Life Advice – Page 2 – HUMOR IS NO FUN UNLESS YOU LAUGH

The Ghost

When I was young I was a master of planning things that, every one agreed, were impossible, couldn’t be done. I would then attempt to do it anyway and sure enough: every one was right. It could indeed not be done.

One such project was to cross the Danish border near Flensburg and gorge myself on Danish butter and cheese, things that were then not available in Germany. That was just one of those things that could not be done. One could say that I failed on this one. But it is only part of the story. I also learned something. You and I may not believe in ghosts. But some people, adults, do. They avoid cemeteries at night and insist they have actually seen a ghost. At the cemetery. Very early one morning before daylight. How can they say that with a straight face?

Easy, because they are right. They did see such a creature walking slowly from grave to grave. He was wearing a black pelouse and a wide brimmed black hat. The young woman who reported this saw him only from behind as she came around the corner on her bicycle. She was so frightened that she jumped off her bike and ran the rest the way on foot.

How can I be so sure of all that? Easy, too. I was there when it happened. I got stuck on my trip to Flensburg without a penny. All I had was a return train ticket home. I had slept that night in an empty rail car. It was still too early for the first train home. Good thing I had this black overcoat over my shoulders and that big felt hat to keep my head warm. It was cool that morning as I passed the time reading grave stones.

I know a thing or two about ghosts, you see? And I also understand what they mean about hell freezing over.

Hello, Francois Rene!

My greeting goes to Chateaubriand. Not the steak cooked in butter but the author of Memoires d’outre-tomb. Which he published at age 80 to tell us wise things from beyond the grave. I also am thinking of telling people wise things, but I prefer to do that from this side of the tomb. Life, he is said to have suggested, is spent hovering round our tomb. This is much too dark and morbid. Who wants to hear such pessimistic memoirs? I will write a book and call it Mémoires de ce côté-ci.

I already started. But it is not as easy as I thought. I find myself telling young people: “Wait ’till you are my age. You will be a lot older then.” Good Lord, Chateaubriand could have said that. Or Yogy Berra. Was I not going to be more positive, more life-affirming? I must try to do better.

“Life is a dream?” Don’t get hung up on that idea. It isn’t. It is more like a roller coaster. Scream all you want. It will not stop for you. You are stuck.” Here I go again, still too morbid.

“Always scan the obituaries. Make it a Sunday morning habit. That way you will start the week in a good mood, happy that you once more did not get listed.” Now that’s much better. At least I mentioned the word ‘happy.’ How about this one: “At your age, don’t pinch pennies, Man. Pinch dollars! You can’t take them with you, no?” Trouble is he may not have any left. Scratch that.

O.k. “Some times you may not feel good. That is no crime. Just remember that you will not feel better until you feel better.” Now that one I will let stand. People will study this and write dissertations about it.

When we were children we were told always to speak the truth. Bad idea. I still remember my supervisor telling me sixty years ago not to be so definite when discussing matters of business with customers. This line of thought translates into a new rule: “Never tell it like it is.” Example: you refer to this person over there as ‘an old woman.’ That’s a no-no however. What if she hears you? It Is bad enough to be a woman. But an old one? Never. So what do you do? You make her younger, of course. But how? Simple. The English language has one word which like the Roman god Janus has two faces. This Janus-word is ‘older.’ On the side of truth the word means’older than old.’ Flip the word over and it means ‘younger than old.’ In this simple way we convert an old woman into an older lady, i.e. a younger one.

In my Memoirs from this side of the to tomb I shall be bold and challenge Francois Rene by declaring that life is spent hovering round the truth and having a good time doing it, staying this side of the tomb.

On Canine Intelligence

Dogs are smart. Dogs are a nuisance, too. Topsy, our dog, chewed off the spines of all my dictionaries, for example. And he leaves his “output” everywhere and I step in it and my wife gets mad because I drag it all over the house.

Then he died. As I come home from the veterinarian, alone, sobbing, I find still another little heap in the patio. A piece of paper sticks out, like a Chinese fortune cookie. I pull it out. It says: “Eliminatio non est crimen. Just pick it up and toss it, Man! See ya. Topsy”

I DO have the strangest dreams.

