HUMOR IS NO FUN UNLESS YOU LAUGH
"ABSURDITY IS THE MOTHER OF TRUTH" (Albert Camus, I Think…)
Have you heard the news yet? Of course not. “True Press” is way ahead of the curve. Listen to this: the president of COSTCO announced that he would run for President. At this moment thousands of Chinese are dancing in the streets chanting “Young-Key Soon Wei -ping!” President Trump has already declared that he has elected not to participate.
End
The inventor of the dress code, I would say, was the French king Louis XIV. To be received by him, and he insisted on that, you had to wear a hat. He died in 1715, presumably wearing his hat. Since then people have slowly learned, mostly from their mothers, what to wear or not to wear, according to the occasion. That is why, until recently, people never showed up at five o’clock tea clad in shorts and wearing flip flop sandals without socks. But they do now. They also go to a symphony concert or to the opera in the same clothes they had worn in the morning to take out the trash. Restaurants and cruise ships still hang on to the code but they cannot enforce it. After all, those people are the customers. They bring in the money. In other words, the dress code concept is defunct. R.I.P.
Strange as it may sound, I have noticed that there is also an unwritten un-dress code. That code is universally recognized and, unlike the dress code, is strictly adhered to by all. One never sees people at a concert wearing just their underpants. But, come to think of it, I have noticed that bathing suits 
get smaller and smaller with each annual Sports Illustrated edition. Could it be that the un-dress code is also on the way out? Maybe I should make an effort to get rid of my excess tummy. This could become embarrassing.
I passed the “written” on the third try, just barely. But now I have a valid drivers license again. I also have nightmares. “You are driving,” I dream, “north on a one-way street. You want to turn west onto a divided two-way street but lane #1 is blocked by a crew of workmen digging a hole. The light turns from green to yellow and people are honking. A swarm of bycicles is on your right. What will you do?” Best answer? “Get out of your car, sink to your knees and cry for help.”
Good luck to all of you whose license will expire soon!
I suffer from a weird affliction: I just cannot sit still in a chair for very long before my legs cramp up. The only quick solution to this problem is to stand up. But when I do this during a party or similar gathering everybody thinks I want to go and then they all stand up and begin saying their goodbyes. I am surprised people still invite me. But that is a minor annoyance. Some time ago we had gone out for lunch. “Look,” my wife said, “they have your favorite Rigatonelle with roasted Macadamia nuts on the menu today!” True, true. I used to eat such things with gusto, in my time. But I ordered the Spaghetti with homemade meatballs that day. How to explain this abrupt switch? Well, let us just say that even George Washington had false teeth. You get the drift. My paradise days are over. I cannot even bite into a pear, let alone an apple.
More embarrassing are moments in restaurants when something gets stuck among my makeshift choppers. I cannot continue chewing because that hurts. My impulse is to take my finger and poke the offending material loose. But one does not do this, not even hidden behind a napkin. One excuses oneself and inquires where the restrooms are. This happens all too frequently, yet one does not explain anything to anybody although one is tempted to speak up when one is informed that an appointment was made to see the urologist.
It is all part of the lesson, namely that getting old is not exactly a lark but it does make you laugh. Which is the essence of a good life. And now let my try biting into this marshmellow.
There was standing room only on this streetcar in Munich, Germany. In the back near the exit stood two gravediggers, clad in black, mud encrusted overcoats. They were on their way home after the day’s work in the cemetery. An older gentleman had rung for a stop and was working his way toward the exit. In his opinion the two men were taking up too much room. As he finally got off he muttered something like ‘‘apparitions like these should not even allowed on the tram.’’ To which one of the men quipped: ”Don’t get excited, little man. We will get you too in the end.’’
We hear a lot about homelessness these days. Well, just three score and fifteen years ago, to put it gravely, the second world war had ended and I became a barefoot homeless refugee. That is because our house had gone up in flames and my shoes with it. Eventually things quieted down. Centers were set up where left-over German army clothing was collected for needy civilians. I went to see if I could get some shoes. There were piles of shoes, but only singles. I had been shot at alright, but I was lucky to still have both legs. So I did need a pair. I found a left boot that fit. But I could not find the mate. I came away looking like a clown: one black left boot and one brown right shoe. I walked around that way for quite a while. Moral of the story? When there is a famine the Devil will eat flies.
