Time to Rhyme

Until today I knew two things about Ogden Nash:

1. When the daily crossword puzzle calls for a poet, there is at least a 50 percent chance he is the solution.  I guess that’s because N, A, S, and H are all nice, common letters.
2. He wrote a delightful ditty that I can’t seem to forget.  “Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker.”  It’s unfortunate that I can’t remember my zip code but can’t forget that particular poem. Thus is life.

But at the library this morning in the New Books section I discovered The Best of Ogden Nash, edited by Linell Nash Smith (his daughter.) (Published by Ivan R. Dee)  I was enchanted.  A sample:

THE FLY

God in His wisdom made the fly

And then forgot to tell us why. (p. 175)

THE TERMITE

Some primal termite knocked on wood

And tasted it and found it good,

And that is why your Cousin May

Fell through the parlor floor today. (p. 175)

THE KITTEN

The trouble with a kitten is

THAT

Eventually it becomes a

CAT. (p. 171)

THE CATERPILLAR

I find among the poems of Schiller

No mention of the caterpillar,

Nor can I find one anywhere

In Petrarch or in Baudelaire,

So here I sit in extra session

To give my personal impression.

The caterpillar, as it’s called,

Is often hairy, seldom bald;

It looks as if it never shaves;

When as it walks, it walks in waves;

And from the cradle to the chrysalis

It’s utterly speechless, songless, whistleless. (p. 183)

THE MANATEE

The manatee is harmless

And conspicuously charmless.

Luckily the manatee

Is quite devoid of vanity. (p. 185)

.

.

THE PANTHER

The panther is like a leopard,

Except it hasn’t been peppered.

Should you behold a panther crouch,

Prepare to say Ouch.

Better yet, if called by a panther,

Don’t anther. (p. 170)

THE COW

The cow is of the bovine ilk;

One end is moo, the other, milk. (p. 163)

THE LAMA

The one-l lama,

He’s a priest.

The two-l llama,

He’s a beast.

And I will bet

A silk pajama

There isn’t any

Three-l llama. (p. 163)

THE PIG

The pig, if I am not mistaken,

Supplies us sausage, ham and bacon.

Let others say his heart is big–

I call it stupid of the pig. (p. 164)

THE DOG

The truth I do not stretch or shove

When I state the dog is full of love.

I’ve also proved, by actual test,

A wet dog is the lovingest. (p. 189)

THE RHINOCEROS

The rhino is a homely beast,

For human eyes he’s not a feast.

Farewell, farewell, you old rhinoceros,

I’ll stare at something less prepoceros. (p. 164)

THE GERM

A mighty creature is the germ,

Through smaller than the pachyderm.

His customary dwelling place

Is deep within the human race.

His childish pride he often pleases

By giving people strange diseases.

Do you, my poppet, feel infirm?

You probably contain a germ. (p. 210)

CAN I GET YOU A GLASS OF WATER?

One trouble with a cough,
It never quite comes off.

Just when you think you’re through coughing

There’s another cough in the offing. (p. 224)

THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN

I’ve never seen an abominable snowman,

I’m hoping not to see one,

I’m also hoping, if I do,

That it will be a wee one. (p. 240)

He wrote lots of other stuff, much of it longer and some of a more serious nature, but it is these charming bits of verse that I find so captivating.

The Doctor Is In

Yesterday was my semi-annual (?) bi-annual (?) let’s go with “twice yearly” neurology appointment for multiple sclerosis.  The visit in a nutshell?

1. The doctor asked how I was doing.  I said fine.
2. The doctor read the sheet I filled out when I arrived for the appointment, on which I stated that I was having no problems.
3. The doctor asked if I was having any MS issues.  I said no.
4. The doctor said I was in good shape.

And how many years did he have to go to med school?

OK.  So maybe I’ve oversimplified.  Left out a few things.  Such as:

Sobriety testing. I walk in a straight line, touching my heel against my toe for each step.  Also, I close my eyes and touch my nose.

Pain tolerance study. Also known as “We have ways of making your talk.”  He drags a sharp object against the bottom of my bare feet to see if I cry out in agony.

Clown school curriculum. He hits various parts of my body with a rubber hammer.  One of these days I’m thinking that because of my uber-strong reflexes, I  might kick the guy (shades of the Three Stooges), but he’s pretty careful about standing back before he whacks.

Strength training. Like arm wrestling but for assorted muscles.  He pushes and I push back.  I’m thinking about enrolling in some intense boot camp training so I can amaze him by pushing back with super power force.

I guess I passed all the tests, because, as he said/I said, I’m in good shape.

