accurate time, within a fraction of a second. Frankly, I do not think there is anything genuinely atomic about it. You could probably stack a thousand of these things in a big pile and throw a match in and that wouldn't make a big bang and a mushroom cloud.

But it does genuinely appear to work, and I love it.

Among other things, I really enjoy being able to answer requests for the time with: "It's ten twenty two and fifteen seconds." And after saying this, I then snap my finger when that particular exact time is precisely right. I've been doing this pretty regularly for about a year now, and I am puzzled by the fact that nobody seems to notice the absolutely valueless precision of my answer. Nobody has ever commented. Which leads to the clear validation of my theory that pretty much nobody ever pays much attention to anybody. Regardless, I kind of enjoy the sense of valueless precision. I leave it to the Freudians in the crowd to figure out why (if course, sometimes an atomic watch is an atomic watch).

Why do I bring all this up? As Tevye says, "I'll tell you." (Followed by "it's a tradition," but that has no relevance here.) The reason I bring this up is because I wanted to post to my blog today, but didn't have anything particularly potent to say, and so when it came time to write the Title of this entry, I just put in the day and time.

If anyone reading this can't guess from the forgoing that I used my atomic watch to see the time, then please leave the room. (And if anybody actually left any rooms upon reading that last, then I am deeply concerned, and when those of you who actually vacated the premises because of me return to these words, please call some kind of a hotline, because this kind of overly zealous responsiveness to the written word could make it dangerous for you to read the morning paper or for that matter a bottle of aspirin. What's in my mind is that anyone who so immediatley responds to absurd requests, would read the instructions on an aspirin bottle that say, "take two every four hours," and do so. This affliction (which I believe Oliver Sachs would write about if it actually existed), could make it incredibly dangerous to read advertisements in the papers or pass by a pizza shop ("you've tried all the rest, now try the best," could lead such an unfortunate soul on an endlessly fattening journey from pizza parlor to pizza parlor, ultimately exploding -- like the computer in a particularly memorable episode of Star Trek -- with pizza shrapnel spraying out in all directions and the doctor saying, "He's dead, Jim.")

I think it's time to go to bed now, and I'm about to do so. It's critical to me that before I go to sleep, I have enough time to 1) chat with Katherine before she falls asleep 2) watch some television 3) read for a half an hour or more and 4) listen to the radio for a bit. This is my practice and my habit and it works for me.

It occurs to me, however, that my just-described bed-time regimen seems to fit all too neatly with the kind of person who would care about knowing, and telling other people, the time to the excact second. And I need to give this a little bit of thought before I expose my inner psyche any more thoroughly to your prying eyes.

It does make me think of one more thing (actually that makes me think of about eight more things. . . but almost everything I see or hear makes me think of about eight more things, which is both a blessing and a curse. It's very nice, in that I'm never bored. On the other hand, there is a danger of my thoughts engulfing me like some kind of self-eating Hydra.) But the one more thing is this. When Ben was a little boy, before he could tell time, he would sometimes ask how much time remained on a car trip. Saying "an hour," or "twenty five minutes," was meaningless.

This was concurrent with a time when Ben loved watching the Barney the Dinosaur television show (prior to Barney's turning all Hollywood). So, we'd tell it. It's three Barnies, for an hour and a half. Etc. This may have been even better than an atomic watch.

As I was saying.

July 26, 2006


It's a curious paradox, as they say in the Fantastiks. When I go to any kind of theatrical event, I'm always picturing myself somehow being called onto the stage ("Is there anyone here who knows all the lines?" "You betcha!") Once astride the footlights (?) I quickly demonstrate to the rapt audience that they're witnessing the second coming of Ruby Keeler in Forty Second Street. (Which is a most peculiarly mixed metaphor when you think about it . . . the whole idea of Ruby Keeler as the Messiah is kind of chilling, notwithstanding the fact that it would establish tapdancing as a religious sacrament in the New, New Testament). My daydream then goes onto the next day, when the headline in Variety reads: "Man In Audience Boffo at Box Office!"

[Of course, one of the great difficulties I've always had is that I edit my own fantasies. . . and the above fantasy only leads me to wonder about the inconsistency of creating a box office stir, since this particular story doesn't promise any kind of recurring part -- and even if it did, by the time the show would have been over, the box office would be closed. This is why I try not to fantasize about good things too much. . . it only leads to a heightened awareness that really amazingly wonderful outcomes are like an oasis on the other side of a mine field.]

Anyhow, the paradox is this: Even as I like picturing myself up there on the stage, I'm absolutely involvaphobic of people from the production who ask audience members to come up onto a stage. It's just like having waiters sing Happy Birthday to you in a crowded restaurant (note to good friends: please, don't arrange for this).

