Leezer

“A child of five could understand this.  Someone fetch me a child of five.”                                                       

                                   Groucho Marx

Me to the counterperson at Taco Time: Hi. I ordered a Natural Soft Taco, no cheese, and I got one without sour cream.  Can I have a side of sour cream please?

Polite Counterperson:  OK.  Just a minute.  

[She walks over to Cook, out of view but not out of ear shot].

Polite Counterperson to Cook:  Can I get a side of sour cream please?

Cook: Is it for the Natural Soft Taco, no cheese I just made?

Polite Counterperson:  Yes.                      

[Polite Counterperson returns to counter].

 Polite Counterperson to Me:  Can you bring your Taco over here please?

Me:  Can I just get a side of sour cream?

Polite Counterperson pointing at Cook:  She wants you to bring her the Taco.

Me, angrily:  You want to inspect my Taco?  You’re not looking at my Taco.  It doesn’t have any sour cream in it, and I just want a side.

[Cook emerges from kitchen]

Cook to me:  Can I see your Taco?

Me:  No, you can’t! You can get me a side of sour cream.

Cook:  O.K.  [Brings my sour cream.  Polite Counterperson fidgets and glances in my direction while I eat Taco with side of sour cream, then walks to my table].

Polite Counterperson to Me:  M’am, I was wondering if the Cook told you why she wanted your Taco. Did she?

Me: No, she didn’t

Polite Counteperson: Oh. Well, she was going to make you a new Taco.  I’m sorry she didn’t explain that.

Me:  Oh.

numbskull no+way+to+run+a+railroad pus kisses knots taco

O.K.                       Not O.K.

flexible               supple

nibble                 nipple

but                     bud

rub a dub dub       nubbin

huckle(berry)        suckle

wet                     moist

poop                   bowel movement

blemish               pimple

family jewels        nutsack 

bubble                 bulbous

Speaking of Panama . . . This is what my hair looked like in 1986

 Most of us who were born after the Kennedy administration can relate to certain songs that, when heard, bring back memories - good or bad - or simply speak to us in some way.  Over the years,  I’ve compiled a list in my head of songs of which I never tire.  I’ve heard some of them thousands of times and never grow weary of them.  Some songs I would rather listen to alone, some are better shared.  Here is my list, and please share with me yours, as Greta my Nano is getting tired of the same old same old:

1.  Panama, Van Halen
2. Never Been Any Reason, Head East
3. Layla, Derek and the Dominos
4. You’re All I’ve Got Tonight, The Cars
5. Pretty Vegas, INXS
6. Word Up, Korn
7. Jump Around, House of Pain
8. My Immortal, Evanescence
9. Mr. Jones, Counting Crows
10. Better Man, Pearl Jam
11. Don’t Stop Believing, Journey
12. Georgia On My Mind, Ray Charles
13. Rapture, Blondie
14. Into the Dark, Deathcab for Cutie
15. One Headlight, The Wallflowers
16. The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, Joan Baez
17. Brian Wilson, Barenaked Ladies

I am probably the only white female with a post-graduate education that has owned – not one – but two Chevy El Caminos. Moparman drove a 1976 El Camino until about 1994, when he gave it my husband. I’m not sure why he didn’t make us pay him a lot of money, like ten thousand dollars, because it was such a hoot to drive. When he signed the title over to my husband, in the blank marked “purchase price,” he wrote, “As consideration for taking my spinster daughter off of my hands.” My husband sheepishly turned the same form into the clerk at the DMV, who was not amused. And so began our love affair with Big El. We drove fast over railroad tracks, turned the stereo up with the windows rolled down, and threw burger wrappers on the floor. That car was smokin!

Because my husband drove a Porche 911 and I drove a Subaru, we parked the El Camino on the curb and used it for hauling bark, trips to the dump, and moving heavy furniture. Until the Subaru broke down one day and we were too broke to explore any options other than me driving Big El to work. I quickly learned how to push in the clutch while shifting on the tree, as it were, and on one rainy April afternoon, I drove Big El about fifty miles away into the next county to visit a client. On the freeway on the drive home, the gearshift came off of the steering column and hung by what appeared to be an electrical cord in my hands.  Big El lasted only a few more months and we unloaded it to a Seattle Parks maintenance employee.

Our next El Camino was a two-tone blue 1982. This one belonged to my Dad’s best friend Lauren, who unloaded it for a song. The 1982 gave us more miles of driving satisfaction than had the 1976, plus it had air conditioning. There was quite a bit of storage-room behind the two seats where my husband squirreled away rope, duct tape, tools, and probably about fifty flashlights (he has an obsession with flashlights). One day in the fall of 1998, we used the El Camino to move furniture into a storage unit. It took us all day, and by dinner time we were grouchy, hungry, and tired. Because I have the maturity of a fifteen year old boy, I like to mess with people taking orders in the drive-through (I’m never mean. I just like to see if I can get the employee to give me a weird look.) Placing an order at the Burger King drive-through that day, I was able to lie down on my stomach behind the seats positioned like either a rag doll or a person who has fallen five-hundred feet without a parachute.  As we approached the drive-through window, my husband kept telling me to “cut it out” and to “get up,” but I didn’t budge. I hoped that the drive-through employees would think my husband was transporting a corpse and alert the authorities. At the window, their dead eyes focused on nothing but the money my husband’s outstretched hand. But I amused myself in any event.

We lost that El Camino in 2000 when our daughter was born and we acquired a mini-van. Because I have no concern about my image, I am happy to drive anything that has a cup-holder and air conditioning. (My husband made the choice to buy a van so our whole family can take one car when we go to the liquor store).  Six years later, the van is so filthy with spilled lattes, graham cracker crumbs, Cheerios, and french fries that it needs more than your typical auto detail - I need to find a poor soul who hires himself out to clean the inside of a car in which one has died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.  Only such a person would be able to get my van clean.