(I’m actually very fond of my doctor.  Because he’s so nice whether things are going well or not.  And because he’s so knowledgeable when he needs to be.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

That is really just part one of my HEALTH ASSESSMENT which involves evaluating what a person can judge just by looking.  But that’s like seeing a nice, red, blemish-free apple.  Can you really say how the apple looks on the inside?

Hence, part two, the MRI of the brain and spine, which can reveal nasty white lesions, the hallmark of multiple sclerosis.  I haven’t had one in two years, since I changed my medicine.  Does that make it bi-annual?  Semi-annual?  Let’s just go with “once every two years.”  He suggested doing it in the fall.

Ideally, part one, the general assessment and part two, the MRI, both show that a person is doing well.  On the other hand, if they both say there’s trouble, well, that’s bad news but at least the two methods agree.

The ultimate frustration comes when a person knows he’s having symptoms but the MRI comes back clear.  People start looking at him like he don’t know what he’s talking about.  Like he’s full of hot air.  Like it’s all in his head.

It’s not a good thing.

Required Reading

Remember when “text” was not a verb?

This week my son and I are all worked up over college textbooks.  But we’re coming at our issues from different sides.

In the process of sorting through some stuff in the basement, I ran across a box of old college textbooks.  I found volumes on math, chemistry, sociology, accounting, and education.  You don’t get out of William and Mary without being liberally educated.

But there’s one book I can’t remember at all.  It’s by Arthur Schlesinger and it’s on “The Newspaper War on Britain: 1764-1776.”  I can tell from the price tag that it’s from the college bookstore and that it’s VERY old–$4.98 for 318 pages!  My immediate assumption was that it must have been my husband’s because if it had been mine I would have highlighted it (not those awful pastel markers; I always underlined in pencil, neatly, using a flexible plastic six-inch ruler.)  Plus, he was a history major who became a newspaper reporter when he graduated.

But he looked at the book and noted that it was published the year he graduated.  So I don’t know; either way, it’s going in the DONATE pile.  I’m sure somebody wants to learn about the newspaper war on Britain, but they don’t live in this house.

My son, on the other hand, is looking to acquire a college text.  He decided to take Spanish I this summer at the community college.  The required textbook goes for $150 new.  For a Spanish textbook?!?  I can barely fathom that for an art history book, with all those photographs, or an organic chemistry book; that weighs a ton.  But for first year Spanish?  Perhaps equally astounding, he found it online for $15.  How can a $150 book be selling for $15?  Is it missing, say for instance, all the pages?

Anyway, after four years of exploring all the angles, my son is the expert on minimizing textbook costs, though sometimes my husband and I do have to insist that when taking a course it is expected that he actually have access to the reading material.  So I trust he’ll figure this out as well.

Buenos Dias!  (Did I say that right?)

OCD:Obviously Completely Dysfunctional?

I don’t think it’s a big deal that I always put on my right shoe on first.  Or that I always floss starting at the upper right back.  Or that I always insert my left contact before my right.  I’d call those  habits, not examples of obsessive compulsive disorder.

But I exhibit a few behaviors that might raise eyebrows in the psychiatrist’s office….

When I buy eggs, I don’t just pick up a dozen and plop them in the cart.  I pick up a carton from the back, where it’s nice and cold, and also check to make sure I’m getting the most distant expiration date available.  And then I open the carton and eyeball each egg.  But even then, I’m not satisfied.  I have to touch EACH EGG to make sure it wiggles in the carton.  Why?  Because some time in the distant past I got home and discovered an egg that looked fine but was actually cracked on the bottom and, due to the dried leaking yolk, glued into its little compartment.  How much time have I spent over the years making sure THAT never happened again?!?

My three-month supply of Copaxone medication arrives in three boxes, each secure in its own plastic bag.  I open each bag, remove the box, and open the box.  One might think that seeing all the syringes lined up would be sufficient.  But no, it would be possible–would it not?–that underneath that top row of syringes I might find–I don’t know–string cheese.  So I dig down to the bottom of the box to verify all the shots are present and accounted for.

On more than one occasion I’ve been known to retrace my steps halfway across a parking lot.  While I pretend I need to get something out of the car that I’ve forgotten, in actuality I am checking to see if I’ve remembered to lock the car doors.  (My auto-clicker has long since died.  Actually that would be my automatic-automobile-clicker.  An auto-auto-clicker.)  And I don’t just check the driver’s door and leave it at that, I also check the back seat driver’s side and maybe even the trunk.  But no, I don’t walk around and yank on the passenger side doors also, though I’m tempted.  I trust my eyes.  If the door looks locked, it must be locked.

