Lipsticks and lip balms live on every ledge and sometimes end up in the dog’s mouth. The closed toilet seat cover is a staging area for foundation and blushes. Brushes peek out of a coffee mug that barely fits on the counter. Eye-shadow compacts litter the sink’s edge, daring to be knocked off and shatter on the floor.
In my defense, my bathroom is so small, three things out of place make it look like a disaster zone.
You may recall I mentioned earlier that I water my garden too much.
That problem is now solved.
Because I’m out of water.
Our story begins when I noticed that the water pressure in my house is low.
Hmm.
By the way, I have well water. We live like pioneers in our township, which has no police, fire, or garbage removal, though I don’t have to sew the American flag.
Thanks, township!
Anyway, the water level in my well generally goes down when there’s no rain, but it was getting worse and worse until I realized that something must be wrong in the springhouse.
If you don’t know what a springhouse is, welcome to the club.
All I know is that it’s a picturesque little shed that houses where the water comes up from the well. More than that I can’t explain, because I have no understanding of how my springhouse works. I never go in there because it’s damp, dark, and scary, like a basement on steroids.
I called the plumbers who specialize in wells and they wanted me to show them the springhouse, so I was shamed into going in. Inside were strange black gauges, weird blue tanks, and two body-size open trays of water, which is the water I drink, evidently laying around all day and night, so that bugs, snakes, paramecium, and God-knows-what-else can swim around in it before it finds its way into the glass that I put to my parched lips.
Delicious.
The plumbers inspect the well and say that it’s fine, so we all leave the springhouse and troop around the lawn to solve the mystery of why I have no water. You don’t have to be Nancy Drew to notice that the grass in my front yard, near the garden, is surprisingly soggy.
Uh oh.
So we go find the faucet for the garden hose, which is in the garage, and the plumbers guess that the pipe must be leaking under the garage, since it was never used until I put in this stupid garden. They say it must have been corroding, but the corrosion was holding it together.
Like me.
Anyway, we trace the leak backwards to the basement under the garage, which is another place I never go because it’s damp, dark, and scary, like a springhouse on steroids.
As soon as we open the door, we see that the basement brims with water. Pieces of wood, broken glass, and kreplach float by.
Long story short, we call in the plumbers who specialize in flood damage and they use three pumps to pump the water out of the basement. They figure out where the leak is in the pipe, but also surmise it can’t possibly be causing the soggy grass. In other words, I have two leaks in two pipes, caused by watering the garden!
Yay!
We call in a third set of plumbers who specialize in second leaks, and these are the guys who put on their booties before going to work.
For a middle-aged woman, a plumber is a booty call.
They find the leak under the soggy lawn but are not sure exactly where. They explain that they will need to dig trenches and lay new water lines, and that an estimator will come out on Saturday to tell me how much my gardening hobby is going to cost me.
Obviously, I have a green thumb.
Dollar-green.
So by Sunday night, as I write, my entire front lawn is a swamp.
The only dry spot is the garden, where the flowers left by the deer are dying of thirst.
It can be a problem when your kid comes home to visit. You’re not used to living together, and even the littlest thing can cause a fuss.
For Daughter Francesca and me, it was dessert.
We’re finally on the same page, food-wise, which is a nice way of saying that we’re both trying to lose weight, so we’re eating healthy foods. She’s home this weekend, so for dinner I made politically-correct pasta. By which I mean, I sautéed a few tomatoes in olive oil with whole cloves of garlic, and when the mixture got soft, I took it out of the pan and dumped it on top of whole wheat spaghetti.
By the way, the best thing about this recipe, which I invented, is that it uses garlic without having to chop it up. I hate it when my fingers smell like garlic, and I don’t buy garlic already chopped, because that’s cheating. But this way, if you toss whole cloves in the pan, they get mushy, and you can mash them with a fork. Mashing is more fun than chopping, and doesn’t involve your fingers.
You pay nothing extra for these culinary tips.
Go with God.