The Falcons

For a small town we have a splendid team, the Falcons. I myself am not much of a sports fan but my wife understands the game and has been known to assure players that “they can do it” from her couch.

But that is alright. We are solid fans, nevertheless. The Falcons are “our” team. When our team is playing we are tuned in. When the team is doing well we are exstatic, especially when Crawfit does his his famous two three pointers in a row. Pendergrast and Voykovitch on the attack, handing the ball to each other in such quick succession that just watching makes you dizzy. And then the groan when the ball hits the rim and the other team gets the rebound. Ah, the joys and the agonies of living with your team. Right or wrong, it is your team. Not just Crawfit and Pendergrast and Voykovitch but Jared Browne as well, and Ishmael N’Bakuba, this other great talent the commentators talk about a lot. Those men, and a few others not named here are our team, “a number of persons associated in some joint action”, as the dictionary defines the term. Those men as a group were the ones we rooted for.

But the season ended and Browne retired. He was the oldest. Crawfit was traded. Voykovitch went to Miami. Pendergrast ended up in Oklahoma. They were obviously no longer “associated in some joint action .” I forgot what happened to N’Bakuba. Does not matter, though. One man can hardly be called a team. In other words, our team had ceased to exist.

We had never considered that “our team” and “Falcons” were not identical, not one and the same thing. But actually the Falcons are a separate, a different “team,” an abstract corporate entity, a club called Falcons. The Club is a business entity, a corporation. It never shoots anything, let alone baskets. It may shoot itself in the foot by trading the wrong player. I cannot get myself to root for an abstraction. Some will now accuse me of lacking this imponderable thing, the team spirit. But then I never rooted for the abstract entity called Falcons. I rooted for the team of players I admired. And that team is gone, dissolved. And with it goes my team spirit.

It seems, though, that I was taking trivial things too seriously. Because the Falcons club is still alive. Like a damaged lizard that grows a new tail the Club is growing a new team. They are working on it. To give up on them now would be untimely. And I was just unteamely uprooted.

Plastics

The car we drive looks as if it were made of nothing but steel and glass. But that is not true. A significant part of an automobile is plastic. What we wear may look like wool or cotton or silk. But it is not. My fine Calvin Klein raincoat is made of polyester, 100 % as the label explains. Polyester fiber is indestructible. That used to be a virtue. We now understand that indestructible means that the material is not biodegradable, hence may be a menace to the environment. My coat will not be forgotten. It will be around for a long, long time. There is something ominous about that thought.

In my youth we always bought a bouquet of flowers along with the food for the dinner table. Decorating one’s home with fake flowers, while cheaper in the long run, was a decided no-no, considered the epitome of bad taste. It just was not done. Not so any more. Artificial flowers are now so perfectly crafted that at first glance you cannot tell fake from real unless you touch. In bank lobbies, hospital corridors, restaurants, and other public places fake greens and flowers are normal decor these days. One often sees signs posted that warn housekeeping staff not to water “the plants.” Artificial flowers, being made of polyester, are of course also indestructible. They are a good investment. They keep a long time.

Somehow this makes me think of cemeteries. Never was there a sadder sight than a new grave covered with wilted and rotten flowers. I will leave instructions that I want a huge arrangement of polyester flowers on my grave. They will last 100 years, they say. Cemetery strollers-by will stop and look who is buried in that indestructible grave. My way to intimate immortality.

Some plastics, Teflon for example, are particularly useful in my daily life. I no longer burn as much of what I cook as I did before I got my Teflon pots and pans. I have now advanced to the next level of culinary expertise. I found out that I can melt plastic spoons and other utensils into humorous shapes simply by leaning them against hot burner elements.

Plastics are so common in our lives that even children understand their many uses. On a road trip with friends the three women in the front seat were discussing the merits of different fabrics for women’s intimate wear. Eight year old Mike in the back seat was following the conversation with great interest. One of the women said that she liked silk best. No, said the second, it has to be cotton. Before his mother had a chance to declare her preference little Mike felt obliged to join the debate: “We got plastic!” he informed the party.