 It never occurred to me that I would look back wistfully to the days when I drove an El Camino. Who knows, if there is one in my future, I just hope it has an automatic transmission and enough room behind the seat for my daughter to play “dead.”

Things I do not want to hear when I have a hangover:

1. Anything by the The Beach Boys;
2. “Do you want to go jogging?”
3. A leaf-blower;
4. “I’m making chili dogs.  Want one?”
5. Back in Black by AC/DC;
6. “Can I shine this pen light in your eye?”
7. “Let me tell you about how the first Newtonian law of thermodynamics works.”

The end.

Kitcat mentioned the other day that she has HMAG (Hairy Martial Arts Guy) at her gym which was a timely post, because this the time of year when gmnasia become filled to capacity with all manner of folk - young and old; rich and poor; thin and wide; smelly and perfumey, gay and straight, Greek and Russian; mathematically challenged and musically talented.

If you’re going to join a gym, do your best to join a large well-populated gym, because when you don’t think you can spend one more second on that elliptical trainer, someone will come along to entertain you and, hopefully, will not smell at the same time.  There are four spectacles at my gym – spectacles I call Kilt Man, Patchouli Man, Fur Coat Woman, and Hula Hoop Man.

Kilt Man – and I’m not making this up – wears an apparently authentic Scottish kilt during his workout.  It looks just like this:

Apparently, his tartan is from the Stewart Clan, but I’d need to ask him.  Tartan Man is about fifty, thin and lean, and looks a bit like a Wall Street banker.  The on thing Tartan Man wears with his tartan is a woman’s jog bra.  The last time I saw Tartan Man at the gym it was about 102 degrees.

Next, we have Patchouli Man. Patchouli Man isn’t really a spectacle, but he smells faintly like Patchouli and he looks like the monster from Predator.  His face doesn’t really look like the monster’s but he has dreadlocks that he hides under a bandana, which creates a profile not unlike the monster’s head in Predator.  But he smells so darn good, that I find I just want to follow him around the gym.  My fascination with Patchouli Man is not amoral or sexual per se, but I might have to ask him if I could sit on his lap and fall asleep with my head on his shoulder.

Next is Fur Coat Woman.  I first saw Fur Coat Woman when she interrupted a session with my trainer, Mike.[1]  She irritated me so much that I now wish I would have asked her to reimburse me the approximately $1.67 she used in my $40 per hour session.  I was doing my ditty when I heard someone yell at Mike, “Hey!  Can I ask you a question?”  We looked up to see a woman on the stair machine working out in high-heeled boots, corduroy pants, and a fur coat:

FCW to Mike:  I need to lose ten pounds.  Can you 

                       help  me?

Mike:   Uh, it depends.  Would you like to     

            schedule a consultation  later?          

FCW:   I don’t have time for that. I need to lose ten     

             pounds really quickly.

Mike:   By when?

FCW:   By tomorrow.

Mike:   Sorry, I can’t help you.

Finally, there’s Hula Hoop Man.  Hula Hoop Man looks like Robert Duvall about fifteen years ago.  Hula Hoop Man wears a wife-beater T-shirt and billowy dark blue sweat pants.  He stands on a mat, hands in a praying position.  He starts to swivel his hips rather slowly at first, gyrating like a belly dancer or –well – like he’s trying to work a Hula Hoop.  He then starts gyrating faster and faster until he is swinging those middle-aged hips so widely that people have to move their mats away.  Hula Hoop Man is oblivious to the stares, and he closes his eyes, hands still praying to whomever, hips making figure eights and pumping motions to his own delight. I fully recommend that you find a gym like mine.  It is always an adventure.

[1] I don’t throw out the reference to “my trainer” casually, I might add.  This is a luxury I can’t afford, but somehow I scrape together the money.  I am simply too lazy and bored to devise my own workout and motivate myself to stick to it.  A personal trainer helps not only with this, but he is a paid-for friend.

 Today about 1:00 p.m., I decided to go for a swim.  Because it’s January 15th, approximately eight gazillion people have joined my gym in the past two weeks, and the infrastructure is showing the wear and tear. 

 In particular, the bottom of the pool looks like Beirut.  In no particular order, I’ve listed the stuff I saw on the bottom during my half-mile swim  (It’s a long haul, people.  There’s nothing else to look at besides the bottom of the damn pool):

1. Three band-aids, one of them Strawberry Shortcake;
2. One lens from a pair of goggles;
3. A spectacular amount of sandy-looking debris;
4. The leg of a Transformer or other similar looking childrens toy;
5. A bobby pin;
6. Shopping cart (turned over on its side, of course)

O.K., I made up the shopping cart, but you get my point.  You would think that every now and then the maintenance people would either clean the bottom of the pool or recommend that someone do it.  Doesn’t this crap get caught in the filters? 

You can bet that If I was a lifeguard at that pool, I would be working on a sculpture built out of the crap I found at the bottom of the pool.   Every day I’d put on a snorkel and go treasure hunting.  In three months’ time the sculpture would probably rival Michaelangelo’s David.   I would quickly tire of bandaids and hair clips, and a Transformer leg would be a gold mine.

My only hope is that there is enough chlorine and other poisonous chemicals in the water to vaporize all the bodily fluids undoubtedly circling my waist, my ankles, my head.  If not, I may faint during my next swim, then drown, and a sculpture-building lifeguard will be able to use my corpse as the foundation for his next work of art.