Lance Mannion

The Husband Curmudgeon

A true-to-life dialog between an unsympathetic wife and her sainted, misunderstood spouse.

Her:  Why are you pretending to be so grumpy?

Him:  Who's pretending?

Her:  You.  You like to pretend to be a grump.  It's a pose you adopt because you think it's funny.  You've heard of the Comics Curmudgeon?  You're the Husband Curmudgeon.

Him:  It's not a pose.  I am grumpy.

Her:  Save it for the blog, Husband Curmudgeon.

In their Easter bonnets

Two little girls at Mass Easter morning, sisters about two and four years old, all dolled up in their Easter finest in matching pink dresses, white tights, white patent leathers, and pink straw hats.  There with their mother who was not dolled up.  She wore a plain white blouse, untucked, with the tails hanging out under her pullover, workaday slacks, a pair of practical boots that looked well broken-in.  Her hair was still wet from the shower and if she’d combed it it had been in a hurry with only a few strokes to take out the worst of the tangles.  No make-up.  She looked tired and pale.

It’s just the three of them, by the way.  There’s no father in the pew with them.

Fiction writing exercise.  Explain the reason for the difference between the outfits the mother chose for her daughters and what she chose for herself.

A.  The mother had spent all morning dealing with the fall out from the Easter Bunny’s visit and getting the girls ready so she hadn’t had enough time to worry about herself and was lucky to get everybody out the door in time for Mass.

B.  The mother wasn’t feeling well and should have stayed home and would have but she didn’t want to disappoint the girls who were looking forward to showing off their Easter outfits.

C.  The girls were dressed up to please someone or some someones the mother knew wouldn’t care what she herself was wearing.

D.  The mother was dressed to go straight to work after mass.  Not everyone has Easter Sunday off, after all.  The malls are open. Grocery stores, restaurants. Barnes and Noble was open from 11 to 7 Easter Sunday.

E.  The mother was someone who’d never given a thought to what she looked like but now that she has little girls of her own she’s determined that they’ll have the kind of fashion sense she’s never developed for herself.

F.  Variant on E.  The mother has never liked calling attention to herself but is proud of her little girls and likes to show them off.

G.  Another variant.  The mother believes she is not worth the effort.

H.  The mother thinks the outfit she has on is dressy.  Her pullover was pink and matched the girls’ dresses.

I.  The mother had planned on wearing something else to mass but for some reason had to switch to what she has on in a hurry.

J.  The mother did not in fact choose the girls’ outfits because she is not their mother.  She’s a friend or neighbor or relative who’s been prevailed upon to take the girls to church.  So where are their parents?

K.  Your guess is as good as mine.

For extra credit.  How does the girls’ father figure in any of the above, if at all?  For example, in D., is he the someone else the girls are dressed up to please?  If so, then why isn’t he the one taking them to church?

Discuss.

Eschatological confusion

This morning’s sermon, delivered by a priest who was elderly at the time of Vatican II, was an exercise for a voice in search of a point.  Poor priest never found it, but he did reach a conclusion at long last.  Somewhere along the line he made a stop over in eschatology.

“Remember,” he said, “God will always love us.  Even if you and I were to go to hell, He’ll still love us for all eternity.”

Hold on there, father.  Isn’t one of the torments of Hell the absence of God’s love?  If the damned can comfort themselves with the thought that God still loves them, how damned are they?  But what comfort is it to know that God loves you but He’s still planning to leave you in stewing in the devil’s soup pot forever?  Doesn’t that make God’s love part of the torment?  I’ve known people who’ve used love as a means of torturing others.  Very neurotic people.   Does this mean God has issues?

The priest didn’t dwell on this subject though.  Before I’d finished formulating my questions he’d moved on to the evils of the internet one of which, although he didn't mention it, is probably that smart-alecks in the congregation go home right after Mass and poke fun at the sermon in a blog post.

I'm going to hell.

Thank goodness Barney was carrying the bullet today

Walking home from the post office this afternoon I looked up the road and saw that I was sharing the sidewalk with a skunk, heading my way.

Skunks are nocturnal.

Skunks are shy.

Shunks normally don't stagger like drunken sailors coming out of an alley where they'd just been rolled for their wallets.

This skunk was disobeying all the skunk rules.

I stopped in my tracks.

The skunk stopped in his.

I decided to cross the street.

The skunk decided to cross the street.

I undecided to cross the street.

The skunk undecided to cross the street.

Then he un-undecided to cross again.