The Denier

This man we knew had a sharp mind. Unlike many other old men he had kept his youthful and optimistic outlook. Although he understood that the world was full of problems he was not going to let that bother him. There had been fears of worldwide tuberculosis outbreaks, for example. He maintained that a remedy would be found and he was right. Though not completely eradicated, the disease was eventually controlled. When it became obvious that our cities were going to be choked by exhaust fumes he predicted that within years cleaner engines would be developed and he was right on that, too. In time he convinced himself that most, if not all, our fears and problems were in our minds, not anchored in reality.

This attitude of seeing no evil, hearing no evil made life easy for him. If you brought up the subject of, say, water shortage he would say that it was nonsense, that there was plenty of water, that the problem was government overregulation. If you told him that sea levels were rising he would laugh and tell you that comparative data collected over the last hundred years show nothing of the sort. Forests dying on account of acid rain? Yeah, that’s a problem he might admit. All it takes to correct that, he would suggest, was tougher enforcement of existing regulations. The corals are dying? Well, that is nature’s effort to balance things out in the face of ocean water changes. The Pink Eyed Squirrel faces extinction? So what? As Darwin has told us their place will be taken up by the Grey Eyed Squirrel, which is a much stronger species. The Sahel is drying out? Not to worry. He had the figures back to the sixteen hundreds which prove that the Sahel was then and still is a dry region, hence not a problem. Hurricanes are getting more severe? Not so. We have always been getting four or five every year. We just hear more about them because of television. It is probably a conspiracy, he claimed, to cash in on increased viewership which translates into advertising revenue. People love to see catastrophes.

Invariably of course the topic of global warming would come up. Sure the glaciers are melting, he would say. They do that every summer. Then we have a cold winter again, and the balances is restored. The North Pole is melting? Rubbish. Polar ice is five meters thick, he happened to know. You can build a house on it.

By coincidence an old college friend of his was involved in a scientific project in the Arctic. This friend invited him to come and see the station. True enough, he found himself vindicated: there were not only houses on the ice, there even was a runway for aircraft. Triumphant, he set out for a long hike into that bleak majestic blinding white landscape. Two or three miles or so from the station, the sun still shining bright, the ice cracked and moved under his feet. He was just about to deny this event as well but it was too late.

As he arrived at the Pearly Gates the friendly Saint on duty handed him a towel: “Here, dry yourself first. I bet that water was cold.” “Oh, I did not get wet,” he replied. “I am just perspiring a little.”

On Silence

I am not one of those that hear the grass grow. Nor do I hear the squirrel’s heartbeat, to borrow another concept from George Eliot. But then I would not want to hear such things, anyway. I would settle for just hearing what those around me are saying. Not that I do not “hear” them – if anything, I am annoyed by the din, the constant roar that surrounds me – but I would also like to understand what people are saying. I find it very taxing to give a well-reasoned cohesive answer to a question I did not understand. I am not a reliable conversation partner. Folks may be put off when they discuss Macy’s sale of pots and pans and I respond that I don’t really need any socks, nor pants. The short of the story is that the family counsel came to the conclusion that I should have a hearing test.

This was done. Among other things they put earphones on me and I had to listen to words and then repeat them. The first one was the word “clarinet”. Then came the word “woods”. Hello, I thought, this is going to go my way. The next word was “reed”. Didn’t I guess that? This was fun, actually. The next word was “laughed” followed by the word “fest”. This test was music to my ears because I was thinking “Mozart”. Unfortunately the music was only in my head. I had the fest all wrong, and it was nothing to laugh at. It had not been clarinet but cabinet; goods, not woods; followed by “weed”, “graft”, and “west”. What a downer. There went Wolfgang Amadeus. I probably should look for a recording of the Concert in A for Clarinet while I can still hear. But I digress.

I came away with a chart showing what was normal hearing (in black) vs. what was me (in red). This explains a lot and people make allowances because they understand that old age and my deteriorating inner ear ganglion cells slow down my brain. Many are supportive, none more so than the Edison Company. When I call them to pay my bill the helpful voice on the recording always warns me: “While you are waiting you may hear silence!”