And before I tell you about the fight, let me mention also that I’m working on portion control. I know that’s my main problem. This should have been a reasonable-calorie dinner, even though it’s pasta, but I always up the ante by getting a second and a third helping. You might ask, why do you make so much food in the first place, Lisa? The answer is simple.
I’m Italian.
Actually the truth is, I like to make extra of everything, like scrambled eggs, so I can give some to the dogs. Every morning, I make six eggs, knowing that I’ll eat two and give them the rest. They wait patiently during my breakfast, knowing that their eggs will come. It’s all very easy.
But I was doing the same thing with whole wheat pasta, making extra for the dogs, until I realized I was using them as my portion control beard.
I busted myself and stopped.
To stay on point, I made a delightful spaghetti meal, and Francesca made a side salad. We had a fun dinner, yapping away and trying not to eat more helpings of pasta, even though I was calling to us from the colander. When we finished our meal, I wanted dessert.
This, I can’t help.
I love to eat dessert right after dinner. And when I say right, I mean immediately. Timing is everything. It doesn’t have to be a lot of something, just a taste. It’s not my fault, and I figured out why this is so:
It’s because dessert sounds so much like deserve. Also, we say that people get their just desserts, which means they get what they deserve. So, ipso fatso, I feel as if I deserve dessert.
Right now.
But Francesca doesn’t like dessert right after dinner. She can wait, which I consider a four-letter word.
This is a long-standing battle we have, because I like us to eat together, and the conversation usually goes like this: I ask her, “Want some dessert?”
She answers, “No, thanks. We just ate.”
“But don’t you want something sweet? I’m having mine now.”
“No, I’m not hungry for dessert yet.”
I get cranky. “When do you think you’ll want dessert?”
“I don’t know. Later.”
“Sooner later or later later?”
Okay, so usually I don’t eat my dessert then, and we retire to the family room, where we watch TV and work, and I spend the rest of the night asking her, “Is it later yet?”
Just like she used to ask me, “Are we there yet?”
Payback, no?
So last night, I figured I’d solve this problem. All I wanted was a small helping of vanilla ice cream, with a banana. And because I wanted it right after dinner, I decided to have it then. If I had to eat alone, so be it. Plus, this way I’d have more time to burn off the calories, by reaching for the remote throughout the evening.
So I had my ice cream and banana.
Delicious.
But then what happened is that sometime around nine o’clock, Francesca sauntered into the kitchen and returned with a small plate of vanilla ice cream. She strolled over to the couch, sat down, and started eating.
I stared at her, along with the dogs.
It looked so delicious. I could almost taste it on my tongue. In fact, I could taste it on my tongue, because I had it two hours ago.
I just got off the phone with Mother Mary, who’s lost her mind. Or maybe it’s Scottoline birthday madness.
Let me explain.
She told me a story that happened to her that day, when she was going outside to do the laundry.
Yes, you read that right.
She lives in Miami with brother Frank and she goes outside to do the laundry because they keep their washer and dryer in the backyard.
This makes no sense to me, but she swears that it’s common in Florida to keep major appliances in the backyard, like shrubs with twenty-year warranties.
Still, it’s hard for me to believe. I suspect that my mother and brother are redneck Italians.
But never mind, that’s not the point of the story.
So Mother Mary is going outside to put in a load of laundry and she sees one of her neighbors, a nice young woman, walking her two-year-old son by the hand. My mother stops to say hello, and the little boy looks up at her with big blue eyes and says:
“I love you, Mary.”
So of course my mother melts, because she loves kids, and she even gets choked up telling me on the phone. The whole story is sounding really sweet until she gets to the next part, which is when she asks the mother of the toddler when is his birthday, and the woman answers:
November 23.
Okay, means nothing to you, but that’s brother Frank’s birthday.
And on the phone, my mother tells me: “I looked at that little boy, and I thought he was like Frank. Like he has your brother’s soul.”
I thought I heard her wrong. “Pardon?”