Then he un-un-undecided, right in front of an oncoming car, which somehow managed to swerve in time to leave the skunk unflattened.  The car behind that one slammed on its brakes and stopped in time to save the skunk's three-dimensionality too.  The skunk was ungrateful.  It turned and raised its tail and sprayed the car.

By this time I had backed a ways down the sidewalk.  I turned and hurried the half-block to the police station where, as luck would have it, a visiting sheriff's deputy was just climbing into her cruiser to go back out on patrol.

She rolled down her window.

I told her about the skunk.

Skunks are nocturnal, I said.  Skunks are shy.  Skunks don't normally try to fight it out with SUVs and Toyota Corollas.  A skunk out in the daytime, acting the very opposite of shy, and thinking it can scare off automobiles has something wrong with it.  Like rabies.

The deputy looked very much like somebody who wanted to say, I'm going on my lunch break now.  Why don't you go inside and tell one of the town cops?

She didn't.  She asked where the skunk was.  I pointed to the brake lights of the latest car to to avoid splattering the skunk all over the road.  The deputy sighed and shook her head and laughed a little.  "I'll take care of it," she said.

I thanked her and set off for home by the back way.

A couple minutes later I heard a ka-pow.

Half a minute later I heard a second ka-pow.  The coup de gras.

Not too long after that I saw the deputy's cruiser turning the corner and heading my way.  The deputy recognized me and rolled to a stop.

"Got him," she said through her open window.  She didn't look proud of the fact.

I stepped up to the car to congratulate her.

I stepped back.

"I got some blown back at me," she said.

I nodded.  I would have said something but I was planning not to breathe again until she drove off.

"Good thing I got a cold," she said, "I can't smell it on me too much."

"Pine-Sol," I said, trying not to inhale as I spoke.

"I heard that's the best thing," she said.

"Tomato juice's supposed to work too," I said, backing away.

She smiled an apology.

"Thanks for taking care of it," I said.

She nodded.  She wore the look of someone who wanted to say, Next time you get the urge to be a good citizen and report something like this, stifle it.  But she just said so long and drove off.

This reminds me of a Chris the Cop story.

Once upon a time, back in Syracuse, where our old pal Chris the Cop was doing his police sergeanting, a rabid raccoon appeared to terrorize our neighborhood.  The cops were called---by me.  I have a history of sicking the Law on these woodland creatures, don't I?---and a patrolman arrived with his gun drawn to dispatch the poor suffering beast, who had decided to pace out what he might have known were his final moments on earth on the edge of our next door neighbor's lawn.

The patrolman approached the raccoon cautiously.  Stopped about fifteen feet away.  Assumed a marksman's pose and fired.

He looked at the raccoon.

The raccoon looked back.

The patrolman shook his head in dismay.  Then he moved forward a couple of feet, aimed, and fired again.

The raccoon grinned.

The patrolman took another couple of steps towards the raccoon.  He fired again.

The raccoon was laughing at him now.

The cop squeezed off another round.

I swear the raccoon was standing up with his thumbs in ears, waggling his fingers at the cop, and sticking out his tongue.

The cop walked up to him and blew him to kingdom come.

Later that day, Chris stopped by, as was sometimes his habit when he was out on patrol, for a Pepsi.  We told him about the raccoon and the patrolman.

"How many shots did it take?" Chris asked.

"Five."

"And he was how far away?"

"About five feet when he finally got him."

"You get the officer's name?"

We hadn't.  Chris looked grim.  He said he'd call in and find out when he got back in his car.

"Why?"

"Somebody," Chris said, "Is about to begin spending a lot of extra time on the target range."

By reading this post, you are crossing a picket line

Many regular readers have noticed that the quality and the quantity of the writing here has fallen off significantly over the last month or two.  There's a reason.

You're probably under the impression that Lance Mannion Productions is a one-man operation.  Au contraire, mes amines.  I'm the creator-producer, sort of the David Simon/David Milch/David Chase of this blog.  (And have you noticed that you have to be named David to become the creator producer of a groundbreaking HBO TV drama series?  Comedies can be produced by any old Tom, Dick, or Harry, but for the real gritty, rises-to-the-level of Shakespearean tragedy stuff, you need to be a David.  I don't know what to make of the fact of Larry David.)   And like those guys I have a staff of writers.

Had.

Had a staff of writers.

In solidarity with the WGA, my writers have walked out.

I'm trying to negotiate a separate deal, the way Letterman did, but some of their demands are outrageous!

Ice cream twice a day?  Out of the question.  And bedtime will not be moved past 9 o'clock on school nights, no way, no how!

Meanwhile....know any reliable scabs with snappy prose styles willing to work for peanuts and one bowl of cookies and cream ice cream a day?

