Titles, Inc.

Down, but Hardly Out

Get on line.  You want to tell me your problems, take a number.

He bought a book and told me he has about everything else Wodehouse has written.  Says he is running out of shelf space in this smaller living quarters.  “You had a big house?” I ask.  “Yes, she kicked me out, kept the house.”  “Oh, divorce,” I cleverly deduced.

“Yes, she punched me in the nose.  Twice.”  The only appropriate reply seemed for me to repeat it, “She punched you in the nose?  Twice?”  I formed a fist and made as if to punch him in the nose, “Surely you don’t mean like this?”

He was enjoying my bewilderment.  I threw a short punch.  Examining my fist, I told him I can’t imagine punching someone in the nose.  “And then she threw me out.”  I followed along with the script he was laying out.  “Why did she punch you in the nose and throw you out?”

“It seems I had another child somewhere.”  Pause.  “Well, we were separated for a while.”  Since I was speechless, he continued.  “She suddenly shows up.  Now she wants money.  I didn’t even know I had this kid.  She could have found me anytime.  I’m famous.  I’m in the news a lot, my picture in the paper.”

Hey, a celebrity!  Renewed interest as I look at him more closely.  “What’s your name?”

He tells me.  I say, “I never heard of you.”  “Maybe not,” he agrees, “it’s a very specialized field.”  Disappointed, I ask, “What do you do?”  He tells me, “IT.”  “Yeah? So what’s that?”  “Computers,” he says.

I have since written to my guru who says it means “information technology  -- computers, both the machines and the software, that enable us to produce, distribute and consume information (text, audio, video, images).  But not knowing this earlier I was not impressed by the IT.

“I only know Bill Gates,” I tell him disdainfully.  “So what are you doing here in the middle of the afternoon?”  (You all know what’s coming, we can recite it together.)  “I lost my job.”  “Tough,” I commiserate.  He shrugs.  “I was top man, but the company was sold, and the new people got rid of us and brought in their own team.” 

“Ouch,” I say.  He laughs.  “I did exactly the same thing when I was brought in to run this company. Fired the whole staff.  I’m not worried.  I’ll find a job somewhere.  I'm good at what I do.”

“Well, you’re divorced.  You can move anywhere.”  “Not really.  I’m living in a condo in the neighborhood because I want to be near my kids.”  I didn’t think I should say it, but I ask, “And the other kid?”  He says, “I don’t know that he’s mine.  She wanted money - I gave her money.  My wife wanted out anyway.  This just worked for her.  She threw me out and kept everything.”

“I have all my books, though.”  He smiled.  “If she knew how important they were to me, she would have taken them too.”

---Florence

 

A Book is a Book

This from James Joyce:  "The demand that I make of my reader is that he should devote his whole life to reading my works."  

Sheesh!  What an ego.  On the other hand, I met a lady who belongs to a club that is devoted to discussing Ulysses.  That’s it.  That’s the agenda.  Ulysses, month after month.  I tried listening to A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man from a cassette in the car.  I kept rewinding thinking a second hearing would help.  Or a third.  Since I couldn’t follow it from the printed page, I thought someone reading it to me with expression would clarify it.  Didn’t work. 

The Joyce comment is just one from an entertaining list of one-liners about books by other prominent authors.  I found it on Forbes.com which I hope was encouraging us to read the gen-u-wine product even though we were gleaning this tid-bit from the computer.  Disclaimer: a dear family member is managing editor at Forbes, and to show loyalty I put Forbes.com on my Favorites.  Now I find myself going to it every day to check the state of the financial world, but mostly to read all the fun articles surrounding it.

I often, very often, want to Comment and I can’t figure it out.  I read an even-handed report about I won’t mention her name, and I wrote, incensed, “How can you be so objective?” but I couldn’t find Send.  Just now I read their health report about how salmon is good for you, and I tried again.  I wanted to know whether smoked salmon, (you know, Lox) is equally healthy.  Forget the bagel and cream cheese.  Just lox, straight into the mouth.  Somehow it is too tasty to be healthy.  Well, I won’t find out from Forbes.com because I don’t know how to fill out a form. 

“No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.--Mary Montagu”  from the list I mentioned.  I suppose that doesn’t exclude the Internet or anything digital. 

But I think she might be surprised to find us reading her words on a lit up screen, instead of hard paper.

-- Florence

 

 

Saving Face

The neighborhood had been carved out of a huge private estate, with meandering streets branching off from each other without a seeming pattern.  The woman had given me directions so confusing that I dialed up my GPS.  Good grief!  With all the turns the GPS put me though, I felt lost in a maze.

Finally.  I was admitted to a lovely house, and looked at books in several rooms and in the plush basement recreation room with a big set of drums.  Shelves and cartons of books.  Nothing for me but I selected a handful hoping I would recover the gas money.  We chatted while I dug out the books.  She told me the books I didn't want would go into a garage sale.  "Oh, are you moving?  Or just cleaning up?" 

She whispered.  "We have to sell."  I straightened up to face her.  "You have to?"  She nodded.  I asked, "Like you're in trouble?  Work?"  She said, "He lost his job, and can't find anything."  He had been in something financial, Wall Streetish.  I didn't understand the job description, but I could understand the consequences.  She seemed terrified, "We let the landscape service go, and my housekeeper comes in only one day a week now.  The boys are at state colleges and that's taken care of.  Otherwise...."