“When he said he loved me, I looked into his eyes and I could see his soul, and it was Frank’s soul.”
“You mean they’re alike?”
“No, I mean they’re the same.”
I tried to deal. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No. I’m telling you, he has the same exact blue eyes as Frank and he was born on the same day. He has Frank’s soul.”
“Ma, Frank still has his soul. He’s not dead yet.”
“I know that,” she said, irritably. “They share the same soul.”
“Ma, that’s crazy.”
“Sorry, but I know, I can tell. Remember the earthquake?”
This shuts me up, temporarily. It’s matter of public record that Mother Mary was the only person in Miami to feel an earthquake that took place in Tampa, and the South Florida newspapers even dubbed her Earthquake Mary. Ever since then, she thinks she’s Al Roker, but supernatural.
She said, “It’s the same soul. Absolutely.”
“Ma, just because they have the same birthday doesn’t mean they have the same soul.”
“Hmph. What do you know, about birthdays?”
She was referring to something I’ll never live down, which happened to me over thirty years ago, when daughter Francesca was three years old. I had taken her in a stroller into an optician’s shop in town, and a man walked through the door, pointed directly at Francesca, and said: “Her birthday is February 6.”
I was astounded. “How do you know?”
“I just do.”
I went home that day and called my mother. “Ma, some guy just guessed that Francesca’s birthday is February 6! Isn’t that amazing?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because her birthday is February 7.”
I blinked. “It is?”
“Yes, dummy.”
Look, I have no idea how it happened, but for the first three years of Francesca’s life, I celebrated her birthday on the wrong day.
Sue me.
Maybe it’s because I was in labor for 349,484 hours, so the exact day she was born seemed like a technicality. And since then, it was just she and I celebrating a day earlier, with nobody around to know better.
So now I can never say anything about birthdays, ever.
But at least I know where everybody’s soul should be.
I remember her looking over her newspaper to laugh at something I said.
I remember her telling me I was great.
I remember her lifting an eyebrow when I was out of line.
She never yelled at me.
Her eyebrows did.
She loved me so much she had to bite me.
This might be an Italian thing.
She would just grab my arm and bite it.
She called it a love bite.
You know what?
I liked it.
I remember it.
Do you know what I don’t remember?
That the house was kind of messy.
Mother Mary worked, and I was one of the few kids who had a working mom in my class, so I know she was busy.
But her other priority was carbohydrates.
Every Sunday, she made homemade pasta and homemade tomato sauce.
You can’t even imagine how great this was, growing up.
As I’ve written before, we had pasta every night. I didn’t even think that was weird. And I had cold spaghetti for breakfast the next day, and even had spaghetti sandwiches for lunch, which I brought into school.
How do you make a spaghetti sandwich?
Just take spaghetti and put it between two loaves of Italian bread.
This would be Italian, squared.
If people laugh at you, offer them a bite.
The kids at my lunch table started out laughing and ended up begging.
Looking back, we had our ups and downs, but what I remember most about my mother is that she loved to laugh.
She really was the funniest person. I can’t remember any of her jokes now, but the substance of her jokes don’t matter.
What I remember is she was the beating heart of our family, and there was always a laugh.
So I learned humor can get you through almost anything.
And we find ourselves in a really difficult time in our country.
Joking around may look insensitive, but it helps.
The great Mel Brooks had a birthday was this week, and he said, “Humor is a defense against the universe.”
I think that’s kind of brilliant.
There are days when it seems like the universe is conspiring to break us down.
I know there are a lot of women hurting these days, and ladies, I’m with you.
And it’s hard to find the humor in politics, or a pandemic.
But humor isn’t heartless.
It’s a way to take heart.
This too shall pass.
And not because we’ll sit by idly, but because we’ll make sure it passes.
Mother Mary taught me determination, and action.
But most importantly she taught me to laugh.
So forgive me, but here’s a method to my madness, and next week, I’ll write something funny for you.
In the meantime, I’ll look around for the things that make me laugh.