I am an aficionado of all things paper, and so with my various card stock, newsprint, posterboard, and stationery projects, I spend a fair amount of time with an X-acto knife.  I never studied the experts’ advice on how to sharpen one using a sharpening stone, so I developed my own technique.  First eight times on each side of the blade, the four times, then two, then one.  To vary from this proven technique would surely be courting disaster.

You be the judge.  Normal, if slightly eccentric, behavior?  Or is it time to call in the professionals?

Food for Thought

I’m not the CEO of a fortune 500 company.  I’m not an air traffic controller at a major international airport.  I’m not a brain surgeon or a police officer.

But some days I think that during a simple trip to the grocery store, I’m faced with making as many decisions as these people make on a daily basis.

For instance…

Yesterday I was shopping for three people, myself, my husband, my elder son.  We each have different favorite things.  And different tolerances for those things we’re not so crazy about.  And different attitudes about what qualifies as healthy.  And different interpretations of the food pyramid.

I had to consider what dishes I might prepare in the week ahead, and what ingredients I already had on hand for those menus.

I know two families that are facing considerable stress and could probably use a meal or two.

And then there’s the coupons.

When grocery stores started issuing shopper’s club cards, they largely eliminated the plethora of store coupons we had been inundated with.  Well, the club cards are still here, but the store coupons are back.  I had some from the newspaper as well as some that I had received in the mail.  I also had standard manufacturer’s coupons from a variety of sources.

I might add that some of these coupons are incredibly complicated regarding the purchase of multiple items in specific sizes and flavors.

And for any given product one has to decide whether the national brand is really better, or if the store brand is acceptable.  And unit pricing must be considered.  If I can get four times the cheese for twice the cost, should I buy the larger size?

I’m always annoyed that my Safeway has all the frozen foods right at the store entrance.  So that for the majority of my shopping trip, I’ve got ice cream and frozen peas melting in my cart.  Should I wait till last to get those items, making a special trip back through the store to pick it up?

And now there’s no longer just the question of paper or plastic.  Now I’ve also got to consider the eco-friendly reusable bags.

Is it any wonder that by the time I get home, I’m too tired to cook?

When History Happens in Your Front Yard

I’m beginning to think my nephew is a real-life Forrest Gump, the original right place/right time guy.

Then again, he may be an undercover CIA operative.

(Photograph, quotations from Forrest Gump.)

When Adam was a little tyke we called him WW.   It stood for WhirlWind.  A typical afternoon?  His mother put him down for a nap during a visit to grandmommy’s house.  An hour later we discovered that he had found a lipstick and used it to cover every square inch of his face in bright pink (except possibly his lips.)  And when he finished with that he shredded a window shade into lots and lots of long skinny pieces.

“For no particular reason, I just kept on going.”

Baseball and Boy Scouts were his two main childhood interests.  His dad couldn’t see why anyone would voluntarily spend a weekend every month camping out, particularly during New England winters.  But Adam loved it; I think getting away from the day-to-day provided him with much-needed physical and mental release.

“When I got tired, I slept.  When I got hungry, I ate.  When I had to go, you know, I went.”

On the other hand, the rest of the world may think he, his dad, and his older brother are nuts in their infatuation with all things baseball, but they understand each other perfectly.  Whether played or watched, baseball continues to be not just a hobby, but an obsession.

“That’s all I have to say about that.”

Tragedy struck when Adam was a high school student.  He was a passenger in the back seat of a car.  A sharp corner, too much speed, a tree.  Three people in the vehicle died.  Adam and one other friend survived.  (Seat belts save lives!)

“Mama always said dying was a part of life.”

In the aftermath, he had to deal with the physical pain of his injuries as well as the emotional loss of three of his closest buddies.

“My Mama always said you’ve got to put the past behind you before you can move on.”

His survival of that horrific accident may have been a clue that interesting things lay ahead for Adam.

“What’s my destiny, Mama?”  “You’re gonna have to figure that out for yourself.”

Academics didn’t come easily for Adam.  While some kids breezed through school, he learned to study.  Either in spite of, or perhaps because of, this effort he put into his lessons, he came to love his scholarly pursuits.

“You have to do the best with what God gave you.”

So it was not terribly surprising that after graduating from college with a history degree, he went on to earn a masters in religion and eventually ended up with an education degree from Columbia University.

The spark that academia lit within him worked both ways; he discovered that not only did he like to learn, but he also liked to teach.

“Have you given any thought to your future, Son?”

So now we come to the part of the story where Adam finds himself smack dab in the middle of two truly significant occurrences in recent history.  Which both involve revolutionary power shifts.

In 2004 Adam was teaching English to Ukrainians during a stint in the Peace Corps.  Living in Kiev, he had a front row seat to the Orange Revolution that was sparked by a runoff election between Viktor Yushchenko and Viktor Yanukovych.  Numerous news sources as well as public opinion reported that the election was marred by corruption and fraud, favoring Yanukovych.  After days of protests, a new election was held under close scrutiny and Yushchenko was declared the victor.  Adam saw it all, and lived it all.

