Doin' the moron mosey

"You're bringin' on the heartbreak
Bringin' on the heartache." --Def Leppard

Oh, you child of churlishness
you stalwart of stupidity
didn't your parents ever teach you
to look both ways?

My laptop and my lunch go flying
from passenger seat to the floor
My blood boils
and I hail you with my horn

Consider yourself lucky
that I blasted your ears
and didn't break your bones
with my bumper

You give a shrug
you idiot you
"What, me worry?"
Oh, you'd worry all right

If you woke up shattered
in a hospital bed
or worse, in that corner of hell
reserved for the incorrigibly stupid

You are a man in body
but with the naivete of a newborn newt
and the cranial capacity
of a punch-drunk 'possum.

Duck dread

Anatidaephobia - The fear that some time, somewhere, somehow, a duck is watching you.

Cf. http://phobialist.com

I do not have this phobia. Just so's you know.

Nor am I bothered excessively by spiders and snakes, crowds, clowns or what lies ahead for me after I die.

I do fear needles and razor blades, claustrophobic situations, the rise of China as a 21st century military power, elevated superhighways, my own eventual old age and unemployment.

What do you fear? I promise not to laugh.

Humbled

Yesterday I was invited to a lunch meeting with several regional representatives for the kind of work that I do.

Now, if I do say so myself, I consider myself at least as smart as the average bear. So it was very humbling to struggle to keep up with their conversation and to feel, quite frankly, like a six-year-old accidentally dropped off on a college campus.

I will never be invited to join Mensa. From time to time, that is made painfully clear to me.

On a lighter note: I had one dollar with me that day, since payday is still several days away, so my Beloved and I had agreed that I could put my lunch on the credit card.

"Just don't spend a lot," She said.

So I scanned the menu and found the cheapest thing on it, some kind of cheese and artichoke appetizer for six bucks that I could have made at home with a 50 cent jar of artichokes and some Cheez Whiz.

I ate my little meal whilst my lunch companions dined on huge, fancy sandwiches, fries and other succulent fare. I felt sorry for myself but hey, that's life. I also ate most of the garlic rolls in the communal plate since everybody else was busy with their food whilst mine had taken about twenty seconds to eat.

The time came to pay our respective bills.

"I'll cover this, my treat," said the meeting-organizer to us.

NOW he tells me.

Poverty sucks.

The harvest ...

Last weekend, my Niece could hardly stand to finish Her dinner,so eager was She to get out into the backyard and help me, as She had been promised She could, to harvest the ripe Concord grapes.

She quickly dispatched the low-hanging ones, of course popping the purpley-est ones into Her mouth along the way. Then She took care of the ones that She could reach from a chair.

Since I have no ladder, the rest of them hanging from the top of the arbor posed a problem. Ah, but not to an enterprising nine-year-old!I was quickly drafted to put Her upon my shoulders.

"Am I too heavy?" She asked several times. With my face full of grape leaves and with bits of stems and detritus raining down upon me, I answered back, firmly:

"Absolutely not."

It was a bit of a fib. She is nine now, as noted, not five. My back and shoulders started to go numb fairly soon, but I gritted my teeth and said nothing, as She happily plucked and pulled grapes somewhere in the leaves above my head and I kept my grip upon Her ankles to prevent disaster.

Not if every disc in my back screamed at me was I going to give this child, who has been teased about Her weight [which weight, I hasten to add, is absolutely normal for Her age], any notion that She is too heavy.

So we persevered until She had a great big bag stuffed full of ripe, sweet Concord grapes.

"I hope," I told my Beloved later, "that She has a memory to cherish for a lifetime from this."