Like the dogs.
This morning Boone woke me up by sitting on my head.
It’s a dog thing.
The dogs make me laugh every day.
My cat makes me laugh once a year.
But it’s a good laugh.
I also have a barn cat who likes to sit on a horse.
Now that’s funny.
He also likes to ride around in the mower.
Too bad he can’t drive.
I have a horse who’s so lazy he lies down while I groom him.
He thinks it’s funny.
Actually it is.
And I do it.
So the joke’s on me.
And here’s something that’s always funny:
The cable company.
The cable company’s always good for a laugh.
My Internet has gone out three times this week, which of course is the week my next novel is due, and I have gone through four different cable visits, three different modems, and two pounds of pasta, not homemade.
They say that the past isn’t even past, and that’s always true when Mother Mary is around.
It all begins with a call from Brother Frank.
“I got bad news,“ he says. “We’re bastards.”
“Wha?” asks I.
“Well, we went to get mom’s driver’s license renewed.”
So far, I’m following. Mother Mary doesn’t drive, but she carries an ID card that the Florida DMV issues. Her last card expired, which I found out on her last visit after I tried to put her on a plane back to Miami. They wouldn’t let her fly until they patted her down, which she enjoyed way too much.
“The DMV says we can’t renew her ID card without her marriage certificate.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s a woman who’s using her married name.”
“So what?” I’m trying to understand. I don’t see what a driver’s license has to do with a marriage certificate, especially at this point in my mother’s life. My father passed in 2002, and my parents have been divorced for ever. They were married in 1950, a time when people balanced spinning plates on TV. Now that’s entertainment.
“It’s a new law, since September 11th.”
In the background, I hear my mother yelling, “Those terrorists, they should be ashamed of themselves!”
I nod in approval. That someone should be ashamed of themselves is the worst thing she says about anyone. And when she’s really mad, she’ll shout, “Out of my sight!” I fear for the terrorists if they ever meet Mother Mary. She’ll order them out of her sight, take off her shoe, and throw it at them. She always hits her target. There are missile-launchers with less accuracy.
But to say on point, I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “Frank, can this be true?”
“Yes. We were in line behind a 92 year old woman whose husband had been dead for fifty years, and they wouldn’t give her an ID card. She had taken two buses to get there, so we gave her a ride home. She said it was a mikveh.”
I wince. “You mean a mitzvah, which is a good deed.”
“What’s a mikveh?”
“Forget it. Tell the story.”
“So we called the hall of records back home, and they can’t find her marriage certificate anywhere.”
“Do the records go back that far?”
“Yes, but the certificate is lost. Or it never existed.”
I blink. “It has to exist. They got married.”
“Yeah, but they’re’s no proof.”
Behind him, my mother’s yelling, “It’s all because of the terrorists!”
I let it go. “So what now?”
“She can’t visit you until we straighten this out.”
Which would be the good news.
Just kidding.
I ask, “What about a passport?”
“She needs the ID card. She’s gonna show a passport to write a check? And we’re illegitimate.”
“Does it matter?” I wonder aloud. In the olden days, they used to call it being born out of wedlock, but I never liked the word wedlock. It has a faintly incarcerated air, which fits my marital history to a T.
“I don’t know if it matters. It seems like everybody’s illegitimate, these days. I feel kind of cool.”
I laugh. “I know, right? We’re Brad and Angelina’s twins.”
There’s nothing like home improvement to improve your life.
At least, not in theory.
I say this because I’m adding a garden room to my house, even though I don’t even know if that’s a thing, because I have a garden and I want a room in front of it so I can see it through the window.
Like TV, only without Andy Cohen.
The garden room is attached to the kitchen and since it needed a door, the oven and cabinets had to be moved, and in any event, you see where this is going. Adding a garden room meant that the kitchen got remodeled. Because the thighbone is connected to the leg bone and the leg bone is connected to the wallet.
