I wish I were you

ECHOES FROM THE LOAFERS’ CLUB MEETING

This is the best potato and ham soup I’ve ever eaten.

 

It’s clam chowder.

 

This is the worst clam chowder I’ve ever eaten.

 

DRIVING BY BRUCE’S DRIVE

I have a wonderful neighbor named Bruce. Whenever I pass his drive, thoughts occur to me. I was moseying along in my car. I needed to be somewhere—important business—but I didn’t need to hurry. Chuck Berry sang on the radio, “Crusin' and playin' the radio with no particular place to go.”

 

The previous day, someone had sent me an email about something he’d seen on social media saying that there was a law being considered that would prohibit aimless or purposeless driving. There’d be no cruising around or driving with no place to go. Convertible sales would crash. I probably couldn’t even listen to Chuck Berry. How could that be enforced? It’s fake news.

 

I spent a long time in the hardware store. There was a sign reading, “Watch batteries.” I watched, but they didn’t do anything.

 

I took swallowing therapy. That was a surprisingly easy thing to swallow. Lorna Doone shortbread cookies held a prominent position in my therapy. They served as grub in a standardized test to evaluate mastication, oral transport and pharyngeal clearance of hard, quick-dissolving solid foods. Why Lorna Doones? First, lutefisk wasn’t available in an adequate supply. Lorna Doones provide a consistent texture across clinical trials, are hard but rapid-dissolving, and allow appraisal of how a patient eats. I avoided premature spillage, poor tongue control and any residue left behind. Yay me.

 

I BELIEVE

In moments and memories.

 

You matter.

 

In hotdish architects.

 

Everyone is a celebrity.

 

In people who are skilled with a skillet.

 

It can hail cats and dogs.

 

I’VE LEARNED

After Charles Boycott, an English land agent, tried to evict a number of his tenant farmers in 1880, locals in County Mayo, Ireland, fought back by ostracizing him—leading to the term "boycott."

 

The best ability is availability.

 

If you want to feel like a kid again, look at a snow globe through a kaleidoscope.

 

Prices for the top 25 brand-name drugs increased by an average of 81% when they entered the U.S. market, according to a report from AARP’s Public Policy Institute. In 19 other high-income countries, prices of those same drugs had fallen by an average of 13%.

 

THE NEWS FROM HARTLAND HAROLD

Buffet the Vampire Slayer opens to a hungry crowd.

 

Owner of a door company remembered fondly. “He could make an entrance.”

 

“We might have what you want, but I doubt it,” says the owner of the Disappointment Hardware.

 

Local dodgeball legend will be missed.

 

BAD JOKES DEPARTMENT

They told me I was gullible, and I believed them.

 

The nurse lost his job at the dermatology clinic for making too many rash decisions.

 

A friend had his name changed to Bjorn today. He wasn’t Bjorn yesterday.

 

Genie: What is your final wish?

 

Boy: I wish I were you.

 

Genue: Ut’s weurd but alrught.

 

NATURALLY

The bluebird nestlings were becoming bluer, a fawn followed its mother through the tall grass, indigo buntings sang "Fire, fire; where, where? Here, here; See it, see it?" incessantly, and spiderwort brightened the day. The deep-blue spiderwort flowers open in the morning and typically wilt by noon on hot days.

 

A catbird must have wanted me to see those things as it had begun singing outside my bedroom window before civil twilight began. How do catbirds produce their remarkable song? They have a voice box that's different from ours. It has two separate branches that are controlled independently, allowing the bird to make two distinct sounds at the same time. The catbird was singing a duet with itself. Town criers were responsible for making public announcements and acted as human loudspeakers when shouting things like, "12 o'clock and all is well," to reassure the public. The catbird is my town crier.

 

Multicolored Asian lady beetles had become rare in the house, but some stubbornly overstayed their welcome. I watched cedar waxwings feed feverishly on midges in May. Midges are small flies that resemble mosquitoes. Midges don’t bite or transmit disease, but they create obnoxious swarms. Often referred to as lake flies, they’re frequently mistaken for mayflies, which are much larger.

 

Blue jays belong to the Corvidae family, which is considered among the most intelligent birds in the world. That family includes ravens, crows, jays and magpies. Blue jays would do better in school if they would just apply themselves, but other birds do copy from their papers. Their migration remains a mystery. They don’t all migrate, and it hasn’t been determined why those that migrate do so when they do.

 

MEETING ADJOURNED

The kindest word in all the world is the unkind word gone unsaid.