Watch your mailboxes around Christmas 2047

This is the kind of stunt I'd pull, and now that it's in my head I think it's the kind of stunt I will pull:

Even in death, Chet Fitch is a card. Fitch, known for his sense of humor, died in October at age 88 but gave his friends and family a start recently: Christmas cards, 34 of them, began arriving — written in his hand with a return address of "Heaven..."

The mailing was a joke Fitch worked on for two decades with his barber, Patty Dean, 57. She told the Ashland Daily Tidings this week that he kept updating the mailing list and giving her extra money when postal rates went up...

This fall, [Dean] said, Fitch looked up to her from the chair. "You must be getting tired of waiting to mail those cards," he told her.

"I think you'll probably be able to mail them this year."

He died a week later.

"After thirty-nine years, if you don't have what you want, you don't need it."

In the waiting room at the doctor's office the other day.  Tall, stout woman in her sixties weaing a white Christmas sweater decorated with rows of leaping red and green reindeer at the check-in window talking with the two young receptionists about all the shopping they have left to do.  The woman leans lightly on a metal cane.

The receptionists have this and that to buy for that person and this.  The first woman says that, although her list isn't complete, she's probably done.  It's too difficult for her to get around this year with her foot like this.  She and her husband did get into New York City for a day though.  They saw the Christmas show at Radio City and she went back into town to take her mother to see Clay Aiken.

"Oh, how was that?" asks one of the receptionists.

"Well, I'll tell you," the woman says, "When that one was over, if a bunch a people didn't go down to the Brooklyn Bridge and jump off, I'll be surprised."

This stuns both receptionists.  "He was that bad?"

"He wasn't bad.  I like his music.  And he sang beautifully.  But it wasn't...I was expecting a Christmas show.  Something merry.  You know.  Jingle Bells. Rudolph.  He starts out by playing a recording of a story about a woman who's lost her child!"

"No!"

"Oh yeah.  And from there it got sad."

But the Christmas show at Radio City Music Hall was fun.  She and her husband go every year.  "That's our Christmas present to each other," she says.  "We stopped giving gifts years ago.  Because what's to give?  What do we have left to buy each other?  Listen.  After thirty-nine years, if you don't have what you want, you don't need it."

Sleigh bells ring, are you listening? In the lane snow is glistening...

You know how quiet it can get during a snowfall.

Friday afternoon, home from the hardware store, Conan the Barbarian Dog left safely behind, I got out a ladder and set to work hanging wreaths on our windows.  Snow was already falling thick and fast.  Finished, I stood in the middle of the front yard to admire my handiwork and watch the snow settle in the needles of the wreaths.  The neighborhood was nearly silent.  Nearly.

Someone was whistling.  Loudly but musically.  I looked around.  No one nearby.  I looked up the street.  The falling snow blurred what it didn't white out.  But I could make out the bright yellow orange school buses waiting in front of the junior high across the way and at the corner the neon yellow green stripes on the crossing guard's hazard vest.  The guard whistled away.

"Winter Wonderland."

"If all the year were playing holidays, to sport would be as tedious as to work."

Revised late Sunday night to undo a bad cut and paste job and make it make sense.

Bought a new snow shovel for the teenager.

He didn't seem grateful.  Especially after I handed it to him and said with a big, proud grin, "Why don't you try it out?"

All teenage boys aren't naturally averse to hard work.  If they were, family farms would fail after the farmer himself hit fifty, no car engines would ever get rebuilt, every marina on every lake in the country would have to shut down, and the parking lots of all the supermarkets would be stacked up with empty shopping carts.

But there are periods in most adolescent male's daily lives when a natural indolence overwhelms them, when a simple request to straighten their rooms strikes them as announcement that slavery has returned, when getting them to budge off the couch to take out the trash is like trying to get a mule to climb a barbed wire fence, when handing them a pick and a shovel and helmet and sending them down into a coal mine couldn't be more onerous or unfair than pointing them out into the backyard with a rake.

I don't know what causes it.  Formerly diligent, energetic, responsible kids will suddenly turn into teenage Andy Capps, lying face-down on the couch for hours on end, rising occasionally to raid the refrigerator---and then only when they can't convince their mothers or siblings to fetch and carry for them.  Maybe it's that they're all worn out from the terrible mental and emotional stresses of puberty.  Maybe it's that they just don't get enough sleep.  Maybe it's that they are just growing and all their energy is being used up by their lengthening bones and massing muscles.