Anybody who’s ever started home improvement knows that as soon as you improve one thing, you have to improve other things, so that everything is New and Improved, like detergent, only much more costly.
But I’m not complaining.
I feel lucky to be able to make these changes, and since I work at home, I’m spending 24/7 on the premises, I want to premises to suit me. And while we’re turning that frown upside down, let me add that since I’m still terribly single, it’s great to have everything exactly the way I want.
Finally.
And then I’ll die.
My epitaph will read:
HERE LIES LISA SCOTTOLINE
DID SHE IMPROVE ENOUGH?
To stay on point, remodeling the kitchen means that I’m starting to look hard at my priorities, namely, spices. Please tell me that I’m not on the only woman who owns approximately 75,932 spices, accumulated over decades, and that the spices are dusted off every decade, which is the only time they’re even touched.
I’m looking at you, cardamom.
How this came about is that when I moved the oven, I lost the shelf above it, which is where I kept the aforementioned spices, and that meant that I had to find the spices a new home or concede the obvious and throw them out.
So I began to cast a skeptical eye at my spice rack.
And it took me on a tour of my own life.
Let’s begin with Marriage Rookie Enthusiasm.
In that time period of my life, I had just married Thing Two, my daughter Francesca was young and I had two stepdaughters living at home. I wanted to be not only the best mother of all time, but also the best stepmother, so I instantly bought American Mom spices, which you use when you bake apple pie. You know the autumnal array of allspice, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves.
To make a long story short, I made exactly one apple pie.
Divorce ensued, but I got custody of the spices.
Then it was just Francesca and me, and being Italian-American, I decided that I was going to make homemade tomato sauce, or gravy. Mother Mary made the best gravy ever, but she refused to give me the recipe because I was a lawyer.
Don’t ask.
I watched her do it and she always used onion salt, garlic salt, salt salt, and extra salt.
No fresh spices were involved.
Yet it was delicious.
Still I could never make gravy as good as she did, and in time I gave up, though I still have the garlic salt. I feel certain that Mother Mary approves, smiling down from heaven and hoping that the garlic salt has solidified into a sodium bullet.
The next stage of my spice life was Francesca going to college, and that was when I decided I wasn’t going to act mopey because I was an empty nester, and believe me, I got over that fast.
LOL.
But in spice terms, that was the time of my Indian Awakening, an idea I got from a Williams Sonoma catalog. I bought every Indian spice known to man, extending well beyond starter curry into garam masala, turmeric, and vadouvan. They came in round pots full of orange and yellow powders, like nightmare blusher.
These were the coolest spices ever, but I never looked at them again because as an empty nester, I stopped cooking altogether.
Which was coolest of all.
This brings us to the present day, when the only spices I use are salt and pepper.
They require neither shelf, rack, nor cabinet.
They’re sitting alone together on the kitchen island, like survivors of a suburban shipwreck.
Where they’ll stay until the next Williams Sonoma catalog comes in the mail.
Anyway, an Irish surgeon, Dr. J. Calvin Coffey, discovered that we have something in our stomach called a mesentery.
Before now, the mesentery was a mystery.
Dr. Coffey teaches at the University of Limerick, otherwise well-known for its limericks.
Like, “There once was a mesentery from Nantucket….”
Evidently, the mesentery connects the intestine to the abdomen, and as Dr. Coffey explained, “It keeps the intestine in a particular shape, so when you stand up, your intestine doesn’t fall into your pelvis.”
Well, hell. That’s a good thing.
It’s like Spanks for your colorectal system.
Thanks, mesentery!
Meanwhile, I might be in love with Dr. Coffey. He has a way with words. And also if he could find a mesentery, he could find my car keys.
But to stay on point, it turns out that for the past century, medical science had thought the mesentery was a group of disjointed parts, but he figured out it’s a connected organ.
Hello!
So now you have an organ you didn’t know about.
Like a present you got for the holidays.
And it’s just your size!
People don’t understand why medical science didn’t know about the mesentery before.
Not me. I get it. If I were going to lose something in my body, the most likely place to lose it would be in my stomach.
In the folds.
Above the Bermuda Triangle.
You know what I mean.
All ladies have one, and that’s what I call mine. Because any man who goes there is lost forever.
Anyway, if you have stomach folds, you know that they’re the reason God made loose sweaters.
That’s what I wear to hide my folds, or I avoid sitting altogether.
This is my new thing since my last speaking event, when I sat down and my waistband button popped off, then the zipper went town. I couldn’t keep it up. It looked good at the lectern, if you like asymmetrical pants.
Luckily I had on a jacket, which is a folds-hider for special occasions.
And I have other tips for hiding folds.
For example, if you ever see me on the beach, I am lying down. That’s the only way my stomach looks flat. Unfortunately, that’s when my breasts also look flat, but at least it’s a matching set.
Anyway, the thing about folds is that they hide things in addition to mesenteries.
Okay, let’s get real.
I happen to look down after a shower the other day, in a rare moment.
It’s winter, so the shower is rare.
Also the looking down.
I mean, why? I usually can’t see anything over my belly anyway, so who needs that reminder?
Not me.
So when I looked down, my folds smoothed out, and you know what I saw sticking out of my belly button?
Dog hair.
I recognized it because there’s dog hair all over my house, and since I have dogs that have yellow, brown, black, and white hair, in every corner is multicolored canine tumbleweed.
But in my bellybutton?
Who knew?
Yet, there was, sprouting like a little furry fountain.
I started pulling it out, and the more stuff I pulled out, the more stuff there was, like a magician starts pulling scarves out of a hat.
Not only dog hair, but lint and little shreds of tissue paper.
Who knew what was in there?
Could the Bermuda Triangle be spreading?
Are you horrified yet?
I was. I even got out a tweezers to do the job right, extracting every last foreign object like a surgeon.
But I got a letter from my local funeral home, asking that I plan a funeral.
For myself.
I tried not to be insulted.
I mean, do I look that bad?
I might, since I just finished a draft of my next novel, and the truth is that daily showers, nutrition, and grooming go by the wayside when I’m on deadline.
Of course, deadline takes on a whole new meaning when your funeral home is sending you love letters.
The letter offered to save me 44% on funeral or cremation costs.
This would be the ultimate final sale.
But to take advantage, I have to decide right now if I want to be buried or reduced to ash.
Are we having fun yet?
The letter said that the sale price was “guaranteed, no-increase pricing.”
To which I thought, You’re darn tootin.’
Try and collect after I’m dead.
Oh, wait. Maybe you can.
The only things guaranteed are death and taxes, and there are taxes after death, so why not a price hike?
I just wish they’d hike me out of the ground.
Maybe that should be my epitaph:
GET ME OUT OF HERE.
How about, I GOT THIS 44% OFF. ASK ME HOW.
Or, I’D RATHER DIE THAN PAY FULL PRICE.
The letter said I should take the deal because it would “protect positive memories” for my family.
That’s my kind of sales pitch.
In other words, buy this, so your family won’t be pissed that you left them holding the bag.
You old bag.
The letter called it a Prearranged Funeral Program, which I have to admit, appealed to my vanity.
It’s not a funeral, it’s a show!
The Bye-bye, Lisa Show!
Unfortunately there’s only one episode.
The premiere and the finale are the same thing.
Bring a lot of popcorn.
It’s not a surprise ending.
You might even cry.
At least, you’d better.
You guys, when I die, I want you all there, sobbing your eyes out. Saying how wonderful I was. And also what a smart shopper.
“Her books are great, plus she got a deal on the casket!”
But I’m not sure I want a half-price deal on a casket.
Maybe you don’t get a lid.
You get a tray.
Or maybe you only get a lid and they flip you over like a cake you just took out of the oven.
If you follow.
None of these jokes apply to cremation, which is inherently unfunny.
I don’t even like hot water.
Or a sunburn.