I said sternly, "This house is too big for the two of you with the boys away at college.  You don't need to be concerned with maintaining such a large house.  You should be looking to downsize in a major way.  Make life easier for yourself.  You don't need all this stuff anymore.  Get a small condo, and get rid of the burden of managing a big house."

She whispered, "That's how I should think?"  I said, "Absolutely.  That's exactly what you are doing now."

You know the expression, Relief washed over her face.  I saw it happen.

---Florence

Therapy

Limp as a wet dish rag.  A real old expression but the only one to describe my body after this last massage.  I hadn’t been to Victor at Elizabeth Arden’s for a long while, and couldn’t decide whether it was prudent.  This old back did not like to straighten up after bending over, and sometimes I have to find a wall to back up against to remind it what a stiff spine should feel like.

Would a massage help?  Or knock it out?  Was my back saying, “It’s hard enough to hold you upright without submitting me to the abuse of a masseur,” or was I hearing, “For God’s sake, help me out – massage these muscles.”

I gambled.  There I was on the table, ordering Victor’s Deep Massage.  Victor knows very little English.  “If too hard, tell me.”  And an occasional, “Too hard?”   Hard is good.  A bit of masochism helps.  I noted that one grunts on the out breath, not on breathing in.  I was aware of this as I tried to minimize the sound which is uttered down the hole your head rests in so as not to squash your nose.  I had asked for “hard” and I do believe my muscles were screaming, Yes, Yes.  My neck was howling, More, More.

While working the back over, the tush and below are covered delicately with a sheet.  One’s back ends at the edge of the sheet.  Then the very hot towel is laid on the back, covered with a blanket to keep in the warmth as Victor moves to the legs.  The sheet is removed to expose the legs.

The sole of the foot is not ticklish when seriously rubbed.  Up the leg squeezing and rubbing.  (At this point, my children are required to stop reading.)  Up and down the leg, rubbing and squeezing.  Now here is something interesting  I just learned about anatomy.  The tush is the upper part of the leg.  It is all one unit.  Yessir, from the toes on up. But as I said, all my muscles were thanking me for this attention. 

After an hour of this Victor put the robe in easy reach and left the room.  Limp as a wet dish rag.  Didn’t want to move.  Could I get off the table?  Yep, hopped down.  How’s the back?  Hey, it’s straight as a board.  This was a gift from my daughters, so thanks again, ladies.

Feelin’ good!

-- Florence

Who Doesn't Love a Parade?

On the Fourth of July, following tradition, I went to my small town’s parade.  Or more accurately, my town’s small parade.  Long ago, decorated floats filled the street.  Modest, but attractive and lively.  I remember one float blaring music while ladies from the sponsored gym, wearing their very fitted leotards, exercised enthusiastically as the truck rolled down the long streets.  Every year I would think, “I really must enter next year,” and fantasized a float with Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, a childhood book I reflect on with nostalgia.  Rebecca and other members of the cast attired in starched white bonnets, and crisp pinafores over flowered cotton dresses, carrying books.  It never happened.  And then there were no more decorated theme floats.

 

Today there were two that might generously be considered floats.  A moving van company had two life size orange plastic cows on the open bed truck (why cows?), and another truck had very tall lollipops - flat cardboard hand crayoned disks on tall rods - with a lot of happy waving children.  (The very light sprinkling of rain dampened no spirits.) Otherwise it was mostly car after car with a banner across the hood advertising the represented entry.

 

Here comes a procession of Model T (Model A?) cars.  Adorable.  Each one like a shiny toy.  Each proud (elderly) driver honking his horn.  No, it doesn’t sound like a honk.  They sang toot toot.  They really said toot toot, except for one that hollered Ooogah.

 

But the bands.  I love the bands.  They are preceded by an identifying banner with their name and home state.  They are haughty.  They stare straight ahead. Sternly upright. Some bands marching with rigid knees, tiny steps, heel to toe each step.  Others marching with the raised knees and larger steps.  I applaud loudly.

 

The bagpipe bands are wonderful in their skirted costumes.  I noticed the bagpipers were mostly older men, marching strongly.  But look – there are a few young women scattered among them! 

 

Then along came the “hey, we’re only here because this is what we like to do” bagpipers.  They wore any-old-tee shirt, whatever baggy shorts, well-worn gym shoes, socks or not.  No perky hats, of course.  One young man had tight curly hair wide and below the shoulders that seems never to have been caught into a pony tail, others had hair they combed or didn’t.  If you put it in a movie, it would have been comic relief, but they were as intense and dedicated as the costumed marchers.  After my moment of astonishment I applauded them too.  I should mention, the attending crowd was so noisy, no marcher heard my applause but it made me happy.

 

Walking along with the parade were people carrying bags of candy.  They tossed the candy to the crowd, the children prepared with grocery bags to store it.  A group handed out flyers.  I glanced at the one pressed to my hand and gave it back to the girl who followed.  I don’t like to litter.  I did accept two pencils, two pens, and a large plastic clip. 

 

The police car with the whirling lights told us it was over – until next year.  

 

---Florence