But I think some of it is pure cussedness.  They are moved to stop moving by a natural, and admirable, rebelliousness.  It's their way of letting their parents know that times have changed.  "I'm my own person now," they're saying with their inaction.  "My life belongs to me and it's up to me to decide what to do with it."

They're wrong, of course.  For now.  But you have to respect their idealism.

I had my own stretch of principled laziness when I was 17.  I had remarkable energy for everything back then, except anything my parents needed me to do.  I used to ride my bike six miles to my girlfriend's house, expend a lot of energy with her, and ride the six miles back, which was all uphill, stopping about two thirds of the way home at friend's house where I would help his parents with various chores around their place, and then when I got back to my house to find a broom or a rake or a bag of trash waiting for me I'd collapse in a heap of sudden exhaustion and self-righteous indignation at my folks' lack of consideration.

"I never have any time to myself!" I'd invariably protest.

The teenager has had his moments, but generally he's a fairly helpful kid.  Not exactly a self-starter, and I can't say he throws himself into his work, either.  But he'll do what he's asked without too much grumbling or whining, and mostly what he seems to hate about doing work around the house is having to take instructions from me.  Can't blame him there.  I hated it when Pop Mannion used to tell me how to do something, especially since he was always right about it.

The owner of the hardware store where I bought the snow shovel has two teenage boys.  Neither one is in his considered judgment particularly motivated to help out around the house, but the older of the two has developed a special talent for avoiding work.  His favorite ploy is to duck out on a chore by actually appearing to carry it out.  As an example, the owner demonstrated his son's method of pushing a broom, which is to set the bristles down on the floor, give his wrists a bit of a flick, pick up the broom, set it down a few inches farther along, flick his wrists, pick up the broom, flick his wrists.

In this way he can manage to look like he's working hard on one particularly dirty corner while his brother and father clean the whole rest of the garage around him.

Fortunately, the owner has some help in teaching his sons the value of hard work.  He regularly sends them down to the store to help out his two twenty-something assistants, both of whom harbor the souls of Marine Drill Instructors.  One of the assistants was standing right there when the owner told me all this.  The assistant grinned and said it was the truth.   The owner's sons put their backs into it when they are under the assistants' supervision.

I laughed and said that I was sending both Mannion boys down to them when they were old enough.

"Definitely," said the assistant.  "Send 'em to us.  We specialize in breaking teenage boys!"

By the way.  The new shovel works just fine.

Our driveway?

Scraped right down to the blacktop.

Parallel Lives:  Tom Watson has a newly-minted teenage boy in the house now.  His son celebrated his thirteenth birthday the other day and in honor of the occasion Tom fired his lawn care service and handed the kid a rake.  Tom doesn't say if he told the boy, "Today you are a man."

Dog the Barbarian

Strolling along through the falling snow yesterday afternoon on my way home from the hardware store with a new snow shovel over my shoulder and a bag full of light bulbs in my other hand, I found myself being eyed suspiciously by a young German Shepherd who'd come out to supervise some work his owner was doing at the end of their driveway.  When I'd approached to within a half a block of their yard, the dog bounded out into the middle of the sidewalk and stood there in an attitude that showed why German Shepherds are natural police dogs.  His pose was distinctly cop-like.  If he'd been a cartoon dog, he'd have stood on his hind legs, put his forepaws on his hips, and demanded to know, "And just where do you think you're going, bub?"

He had to settle for barking at me.  The deep gruff no-nonsense bark of a dog who knows you belong in jail.

Didn't faze me.  I like dogs, I especially like German Shepherds, there was still a lot of puppy in this dog, and he looked to me like he was putting on a show for the master.  And I had a snow shovel.

The dog's owner, though, wasn't pleased with his nonsense and didn't want him scaring the neighbors.  He ordered the dog back.  The dog obeyed.  Sort of.  He retreated a few paces, circled his owner, accepted a pat on the head as a reward for his good behavior, and then walked right back out to where he'd been, barring my path, and warning me to back off and find another way home if I knew what was good for me.

I still wasn't impressed.  The owner was right there, after all, and he seemed to have some control over his mutt.  I kept walking.  The dog kept barking.

"Get back here!" the owner yelled at the dog and this time reached out and took him by the collar and drew him back to a spot several paces up the driveway.

"Don't worry," the owner said as I walked by, "He's all mouth," which, considering that what's in a dog's mouth is the chief cause of worry, wasn't all that reassuring, but I said the dog wasn't bothering me, he was a handsome, sturdy fella, and I understood he was doing his job.

Then the dog started barking again and this time when he scolded him the owner called him by name and suddenly I felt some mild apprehension.