Ouchie.
Cremation goes against our natural instincts, doesn’t it?
We tell every child, “Don’t put your hand in fire.”
But someday you’ll get a letter that says, “See that fire? Jump in!”
Really, the letter is offering a fire-sale price on an actual fire.
How meta.
This is the best part of the letter: “In short, don’t put it off. As more time passes, the more your loved ones could end up paying for this kind of security.”
HAHAHAHA.
Tick-tock, Scottoline.
Don’t delay because you could die any minute.
And it’s gonna cost somebody 44% more.
You selfish bitch.
I mean, that puts the fun in funeral.
But in the end, I’m going to take advantage of the offer.
I can’t pass up a sale.
And I like to clean up after myself, so to speak.
So maybe I’m a planner, after all.
I’ve become one, after a lifetime.
Literally.
Plus I have loyalty to the funeral home, since they buried my father and mother. And when they came to pick up my mother the morning she passed, there were tears in their eyes, and they actually said, “Is this the famous Mother Mary?”
Aw.
So you know they have my business, from now on.
Because they read me.
People who read my books are my second favorite people on the planet.
My most favorite are people who buy my books.
Why?
Who do you think is paying to put me in an ashtray, at a date yet to be determined?
Let’s start with the time a few months ago, when I trip over a dog gate, go flying, and can’t walk.
I’ve been hobbling around since then.
Seriously, I’m bent over like the old witch in Snow White. Plus I have stringy gray hair and a big nose.
All I need is the carbuncle.
Oh, wait.
Never mind.
Check.
But not the point herein.
I hobble around for about three weeks, barely able to straighten up, much less sit or drive, and so I finally get my butt to an orthopedist, who takes an MRI and tells me that I have a labral tear in my hip.
At first I thought I heard him wrong.
I didn’t think my labral was in my hip.
I got it mixed up with another body part, which should give you an idea of how good I was at sex.
Kind of not very.
But honestly, who cares anyway?
I’m great at writing!
Anyway, it turns out that a labral tear is a tear in the ligament that’s somewhere in your hip joint, and when I leave the doctor’s office, he gives me a DVD of my MRI.
Like a party favor for the middle-aged.
I take it home, and the first thing I want to do is look at my MRI.
Which is when I realized that I don’t have a DVD player in any of my computers.
What?
I don’t even know when that happened.
I seem to remember that I got new computers a year or so ago, because I like to have a nice big screen. And I don’t mind spending the money, because all I do all day is stare at a computer, and the least I can do is have a nice one. But I never really noticed that they didn’t have a slot for a DVD player.
So I went over to my big TV, figuring that I could watch my MRI on TV, like a medical reality show, maybe one called, YOUR LABRAL ISN’T WHAT YOU THINK IT IS
I managed to locate my DVD player underneath the TV, but it needed to be hooked up, since I am addicted to Netflix and haven’t watched a real DVD in a long time. It took me a full hour of struggling to hook it up, and even then, I couldn’t get it to work.
Which is when it struck me.
I am so ancient that I have lived through several stages of technology, like the Jurassic and Pleistocene era of dinosaurs.
I remember when there were VHS tapes because I still have them.
I remember when there were camcorders because I filmed Francesca when she was a baby, plus static scenes of my feet, with me saying, “Is this thing on or off?”
Now I have lived through DVDs, which sucks, because I have an entire set of operas in DVD that I was saving to watch in my retirement, and by the time I retire, operas will be transported telepathically into your brain.
Plus I paid to have those camcorder tapes of Francesca transferred onto DVD’s, and now there’s no such thing as DVD players.
So you’re getting a fairly complete picture of what life is like as me, which I’m hoping is like life as you, too.
Who here remembers actual records?
I do.
Who remembers little 33’s?
I do.
Who remembers cassette tapes?
I do.
How about trying to rewind them and having them unspool out of the slot like brown tinsel?
I know. Me too.
So there you have it. Many of us live a life measured in obsolete technological stages.