So, the other day we went to this off-Broadway production. And there was an instrumentalist producing before-the-play entertainment. And he wandered out into the audience, playing his guitar loudly. I was sitting on the aisle seat. (Note to my grandmother, who I like to think is currently playing gin rummy someplace in Heaven: See, Mommer? I sit on aisle seats and always check to see where the exits are.) And the guy playing his guitar stops in front of me. I try not to make eye contact. He plays a little more loudly. I look at my fingernails, as though something interesting may have grown beneath them in the last few minutes. He speaks to me, in an unavoidable fashion. I look up. Trapped! "Why don't you scat with me?" he asks.

"Scat?"

"Yeah, scat with me. Come on. It'll be fun."

"No thanks," say I, ever polite, "I'm not really the scat type."

"Yeah, man. You can do it."

But I can't. I say something about not being "scatological." I think this is a not-so-funny riposte. He thinks I'm speaking another language. Nobody hears anyhow, because the guitar playing is so loud. Frankly, I'm not sure what scatting is, except for some memories of Scatman Crothers from various talk shows late in his life, and even more vague memories of how he could do this fun kind of musical riffing. Or Danny Kaye, who I believe did scat. And Bing Crosby. Alright, alright, I can hear you now (actually I can't, but you knew that), I do sort of know what scatting is. Or at least what it was when movies and tv were in black and white. But I have no idea in the world of how to do it. I suggest to him that I'm disinclined to have anything much to do with guitarists. He doesn't hear me. Nobody else does either. Finally, it's clear to him that he should take "no thank you" for an answer.

Whereupon this guitar player, whom I am sure is a swell guy, and whom I would probably like in real life, decides to turn from me to the person on my left, who happens to be my wife, Katherine. Inasmuch as I had proven myself "no fun at all," which wouldn't surprise many of the people who think they know me pretty well, I wouldn't have thought that this young musician would immediately turn to Mrs. No Thank You. But he does.

I need to back up a little here. While, I'm unhappy with waiters who sing happy birthday to you, Katherine -- who is genuinely one of the most even tempered souls in the world -- would like to see them all sent to some kind of Devil's Island for wait staff ("Hi, my name is Jeffry and I'll be in life-long pain for you tonight.")

She was not so pleasant with this fellow, which brought me some pleasure. But she gritted her teeth, and sort of scatted in her way for him, only to have him milk the audience for applause for her, which -- trust me on this -- did not make things much better.

The rest of the evening was far more pleasant.

Back to the beginning

July 21, 2006

Ben has some kind of a way to figure out the geographic location (roughly) of people who seem to be looking at this blog. He discovered that there are apparently people in Connecticut signing on -- doubtless attracted by my reference to Seth G. Haley (and who, I ask you, can ever hear enough about Seth G. Haley? Or West Haven High School?)

Anyhow, that was rather exciting. It does present me with a new responsiblity, however. I fear that if I now have a readership that has expanded beyond my wife, son, daughter (and one friend of my son who I believe is reading this material out of some kind of misbegotten sense of politeness . . . . in the way some forester might hang around in the woods a lot, in order to protect the feelings of trees that may have fallen in the woods and deserve to be heard, beyond a philosophic certainty). The responsiblity, as you might intuit, would be to keep those Seth G. Haley and West Haven High School stories coming.

Were I to genuinely attempt this feat, it would represent a subtle, yet potent, irony. Here, I asked Ben to put a picture of Seth G. Haley on the site, in lieu of my own. The next step was to start the blog by disclosing that fact, and explaining a little about Seth G. Haley. And now, it would appear, I am perilously close to writing as endlessly as is humanly possible about Seth G. Haley. All of which, were I to attempt it, would lead me to put my picture on the blog, and change the name of the blog to "Seth G Haley's blog." [I suppose that perhaps I could start using his name on credit cards then, but that seems like the kind of thing that not only lands you in jail, but also in one of those funny little "Stupid Bad Guys" articles that the Readers Digest seems to love these days.

This is not intended to cast any stones in the direction of the Pleasantville (honest to goodness) headquarters of the Readers Digest. In fact, up to a certain point in my life I believed that practically everything of value I learned came from the Readers Digest, with the exception of the history and biology I learned in 7th grade (go ahead -- ask me to name a bone in your body. I can do it unless it happens to be the scapula, in which case I'll be confused as to whether that's your collar bone or something else). Also, I think I learned a fair amount from the annual holiday present of the World Almanac, a book I continue to love dearly. And I learned a fair amount from my parents. But, the Readers Digest was right up there.

I learned, for example, that if you're attacked by a bear you should play dead, and the bear will likely leave you alone (for more, see the RD article, "ATTACKED BY A GRIZZLY"). I learned not to take any chances of getting into trouble in school (see the RD article: "High School Hi-Jinks that can Haunt Your Life"). I learned about alliteration (see, again, "High School Hi-Jinks that can Haunt your Life.")

I loved the Laughter, the Best Medicine. And I had dreams -- no kidding here -- about finding huge piles of unread Reader's Digests in some previously undiscovered attic space.

These days I don't seem to find that the Digest holds my attention as much, but Sandy seems to really like it. That makes me happy. Goodness knows, if that turns out to be my legacy, I'll be a trifle disappointed. But it's a start.