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CSotD: Confessions of a Pre-Teen Mind

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Mike Peterson March 12, 2023 1 minute 5 comments

I’m with Elliott, or, as Napoleon once remarked to Marshal Bernadotte, “Je ne donne pas une merde.” Or words to that effect.

I have one clock in the house that needs to be reset, plus the one in the car. The others mostly take care of themselves. I never set the ones on the oven and the microwave because they would need to be reset after every blip in the power supply plus I forget how plus see Napoleon, above.

And there are many occasions throughout the year when I miss an hour of sleep, so why fuss over this one?

On the topic of things that actually are worth kvetching about, I have to suspect that Graeme MacKay has a particular neighbor in mind, because, while I also object to people who don’t clear their sidewalks, it certainly isn’t just SJWs who fail to shovel. Though, okay, it would often be 20-something renters.

And, BTW, I particularly like that they flattened the snowbank in backing out.

In, no doubt, an electric car or at least a hybrid.

I’m a noncombatant in this one. For the past dozen years, I’ve lived in an apartment at the back of the landlady’s house and her husband handles both snow and lawn issues. We have a guy who plows the driveway, but, even before I retired, I was telecommuting, so it’s never mattered to me when or whether he showed up.

And I live in town, where we have a little tractor thingie that goes around clearing the sidewalks.

I’ve told the landlords that my retirement plan is to die before they do.

Greg Kearney specializes in local cartoons for small markets around the country, and this one focuses on a dust-up here, where the state decided to enforce the law on an Amtrak commuter train. Seems it’s illegal in New Hampshire to serve alcohol bought outside the state, and so they decided to shut down the club car on a train from Boston to Maine while it was in that little neck of NH by Portsmouth.

Cooler heads have apparently prevailed while they sort things out, but it was an amusing moment in a state that has massive liquor stores at rest stops on the Interstate.

Liquor here is cheap, and, when you’re at one of the state liquor stores, you can tell the folks from New York and Massachusetts because they’re pushing full grocery carts.

Hey, they’re a major reason we don’t have any sales or income taxes.

Drink it up, folks. We’ll sell you more.

Today’s Monty (AMS) gets a laugh at the panting, sweating kid who has tricycled lord knows how far to retrieve his balloon. Back in the days of vertical littering, a fellow brought into the newsroom a half-deflated balloon with a note on it from a kid in a classroom nearly 600 miles away.

When my boys were little, I used helium balloons and balsa airplanes to inculcate them with a little Epicurean philosophy: The nature of balloons is that they deflate, the nature of balsa airplanes is that they break. You can be disappointed in how quickly it happens, but you need to start by accepting that it most certainly will.

It might seem weird, but, yes, when I’d give them a balsa airplane, I’d ask, “What is its nature?” and they’d answer, “It will break,” and I’d say, “That’s right” and then off they’d go to play with it. And break it.

I guess the lessons took. Eldest granddaughter was nearly three when she got stung by a wasp, and my mother said, “Oh, did the bad wasp sting you?” to which she answered through her tears, “Grandma, wasp not bad. Wasps sting.”

Good answer, kid.

I suspect this creditor is accepting the nature of Willie with a little less aplomb, but you’ve got to admit, Willie is posing the right question. It is not within the nature of stones to bleed.

Which is why people in Willie ‘n Ethel’s economic bracket get 26% interest rates on the money they borrow. First we recover our principal, then we take in as much profit as possible before they’re forced to declare bankruptcy.

These companies are not bad. They are simply acting within the nature of bloodsuckers.

I suppose the reason most of the Dogs of C Kennel (Creators) are in the pound is because they were roaming the streets. We rarely see dogs running loose anymore, and, when we do, it’s an escapee and people make an effort to capture and return the miscreant.

Which may be why it seems more dogs die of cancer these days. They’re no longer getting hit by cars.

My dog and I do our walking in an 11-acre park on the banks of the Connecticut River. It’s a mix of woods, picnic areas and playing fields, and when the town put in a leash law, we petitioned for and got a leash-free area there something over the size of a football field.

Still, as Will advises, it’s good to have a sociable dog in the pack, because the leash law there is more honored in the breach. If we’re out of the no-leash zone and see a police car, we leash up, but more out of politeness than fear. Our constant presence keeps out the drug dealers and we pick up litter, so the cops are in no hurry to hassle our pups.

But, while most of our dogs stay close, there is Marcie, not a golden retriever but a very sweet shepherd/airdale cross, who wanders away from Frank regularly. One day she really was missing, so we fanned out to find her, and after about half an hour, a police car pulled up with Marcie in the back seat.

Seems that, having lost Frank, she decided to sit by the river and contemplate things. Someone saw her sitting there staring out at the waters and assumed the worst, and the cops were on the verge of dragging the river for Frank’s body when one of the searchers happened on the scene.

So the cops gave Marcie a ride to the other end of the park and we all had a good laugh and they reminded us about the leash law and we all had another good laugh.