You can say that again, Sister.

NaCl Weaponized

If you are young and healthy you seldom see a physician. You do not think about blood pressure, salt, and heart attacks either. Your systolic blood pressure is about 120 mmHG. But then you get old and the situation changes. You go to the doctor more often than you would like, and you watch with apprehension when they measure your blood pressure. You also learn some Greek and start to talk about hypertension vs. hypotension. Both are bad news. One day, some years ago, the paramedics measured my blood pressure at about 79 mmHG and took me straight to the emergency room. I learned that day that low blood pressure can be deadly, depending on how hypo you go. My case, luckily, was not serious enough to worry. They sent me home again.

The real bugaboo, however, is hypertension. You do not want any of it. It could do damage to your heart, to your arteries, your kidneys, your brain, or all of those together. And it could interfere with your sex life or cause other similarly tragical dysfunctions. I have been lucky so far. I do not have hypertension. But my cardiologist put me on a low salt diet anyway, “to keep it that way,” as he warned me. One learns something every day. I learned then to stay away from sausages, soups, sauces, and other salty things, and that is also why I spend more time reading labels than actually shopping on my visits to the supermarket.

I have to admit that I spent almost a century now in total ignorance of the dangers of excess salt in everything we eat, although much of this, I suspect, was already known in the glory days of Gomorrah. We read in ancient scriptures that the Gomorreans were sinful. I suspect that they were a fun-loving crowd and that their sins included gluttony, meaning that they tended to eat more than was good for them, especially spicy food, and much more salt than the maximum daily amount their creator had carefully measured out for them, a warning they, being humans, blissfully disregarded. He was so upset with their irresponsible behavior that, as we would say today, he “nuked” them to oblivion. A few survivors ran away. “Get out!” he shouted after them. “And don’t you ever come back. Don’t even look back!”

He must have been a vengeful god, given to severity. When one of the women furtively glanced back he selected her as an example to others. She died. Of too much salt. So much, actually, that she turned into solid salt, one hundred per cent pure sodium chloride. Not much more has been published about the affair, other than the fact that this was her unfortunate lot.

Here you have it then, the untold story of Sodium and Gomorrah.

On Driving While Young

When you are young, say fifteen or so, there is little that you don’t already know. You also can do just about anything. I was already seventeen when I thought I could ride a horse, for example. I just needed some practice. There was a riding school a block away. The instructor must have known I could not tell a horse from a mule, let alone tell either of them what to do. He assigned me to a slow old mare. Then we started off, all around the arena. All but my horse. Smart horse: I was still fishing for the stirrups and would have slid off the saddle, had she moved. The instructor came over, cursed the horse and smacked her. The horse reacted by starting off in a gallop, me holding on to saddle and mane. I do not remember how we eventually came to a stop. All I can say with assurance is that riding a horse came off my can-already-do list that afternoon. I forfeited the rest of the lessons.

But then, who needs to ride a horse, anyway. The way one got around in the twentieth century was by automobile. That, certainly, was within my capabilities. After all, I had once ridden a small two-cycle moped for about 200 yards on an empty stretch of rural highway. So when the American army officer parked his souvenir German army VW in the patch of woods next to where we were then billeted temptation bit me. The keys were in, nobody was home. Let’s see if we can move that thing! Ah, the adrenalin. I knew nothing about gears and how to shift. Which turned out to be embarrassing because the moment I turned the key “the thing” jerked forward. There was nothing in the way to stop it except a small tree. The tree performed flawlessly and the engine died. Amazingly enough there was no serious damage. I pushed the car back to where it had been and slid away.

Yet the dream never left me. One day, I just knew, I would have a car and I would of course know how to drive. I was in my early twenties when I bought my first car, a used British Triumph two-door. I had no driver’s license but I was smart, so who needs lessons? I thought it best to practice after dark when our residential neighborhood was quiet. I remember one night in particular. It was snowing. I did my best to steer in a straight line. As I came around the block on my second lap I could still see the impressions of my previous turn in the snow. It looked more like zig zag than straight line and my knees were shaking. I turned left, which was a mistake because it led me into a cul-de-sac. I had no idea how to back out of the situation and there were people, watching.