“Today we should really take a walk around the island. The weather is nice. We used to do this more often.” Thus she spoke. And right she was. But in those days we were still working, we still had extra time to spend.
Now we are retired. A paradox, you say? Keep reading. “We can’t today.” I answered. “I have an 11:30 with Dr. Goodman, and you have therapy at 4:15. And I still need to buy the fish for dinner. Maybe tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow” was the day the neighbor slipped in the kitchen. She was able to grab the phone and call 911. We went over to her house to comfort her. The ambulance arrived to take her to the ER. We followed, to look after her. She lived alone and had no family. It was way past noon when she was finally admitted and given a bed. We drove home, hungry and exhausted. No walk that day.
The next day was a Saturday. We had booked seats for a matinee performance and decided to clean up and go for lunch. Again no walk. Sunday was out because we had arranged for a little garden party in the afternoon. But first the patio furniture needed a scrubbing, which took up the time before lunch..
And so it goes, week after week – internist, dentist, urologist, cardiologist, hematologist, shopping, party, house cleaning and so forth. Round and round we go. I have now come up with a new maxim, a truly fundamental principle for seniors: Nothing, I say, takes more time than the effort to find time to do nothing.
We first learned about Parisian city parks when we saw the German poet Kurt Tucholsky’s little rhyme about Park Monceau, located in the 8th arrondissement. It is pretty here, he wrote, and there are no signs posted to tell you what is “verboten.” (A German would notice that). On our next visit to the city of light we went to see. We found a bench at the western end of the park facing the statue of the rogue poet and composer Henri de Musset, a bench, incidentally, located in a hot spot for internet connections which was convenient. All Paris parks, we found out, offer free hot spots but hearing about and finding one is only half the story. Unless he comes on foot or by bus the sight seer or internet surfer must first figure out where to park in this park, and that is not just a matter of nouns and verbs. Cars are verboten!
Tucholsky would not have liked that. But then he didn’t even have a car. Absurd as that sounds, not having a thing sometimes makes things easier.
It is rather typical for old people to have many medical issues. I am no exception. I find myself discussing ailments with friends. As a solution for one of my problems some one suggested that I wear a kilt. It was meant as a joke but it brought up a good question, namely what Scotsmen wear under the kilt. None of my friends had an answer which gave me a chance to show off because I knew.
It was the feast of San Fermin in Pamplona, celebrated with with vino tinto and some bull fighting. The day began with the encierro, the driving of the bulls from their pens to the rink. It was the custom to allow people into the rink and try to tease the young bulls. One of those brave would-be toreros was a Scotsman wearing a kilt. The fellow obviously thought that he could out-wrestle a bull.
He had only one try. Unceremoniously, the animal tossed him way up in the air. The man landed head first in the the sand with the kilt draped over his ears. No more speculation after that. This, friends, was the authentic way to get at the facts. And what was there to see? Nothing. Just more Scotsman.
Words, as any good dictionary will tell us, often have many meanings. Some words tell us the brutal truth; others are euphemisms, making the described matter fit for polite society. When Eliza, to Colonel Pickering’s amusement, encourages her racehorse she uses the real word, not a euphemism. She does not yell “Move your blooming posterior.” Fit for polite society as this blog is we shall call Eliza’s colorful expression the “a-word.” In Bavaria, where the following happened, the common folk speak German, but in a very earthy dialect. Needless to point out that they also prefer the a-word to the euphemism.
Apartment houses in Munich are typically four stories high and have flat roofs. People sometimes find their way up, spread a beach towel and take a sunbath. If you have chosen a house that is taller than the surrounding ones nobody can see you. Clothing, then, is optional. A lady friend of ours one day made use of that situation, luxuriating face down in the warm sun.
But there is also a lot of equipment on the roofs, boxes, pipes, conduits, drains and such. On that day a young mechanic had been sent up to test some valves. As he stepped out on the roof he must have been stunned. Yet, not showing a hint of embarrassment, he managed to express a most innocent, completely honest and guileless compliment. “Fräulein!” he almost shouted. “You have the most beautiful (a-word)!”
Given the young man’s lack of education and sophistication, I give him a lot of credit for taste in art. I suspect that in every human male’s soul there hides a Renoir or a Boucher.