There are two things to avoid when you're naming a dog.  One is giving him a name he thinks he has to live up to.  The other is giving him one he has to live down.  This dog had the first kind.

"CONAN!" the owner yelled.  "Sit."

Somehow I don't think the dog was named after Conan the O'Brien.

Love song of the empty nesters

My favorite living American poet, and old pal, Steve Kuusisto has been living a lonely, monkish, bachelor life in a friend's basement since he started his new teaching gig at our alma mater, The University of Iowa, back in August.  Steve's wife Connie stayed behind in Ohio to sell their old house and pack things up for the move to their new home in Iowa City, whenever they should happen to find and purchase said new home.

The find was made, the purchase has been completed, Steve and Connie are reuniting as we speak to take up their new life together as empty-nesters.  This has inspired Steve to write a poem for Connie.  Poem's called, "How Love Works," and it begins:

Sometimes if you're lucky you get to write something
For someone you love. This is a magic circumstance.
Like going to the lakeshore and tossing in a feather and a stone.
The stone floats of course, and someone you haven't seen in years
Turns up at your door--and the dear light of spring spins through the poplars
And the neighborhood is filled with...

Nope.  Sorry.  That's all you get here.  To read the rest you have to go over to Steve and Connie's blog, Planet of the Blind.

I won't be joining you.  You'll probably get all mushy about it and you know how I feel about mushy stuff.

Holiday decorating mystery

From my inner Clark Griswald:

Can someone explain how it's possible for strings of Christmas lights and extension cords, each carefully and individually rolled up at the end of last year's holiday season and placed in separate spots in storage boxes, manage to tangle themselves all up while just sitting motionless and untouched in the attic for 11 months.

Second question.  What law of physics requires that two strands of lights removed from the box and disentangled and then carefully laid out well apart from each other on the floor or lawn while you go in search of the ladder must be twined up together like nightcrawlers in a tin can by the time you return with the ladder?

Chekhov's cup of coffee

Tonight I was at Barnes and Noble, having a dad's night out, and not enjoying myself as much as I would have even five years ago---browsing through the new fiction I kept coming across author biographies that began, "So and so was born in 1980..."

While I'm in the cafe drinking my coffee, a barely 20 something girl sits down at the table next to mine.  A golden blonde, with languid, shy eyes and a determined chin. She wears a black tunic dress with spaghetti straps and a slit up to her thigh, a red cardigan over her shoulders (which she lets fall to her chair and onto the floor when she gets up to go to the counter later) and she stirs the ice in her iced latte a hundred times as she looks deeply into one of the books she has brought from home in a ragged canvass pouch. She reads with her lips slightly parted in a small, enigmatic smile.

My middle aged male vanity kicks in when I notice her. There are many empty tables all over the cafe, why pick the one next to mine?  I get the answer when I go to get a refill on my coffee.

At the table behind mine, and so directly across from hers, sits a young hero, another 20 something, with a granite chin, dark wavy hair, blue eyes, broad chest, a three day stubble and black rimmed Ben Franklins on the end of his nose. On the table in front of him is an empty coffee cup and a large cup of Pepsi.

Remember these props.  The coffee and the Pepsi.  They're Chekhov's gun, the one he said that if you bring it on stage in Act One has to go off in Act Three.

The young hero appears to be making notes in a text book, but I recognize the motions of his pencil and catch the quick, assessing glances he's sneaking at her---he's sketching her on one of his 3 x 5 cards! I also know this: She knows what he's up to.

She never lifts her eyes, hardly moves her head.  She's posing.

It's getting late and I'm getting tired of feeling old and past it.  I get up to leave, but as I go out the door I looked back in at them through the window. It's closing time and I watch her start to pack up to get ready to go and I watch him trying to get up the nerve to show her his sketch.  He has it in his hand, has turned toward her. He wears a look of panic and hope as he waits for her to look up and catch his eye.

She doesn't.

She walks up to the counter to pay for a book.

He sits there chewing on the end of his pencil, smiling ruefully to himself.   I can't leave it at this. I go back inside.

She's still at the cash register. He's still sitting at his table, regretting his lack of nerve. I walk by him and say, "You should show it to her."

He jumps.  His eyes goggle at me.  I'm the voice of God.  But he doesn't move.

I shrug.  I tried.  I go back outside, and as I'm getting in my car I see her come out of the store.  She stands out on the sidewalk for a full minute.   She's waiting for him!

He doesn't show.

She begins to drift toward her car.  Halfway across the lot she stops walking and turns around and looks back at the store.  Still no sign of him.  She waits right there for another minute.  Finally continues on to her car.

But she doesn't climb in.

She waits besdie it.  Another minute passes.  By this time I'm pounding on my own steering wheel, yelling, "Come on, man!  Get out here!  She wants you to come find her!!"

Then I remember.

The coffee cup.

The Pepsi.

All that liquid!  All that caffeine!

The poor schnook's in the bathroom!

I almost jump out of the car.  I want to holler at her to be patient.  But she gives up.  She gets into her car. Takes her time starting it up though, and when she pulls out she makes a swing up toward the front doors and crawls by.

Then she drives off.

I wish we had a Miss Lonelyhearts column in our paper.  I could write a letter addressed to both of them:

"To the pretty blonde reading The Good Black and the guy who was sketching her instead of studying, both of you should return to the cafe Saturday night, and this time don't be shy!"

Crossposted at newcritics.

Copyright 2007 by Lance Mannion.

A business that won't be here in a year

Sunday morning tip to owners of businesses offering coffee and any kind of baked goods.

Do not let a customer suffering from a sinus headache wait in a long line and then when he finally gets to the counter inform him that you're all out of cinnamon-raisin bagels.

And blueberry.

And baked apple.

And plain.

And just about every other kind of bagel except sun-dried tomato and onion.

Bagel shop near Mom and Pop Mannion's.  Been going there for years, every time we come up for a visit.  Good bagels.  Great service.  Go in there on a Sunday morning, a line out the door, and you'd still be served and rung up in less than ten minutes.  Always looked forward to going there.

Wandered in this morning and as soon as I walked in the door I knew it.  I could feel it.  This was a business in trouble.  Probably all the empty bins clued me in.  But there were other signs.

You can always tell.  There's an energy in a successful small business.  The staff is on top of things.  You meet the eyes of a clerk and you can see there, if not cheerfulness and a willingness to serve, at least a determination to get you out of there with a minimum of trouble to themselves, which means that they intend to help you, if only to save themselves the bother of listening to you complain.

Three dead-eyed college kids behind the counter.  One beaten down looking middle-aged man at the register, the manager, paying no attention at all to what the college kids are doing.  Six minute wait for plain bagels, six more minutes after that for the cinnamon raisins, maybe, the dead-eyed college kids weren't sure if the cinnamon raisins were actually on the way.

Ok, I'll take what I can get, I said, not exactly being zen about it.  Four plains, the last blueberry, a sesame.

At the register the beaten-down manager asked, in rote voice, "Anything else?"

"There is nothing else," I pointed out.

No response.  No apology.  No offer to hurry anything up.  No explanations.  Not even a shrug.

Paid.  Hurried out.  Returned to the house, seething.  Listened to Mom Mannion warn me I'd have a stroke if I didn't calm down.  Opened the bag.

Scroll up.  See what I ordered.

Ok.  Here's what was in the bag.

Two sesames, the last blueberry, two plains.

Count on it.

Next visit we're going to have to look for somewhere else to buy bagels.

"You have a dull sense of humor, Dad."

At soccer game, half-time, thirsty husband, desiring to purchase a cold beverage, puts hand inside pants pocket to retrieve money he was sure was in there last night.  Comes up empty.  Says to wife, "Wife, did you rob me of my change?"

Wife admits to theft with no sign of guilty conscience.  "You only had a few dollars."

Husband says, "Now I have none and I wish to buy a soda."

Wife asks in tone that implies husband has been irresponsible about family finances again, "And you have no money?"

"Not so much as a nickel."

"How much do you need?"

"Buck, buck and a half."

Wife reaches into her own pocket.  Carefully counts out one dollar and fifty cents in paper and coins.  Husband asks if she'd like a drink herself.  Wife declines offer.  Son who is not on field says he'd like a Pepsi.  Wife carefully doles out another dollar and fifty cents.  Husband and son skip off to buy sodas.

Half hour later.  On the walk home.  Family unit passed by ice cream truck.  Sons politely request ice cream.  Parents shake heads together.  "Not right now," says wife.  "We'll go out later," says husband, "To a real ice cream parlor."  Sons like the idea of going out later to real ice cream parlor.  Dreams of sundaes and milk shakes dance in their heads.  Husband's head too.  Wife says ice cream parlor sounds like a fine idea.

Two minutes later family catches up with ice cream truck parked on their street.  Wife says, "Who wants ice cream?"

Husband says, "??????????????????"

Wife and sons, dreams of sundaes and milk shakes dancing right out of their heads, skip off to buy ice cream from truck, leaving baffled husband behind.

Seconds later, sons have King Cones in hand, wife unwrapping ice cream sandwich.  Wife calls out to husband by name.  Husband, thinking she's wondering what he'd like, calls back, "None for me now, thank you, dear wife."