“Well, now we ain’t strangers anymore.”

After the Peace Corps, Adam taught English to foreign students at a Boston area college for a while, and then he headed overseas again last year.  This time his destination was Osh, the second largest city in Kyrgyzstan.

“Mama always said, God is mysterious.”

In April violent protests led to the departure of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev.  Provisional leaders took control.  During this unrest, Adam was briefly pulled away from his home base, but then allowed to return.

A couple of weeks ago, violence erupted again, this time centered on Osh.  Clashes between the two main ethnic groups, Uzbeks and Kyrgyz people, led to a state of emergency and fears of a civil war.  Adam packed what he could fit in his backpack and headed to a safer spot.  Now he’s out of the country and out of harm’s way, but filled with some sad stories about people in a place where education has taken a back seat to survival.

“I’m pretty tired…I think I’ll go home now.”

Life With Father

It’s hard to imagine that my mother could ever tire of spending unending hours with my sister and I, model children that we were.  But nonetheless, Saturday afternoons frequently found us in the company of my father, visiting the Charlotte Nature Museum.  We watched lots of nature movies there.  This was long before Animal Planet existed.

And Sunday afternoons we often ice skated at the public skating sessions at the Coliseum where the hockey team played.  I didn’t realize at the time how self-centered I was, but now as I think back on it I can’t remember if my Dad skated or if he just watched us.  I never had lessons and never mastered much beyond skating forward, but skating endless loops around the rink could entertain me for hours on end.  By the time we packed up to go home my feet would be aching.  (And hopefully Mom, after two kid-free afternoons, would be fully recovered and ready to face another week of stay-at-home parenting.)

Dad always liked to stop for a doughnut.  No matter where we’d been, it seemed like our route home always wound past the Krispy Kreme on Independence Boulevard.  Once he didn’t realize till after we’d snacked that he had no cash.  He went out to the car to see if he could find some change in the seats, but the staff came running after him.  They knew him well enough (and knew he’d be back soon enough) to trust him to the honor system.

When I was little he worked as an engineer for Douglas Aircraft.  What he actually did during the day was a big mystery to me, but in my mind having heard he was an engineer I thought he drove trains around.

His lifelong hobby was astronomy.  He was probably right near the top of the list of people with the longest Sky and Telescope magazine subscriptions.  I think the first time he got his hands on some money for discretionary spending he used it to buy a telescope, which served him well for MANY years.  Friday nights he headed out to the observatory maintained by the Charlotte Amateur Astronomer’s Club.  On numerous occasions during my growing up years he would awaken my sister and me in the middle of the night and usher us out to the front yard, or occasionally up to the school, to observe something in the night-time sky.  A comet.  Or an asteroid.  Maybe a super-nova.  Some shooting stars.

The most exciting outing happened in the middle of the day.  Charlotte was situated in the path of a partial solar eclipse.  But by driving a few hours we could position ourselves in the region that would experience a total eclipse.  So that’s what we did.  We were in a rural area where lots of astronomer type people had set-ups allowing us to watch the reflection of the sun as it was gradually covered by the moon’s shadow.  It wasn’t safe to look directly into the sun!  At least not until the process was complete and the sun was completely covered, except for a ring around the outside.  Then it got dark.  The chickens went to roost.  For three or four minutes it was distinctly other-worldly.

Our house had a basement workshop that was only accessible from a door to the back yard.  If he was working down there and it was time for me to go to bed, I would go to the heating duct and holler GOOD NIGHT, which always got a similar reply from him.  I thought that was about the neatest thing in the world.  A magic communication port.

(My delight was possibly superseded by the  time we were between kitchen tables so we temporarily used the round outdoor table right there in the kitchen, I guess with a tablecloth thrown over it.  There was a hole in the middle for an umbrella.  Depending on what food item was sitting at the table center, you could stick your toe up through the hole and make the dish jump around.  Which would immediately be followed by howls of laughter.  Oh, but we were easy to please!)

When Mom and Dad visited us in New Jersey after we had kids, they’d stay for a week or so.  While Mom could be entertained endlessly with the grandchildren, Dad needed a project to work on.  On various visits, he installed shelving in one of the bedrooms, added crown molding to the dining room, built a structure to enable us to reach the light fixture installed in a very awkward position in the stairwell, added insulation to the attic, and built a geodesic dome for the kids.

Dad doesn’t remember any of that stuff now.  Alzheimer’s has robbed him of his memories, one by one.  But they live on in a cherished corner of my mind.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad!