CSotD: Which reminds me of a story …
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This is funny to start with, but also sparks a memory of a woman I went out with very briefly, shortly after both of our divorces, but long enough after mine that I could detect subtle warning signs.
Like the fact that she and her now-ex had been building a semi-custom townhouse which originally had a bar in the basement, only she had the builder change it into a barre and dance floor for her little angel-faced daughters. Which he did because they were having an affair.
And she was also seeing a guy who worked for the developer that was marketing these semi-custom townhouses, which made me Bachelor #3, the guy writing a feature story about the builder and the townhouses.
I dropped out of the competition. Love is lovelier the second time around because being older and wiser helps you know when to grab your hat.
Or at least it should.
I’m often astonished at the ability of some people to sabotage their love lives. I can shake my head and chuckle over that one-and-done barre maid, but the relationships that bring a sigh are the near-misses, the ones that might have worked another time, another place.
Some folks, however, just can’t seem to make things work at any time or in any place.
Mamet the Sheep is intended to be a shallow figure with a futile love life, which works well for the comic strip, but isn’t so funny in real life.
On the other hand, I fully identify with Pig, because nearly everybody I know in three dimensions has a dog and, in most cases, that’s whose name I know.
Which is okay. As Samuel Butler observed “The greatest pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him, and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself, too.”
Another case where the random association is better than the gag, though I also liked the gag, which is built on some nice logical twists.
But Mr. Peanut reminds me that one of the things few modern kids, and maybe nobody much under 60, is likely to know is how good freshly roasted peanuts are.
There used to be peanut stores, with a big Mr Peanut over the door, and inside you could get a bag of hot roasted peanuts or some freshly-ground-right-in-front-of-you peanut butter.
I don’t think peanut stores exist anymore, though if you can’t make them work downtown, you could at least set one up at the county fair alongside all the deep-fried stuff.
Which reminds me that a lot of kids think cotton candy comes in a plastic bag and have never seen it spun before their very eyes, or had a chance to eat it when, like those peanuts, it’s still fresh and warm.
A little more generational humor. This week’s story arc was about Clayton’s new unlikeable friend whose parents had a basement full of vintage arcade machines. Though we all know not having Donkey Kong or Defender would be okay if they had Spy Hunter, Dig Dug and Joust.
When the boys were little, I’d take them to the arcade on days when you paid a flat rate and played as many games as you wanted. But the crowning moment came when elder son was in the Navy, stationed in Japan and got to spend a couple of days with one of my college buddies who lived there.
And who took him to the race track that was the model for Pole Position.
I’ve never liked playing at home as much as on arcade machines, but here’s one I’d happily play anywhere.
However, I think part of the fun of the arcade games was that they were slightly clunky. I feel the same way about roller coasters: The high-tech metal ones just jerk you around, but the old wooden ones feel like they might go off the track and that makes them a lot more exciting. It’s part of their actual design.
The abandonment of the printed paper is a relatively new phenomenon, but not as new as we might like.
I spent a quarter century or so putting newspapers in schools and teaching media literacy, but even at the turn of the century, I was mostly reaching librarians and a small but passionate number of teachers.
One of my colleagues at a major paper had a rule that teachers using her paper had to attend a workshop before the school year, because never mind the kids, even the 20- and 30-somethings didn’t know how newspapers worked. For instance, they didn’t know there was a table of contents on Page Two, or that different sections were written at different reading levels.
But back then a lot of kids read the paper over breakfast. Maybe only the sports and the comics, but reading is reading.
The first year younger son was on the hockey team, he stepped onto the bus one morning and someone complimented him on what would have been his first goal the previous night, if he’d scored, which he hadn’t. Then someone else got on and they complimented him, too.
Either the scorer or our sports desk had gotten another player’s number wrong, so he spent the rest of the day repeatedly saying “It wasn’t me. It was J.K.”
In the locker room that night, the guys ragged him, saying to each other, “Wish my dad worked at the paper so I could score some goals.”
Embarrassing for him, but I took it as a hopeful sign.
Another Monty, another memory. This cracked me up because it’s well done, but also because throughout orientation freshman year, a guy on our quad would put his speakers in his window and play the Box Tops’ The Letter about half a dozen times at full volume.
Until the football players showed up for two-a-day pre-season sessions. Second day of their exhausting schedule, we heard the Box Tops start and then the sound of a needle scratching across a record and The Letter had come to a happy, total ending.
Hated that song until I heard it done right:
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