Wife gets huffy.  That's not what she asked.  "I said, Do you have any money?"

Husband, kindly, "You took all my money, sweetheart, remember?"

Wife gets huffier.  "How am I supposed to pay for the ice cream then?"

Husband says, "How did you think you were going to pay for it?" but has sense enough to say it quietly enough that only he can hear.  Runs a block and a half to house, dashes inside, grabs cash off dresser, runs back.  Only needs to go a block though.  Wife and sons have already left ice cream truck a block back and are walking home, calmly eating their ice cream.

Husband, gasping for breath, manages to ask if ice cream truck driver let them have it for free or if he needs to keep running on to truck to pay.

Wife looks at him as if he's a fool.  "Turns out I had some extra change in my pocket."

Husband falls over in street.

Later, back at house, sons declare the above scene hilarious.   Big joke on dad all around.

Husband says, "Ha ha, very funny."

Younger son shakes his head in dismay.  Says, "You have a dull sense of humor, Dad."

Hawk rise

Red-tailed hawk took a tour of our neighborhood this morning.  I was out on the front porch having coffee, facing west.  The hawk flew up from the east, appearing from the fields behind our house.  Because of the angle of the morning sun, above and behind it, its shadow arrived well ahead of it.  A large shadow that darkened the roof of our car in the driveway, then spanned the crown of the tallest maple in our neighbor's yard across the way.  The shadow flapped its wings once on the neighbor's roof, covered the whole of one dormer, ran over the shingles, and vanished in the shade of another tree, and that's when the hawk itself appeared, looking smallish in comparison to its expansive shadow-self but as it glides in at treetop level forcing my eye to recalibrate and my mind to acknowledge, That's a big bird.

The hawk circled that tall maple, followed the line of the neighbor's roof, then chased after its now-gone shadow and disappeared after it behind the trees.

Pretty morning here.  Heat's broken.  Zip humidity.  You might need a jacket.  There's a stiff breeze that keeps the branches of the trees fidgeting between gusts and there's a constant hissing in the leaves as they dance and the neighbor's laundry, white and yellow towels and pillow cases, bounce on the line.

Hope it's as nice where you are.

Traffic court

I'm innocent!  Innocent, I tell you.

Honest.  I am.  In order for me to have been doing the 47 in the 30 MPH zone the cop said I was doing that night in June when he pulled me over I'd have had to have blown through the red light and taken the turn on two wheels.

The other afternoon I was up in traffic court, pleading not guilty and applying for a court date.  This amounted to signing a form I could have signed at home and sent in by mail if I'd read the fine print.  But to do it I still had to stand in the long line of other innocent people and pass through the metal detector, glad that unlike the woman ahead of me I had read the poster-sized sign on the front door when I'd driven up to the court house:  No Cell Phones Allowed in This Building.

Woman ahead of me had her cell phone with her and was told to take it back out to her car.  Man behind me had a paint can and a cereal box.  He was allowed to bring both of those in the court room after the bailiff looked them over and asked him, with more genuine curiosity than what kind of weirdo are you exasperation, but still with plenty of the latter, "Why would anybody be bringing an empty paint can into traffic court with them?"

The man, who was around 30, broad and bluff-faced with a receding hairline and round rimless glasses, explained he had been out collecting for a Save the Wetlands cause.  His paint can and cereal box were decorated with construction paper pictures of ferns and birds.  The paint can was for the donations.  The cereal box contained flyers and envelopes and other paperwork.  "What's this," asked the bailiff as he went through it, "Your filing cabinet?"

Because I didn't have an actual court date, the bailiff asked me to step over to the side to wait for instructions with another guy who hadn't read the fine print on his ticket either.  The other guy had a good excuse.  He didn't read or speak any English.  He was about 25, thin, deeply sunbrowned, Hispanic, spattered in paint from his shoes up to his cap.   The bailiff, a gray haired man in his sixties with a drooping mustache, dealt with the house painter first, and the first thing he did with him was take his cap by the bill and pull it off his head and hand it to him with a look that said in any language, "You're a grown man, you should know better than to come into court dressed like this."

The painter nodded apologetically and did not give the bailiff a look that said, If the town didn't hold court during hours when I have to leave work to get here in time I wouldn't be dressed like this.

The bailiff didn't give me any particular looks at all, not even the Are you that dumb you can't read the fine print look I was expecting.  He had me sign the form, warned me not to sign the part where I'd be requesting a deposition from the arresting officer, and sent me on my way, explaining that it would be next month before I'd have to appear, the exact date would come in the mail.