Eventually, however, I had to take the driver’s test. To do this I had to arrive at the motor vehicle office in the company of a licensed adult. I did not know anybody in Toronto. Someone advised me to hire an instructor for an hour who would accompany me there. I did that and he taught me a few important last minute details, such as parallel parking on a hillside, using clutch control. How glad I was because that is exactly what I had never thought of and what the examiner had me do. I passed with flying colors. Too bad cars do not have clutch pedals any more. I would be glad to demonstrate.

Then came the days of love and roses. We were newlyweds and we were young and foolish, or at least I was. Consequently I behaved flashily like, for example, driving along with a cigarette nonchalantly dangling from my lips. I found out, however, that this blasé gesture was not worth the cost. You have no idea how hot a burning cigarette is when you accidentally drop it between your legs while you are navigating your car during rush hour at the intersection of Bloor and Yonge in downtown Toronto!

(More below)

On Things That Do Their Thing By Themselves

I always had a car that I steered myself. If the past is an indicator of the future this will change. My car will steer itself. The idea makes me nervous.
But in general I am not opposed to automation. I love our robot vacuum cleaner. He (I think it’s a he) goes by the name of Bob. Just let Bob loose in a room. Thirty minutes later the floor is dust- and doghair-free and Bob has rolled himself into his charger unit, awaiting further orders. Now, that beats the way I used to do housework.

One chore I particularly disliked was to clean the oven with a certain super caustic spray. A notice on the container implied that one should not allow this product to touch anything, including the oven I suppose. No more of this nonsense. We now have an oven that cleans itself if you just move a lever on the door an inch to the left. The job takes a few hours but it is worth the wait. The only drawback is that you are left with a heap of ashes. Something funereal about this.

I don’t have much use for department store doors that open as I approach but I can see their usefulness at Christmas time when one has all three arms full of packages. On the other hand, I do like my automatic garage door, the one that self-stops on closing when any impediment such as a child or a dog is in danger of being crushed. This could be helpful. I should have tested this on Betsie, our toy poodle, but I did not have the nerve. Lights that turn on when they sense some movement are very popular. They even come on when so much as a leaf blows by. Or when you yourself tiptoe by, hoping not to be heard by the neighbor’s sleeping Weimaraner.

I have my doubts about alarms that are supposed to go on when there is smoke. Mine has never spoken yet except once when I forgot I had some butter melting in the skillet. I smelled that out in the garden before I ever heard the thing beep.

As a writer I love the computer software that automatically checks my spelling. I am not much of a photographer. I am grateful to the person who invented my self-focusing camera. I am the cook in my family and I truly appreciate toaster ovens, microwave ovens, rice cookers, and such that are semi-automatic. They turn themselves on if you set the time. If you forget this step the raw rice will be sitting there waiting patiently when you come home at dinner time. I speak from experience.

But all of these helpful appliances are still robots at best, devices that do what they are programmed to do. They have no brains, no intelligence of their own. They cannot make decisions as to what I should cook, for example, and how to cook and season it. The camera can only focus my picture. It cannot tell me if I am taking a picture of the right thing. That takes thinking. What is missing is artificial intelligence, a subject that is much discussed these days. Given the fact that even regular intelligence is rare enough, I suspect that AI still has a long way to go. That is why I would draw the line when it comes to self driving, life and death split second decision making cars.

For now I would set my goal a little lower. One morning not long ago I went on my morning walk. My oatmeal was not quite ready, so I had turned the burner off as I left. On my return I was surprised that the fire department had not been summoned because my house was filled with black smoke. That is why I can’t wait for artificial intelligence to come to the kitchen. I badly need an intelligent cook pot, one that “perceives its environment and takes appropriate action,” to use the language of the experts in this field. A pot that would have seen that I had accidentally turned the burner dial on HIGH instead OFF, a pot that would have made an intelligent adjustment.

I have a new pot now, but it is not any smarter. Neither am I, alas. Just the other day I went through a stop sign that I knew was there. I just did not perceive it. Maybe that intelligent car would be of help, after all.