Tattoos

Got returned from a wedding in Pasadena, California.  Most of the 20 to 30 somethings there had tattoos.   These were not little flowers or anchors on the forearm, but big tattoos all across the back.  Coupled with strapless dresses,  this made for a disconcerting  “We’re not in Kansas anymore”  kind of feeling.  From a distance I saw a shoulder to shoulder tattoo across the back of one particularly chunky female  attendee that I could have sworn said “Impeach Earl Warren.”  On closer examination, however, it said something else, but I am not sure what.

Letdown

Our youngest son was a Spanish teacher in Pittsburgh several years ago.  When he called and indicated that he was sharing an apartment with two airline employees,  I imagined vicariously the excitement of living with a couple of “hot” flight attendants.  Unfortunately,  I learned later that they were not flight attendants but baggage handlers.

What’s In a Name

I enjoy thinking of unusual children’s names.  Some of my favorites for girls include:  Debris,  Fellany, Fallopia, and Suppena.  One of my son’s acquaintances from El Salvador is married to a woman of Greek heritage.  They are expecting twin boys, and his suggestion was to name them Zeus and Jesus, respectively.  A nurse told us that one of her welfare patients named her daughter “Female, ” after seeing it on the birth certificate.   We named our dog “T-Bone” after seeing an advertising sign for someone with that first name in West Texas.  On our AKC (American Kennel Club)  registration we felt we had to be more  formal,  so we indicated that the dog’s real name was “Teresa Bonnard,” hoping that would sound more French, and therefore sophisticated.

As Seen on TV

People say some funny things on TV.  Some prison inmates in an interview said they wished the public would not be “so judgmental.”  Some death-row inmates against the death penalty said “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”  In a TV interview when I was in Toledo, Ohio, a local  spokesman for a mainly minority housing project complained that the landlord failed to provide essential services.  When asked if he lived in the project, he said “No, no I doesn’t.”   Another complainant, who wanted an increase in his living allowance from the city, was asked if he had such such services as cable.  “Yes, we have cable, but it’s only basic cable.”  On another trip to Dayton in the winter, an interviewee said “It’s really cold, plus you have your wind factor chill.”  I used to be amused in the late 1960’s at the cult Children of God van, who used to park outside Memorial Stadium  in Austin before football games.  On the side of the van it said ” Children of God.  As seen on NBC TV.”  Daughter Amy once heard on television a jail inmate who had been assigned to a work detail where inmates were required to sleep in tents overnight say “We are being held here against our will.”  An attorney trying to save his client from the death penalty said “Since my client has been on death row, his conduct has been exemplary.”  In an interview of a prison inmate at Huntsville, Texas,  who was commenting on an escapee who had taken a woman hostage, said “He gives all inmates a bad name.”

Old Timer Gem

When my middle son and I went to pick up a car we had bought, the elderly salesman, who was a real rural Texas country type of guy,  asked him where he went to college.  When Kent said “UT Austin,” the old man asked “Did you play ball down there?”  I love the idea that old timers like this can think of going off to college, and after getting there deciding whether to “play some ball.”

AIDS Research Center

We live in a conservative neighborhood.  One year we agreed to host the neighborhood Christmas party, and  worked with a woman who had lived in the neighborhood for a long time to plan the details.  I noted that she lived next to a very contemporary, newly-constructed  house.  She said that  several neighbors  tried to block the construction since the house  was  in a style totally different from the rest of the neighborhood. She consulted an attorney, but he told her there was nothing she or the neighbors could do about it.   She called it the “AIDS Research Center, ” which I thought a bit catty but funny.  I imagined that some artist lived there  (probably a homosexual), and that he had little to do with the neighbors, a real “fish out of water” in this neighborhood.   In passing his house recently,  I noted that he had the only Obama sign in the neighborhood in his front yard,  though several days later the sign was gone.  I don’t know if he changed his mind or if the neighbors removed it.  Another mystery to be solved.

Walgreen’s Conundrum

I went into Walgreen’s Drug Store to buy a can of yellow Gold Bond powder.  All I could find was the green Gold Bond foot powder.  I went up to the young lady on the floor and asked her where the Gold Bond was.  She asked me “foot powder?”  This presented me with a conundrum.  Do I say “Yes, the foot powder” or “No, I want the testicle powder.”  I had only a split second to think it through, so I opted for the easy out and said “Yes, the foot powder.”   She led me back to the green container and I picked it up.  I left  the foot powder on the shelf in another part of the store and went to another drug store to continue my search.

Funny Stuff

I enjoyed reading about the man who jumped off a building in New York, but was saved because he landed on an awning over the sidewalk, which had enough elasticity to break his fall.  The headline read “Man bounces back after suicide attempt.”  I also enjoyed the recent story about the stranded Chinese athletes, who were taken in by citizens of Ft. Worth after being abandoned by their sponsor.  The caption read “Community bends over backwards to help stranded acrobats.”   Several years ago before the era of computers when more typos were made,  I read about a man in an automobile accident who suffered a broken neck, and had his wallet stolen by a passerby before the ambulance could arrive.  The jumbled story said that (instead of the wallet) “missing was the victim’s neck.”

The Dangers of Flatulence

I read that the average person releases gas from 12 to 18 times per day.  This can be very dangerous.  Do the math–a  747 carrying only 300 people (less than capacity) on an 8 hour intercontinental flight.  Assuming 15 expellations per day (taking the average)/3 (8 hour flight)=5 expellations per person in an 8 hour flight.  Multiply that by 300 people and you have 1500 “episodes” on one flight, and that is not even counting the pilots and flight attendants.  I would think that both the government and the airlines would be looking into this.

Bicycle Riders

It seems like bicycle riders are sometimes smart Alecs who think they own the road.  One day as I was turning left at a light a rider came from the opposite direction and went around me.  As he passed, he made a smart remark suggesting  that I had interfered somehow with his right of passage.  I was immediately angered by  this impertinence and longed to make a withering response.  Because of the suddenness and randomness of it, however,  I lacked the luxury of time and thought.  The best I could come up with was “Shut Up!”