I took one quick last look around the court room.  My hope coming in had been that the cop who'd pulled me over wouldn't show.  I'm not sure he did.  There were eight cops in the court room, with four different uniforms represented---town cop, state trooper, campus police, and sheriff's department.  My cop had been a campus cop---I guess their jurisdiction extends into the town roads that pass by the college---but the one in the court room looked a lot shorter than the cop who leaned in my window that night, politely demanding my license and registration.

All the cops were in a jolly mood, laughing and talking together by the empty judge's bench.  Traffic court's a regular office party for them.  Probably shouldn't count on my cop not showing on my actual court date.

On my way out I met the woman who'd had to return her cell phone to her car huffing and puffing her way up the steep front steps to the court house.  She was a stout woman, a retired schoolteacher, it turned out.

"That wasn't nice," she said to me, taking a break on her way up the steps.  "That wasn't nice, making me go all the way back to my car.  He could have held onto it for me."

"Probably he'd have a dozen cell phones to keep track of if he did," I said, I hope with sympathy.

"What's with that anyway?  Why don't they just ask us to shut them off?"  But she knew the answer to that one.  "Terrorists, right?  They're worried I'll use mine to set off a bomb.  Do I look like a terrorist?  I'm a former schoolteacher!  I look like a former schoolteacher, don't I?  Me, a terrorist!"  And she hurried up the steps into the court house.

I wonder what our old pal Chris the Cop thinks of my chances of convincing the judge of my "innocence" when my time comes.

How about you?  What didn't you do they say you did and did you get out of it?
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You are old, Father Mannion

Eleven year old and I were on our way to the town compost heap to unload some brush and lawn clippings this afternoon.  Stopped off at the library first, where I left my wallet on a table and we had to go back.

Kid Mannion:  How did you forget your wallet?

Old Father Mannion:  I don't know.  Guess I'm getting old and senile.

Kid Mannion:  What's that?

Old Father Mannion:  Senile?

Kid Mannion:  I don't know what that means.

Old Father Mannion:  Means my brain isn't working the way it used to.  I'm getting forgetful and silly.

Kid Mannion:  Oh.  (Thoughtful pause.)  My brain isn't working the way it used to either.

Old Father Mannion:  It's not?

Kid Mannion:  Nope.  My thinking is different.  It's getting more complicated.

Old Father Mannion:  Guess we're going in different directions.

Trip to the compost heap complete, Old Father Mannion makes a suggestion.

Old Father Mannion:  You want to go home and have a popsicle?

Kid Mannion:  You have another idea?

Old Father Mannion:  Stop at the ice cream store for sundaes?

Kid Mannion:  Old man, I like the way you think.

Sometimes life imitates art, sometimes it imitates the Three Stooges

From this morning's Times Herald-Record:

About 12:15 p.m., a flatbed trailer from South Fallsburg-based MB Consultants, also known as Murray's Chickens, got on the Exit 107 on-ramp, en route to Route 17 eastbound and Monroe with hundreds of caged, live chickens aboard.

"I was coming around the turn..." [the driver said.]  "Next thing I knew..."

You can take it from there.

Driver wasn't hurt.  A few chickens came to a fowl end.

Photo by Michele Haskell.  Heather Yakin's whole story with more pictures by Haskell here.

Anger issues at Barnes and Noble

Anger is the theme here at the B and N cafe this lunchtime.

Three year old boy with his new stuffed dinosuar:  Why is he angry, mommy?

Mother:  He's a T-rex.  T-rexes are just angry.

At the table next to me three older women are threatening to start a tontine.  They're all going to try to outlive each other.  Whichever one lives longest gets bragging rights on the others.

Youngest woman to the oldest who may be her mother:  If you live to a hundred, I'm going to a hundred and ten.

Other woman who appears to be the oldest's younger sister to her niece:  If you live to a hundred and ten, she'll live to a hundred and twenty just to spite you.

The time line is confused here.  They're talking as if they're all the same age.  They also seem to regard death as a game like dodge ball.  If you get hit you go to the sidelines where you have to watch the survivors having fun without you.

Now the daughter is complaining that her mother stole a sip from her mocha latte when she wasn't looking.

Daughter:  You did that just to get your germs all over it, didn't you?

Mother:  I did.

Daughter:  You wanted to give me your germs.

Mother:  Of course.

Aunt:  I'll bet she spit in it just to make sure.

Daughter:  I'm sure she did.

And they all laugh.  They're having fun.  This is their idea of a good time.  Three elderly white women playing the dozens.