Afternoon Tea

“Tom and I … we broke up,” Frieda said.

“You didn’t?” Denise squeezed her friend’s hand to comfort her.

The two women, both in their early thirties, sat at a table in the Ponce de Leon, a small natural foods cafe. The girl behind the counter had her ipod turned down low, playing Oasis’ “Live Forever”.

“It’s so damned frustrating. Tom seemed to think he’s going to go on forever.”

“I know how it can be. Jeff and I have been together five years, and not once has he had a checkup.”

“It started over the CoQ10.” Another sip of green tea made Frieda feel better. “I told him it would add twenty years to his life.”

“All Jeff says is that he doesn’t want to live forever.” Denise slowly drank a little more of her tea. She loved the taste of the peppermint.

“He wanted to know if it was made from some CoQ10 animal they squeezed for the juice.” Frieda said. “Imagine that.”

“He didn’t?” Denise laughed.

“It took some work. A bit of bribery, you know,” Frieda winked suggestively to Denise, “and he came around. But it was the fish oil that did it.”

The music changed to Joan Baez singing Dylan’s “Forever Young”.

“Fish oil?”

“Heart disease runs in his family. But he insisted he wasn’t about to drink any fish juice.”

“Fish oil comes in pills too.”

“He definitely wasn’t taking ‘horse pills’. His exact words. We had a blowout, then it was over.”

“Over fish oil?” Denise was surprised at the other woman’s courage. After all, Tom and Frieda had been a couple for almost five years. That was a lot to invest in one fellow without any return.

Frieda drained her cup, then said, “I’m not about to stay with a guy that won’t take care of himself.”

“I guess I love Jeff way too much to put that kind of ultimatum on him.”

“Pretty soon you’ll be having unhealthy kids. Unhealthy because you’re with an unhealthy guy. How can you put yourself through that?”

“I can’t see myself without him.” Then Denise offered to get two more cups of tea.

When she returned to the table, she passed a cup over to her friend. Kenny G’s “Theme from “Dying Young” played from the ipod.

“I miss him,” Frieda said, “but there’s no going back.”

“Why not? You don’t think he doesn’t miss you as much as you miss him?”

Frieda nodded toward her cell phone. “No. He won’t even take my calls.”

“My God, I’m sorry.” Denise reached over and hugged her.

“It’s okay,” Frieda said, holding in her grief. Then a long pause. “Maybe, just maybe.”

“Maybe what?” Denise eased back into her chair.

“Naw … it was just a thought.” The warm smell of the tea wafted up to Frieda’s face and eased her sadness. A smile came to her face. “Oops, there goes another rubber tree plant,” she sang. Then she laughed, harder than she had laughed in quite some time.

A Yodelling Fool

I’ve thought that I’d like to traipse off to Liechtenstein and learn how to yodel when I retire. Sounds kind of impractical, doesn’t it?

Then again yodelling worked for Slim Whitman. His yodel can be heard in Tim Burton’s “Mars Attacks”. It’s what destroys the aliens. So I guess there is a use for yodeling after all. Not that I would ever have that opportunity. I’m a real chicken when it comes to invasions.

I hear Liechtenstein is a very nice place. Run by a prince. At one time it was a part of the Roman province of Raetia. Now it’s a Principality. Seems like it would be a good place to retire. Not out to go to war or anything like that. Because it’s so small it has to go the extra mile and get along with its neighbors. It’s the big ones you have to watch out for these days. Like China, Russia and the United States. The bigger the country the bigger the army.

Unless you’re Canada.

A very civilized country, Canada. Lovely people, the Canucks. Didn’t get mad at all at the movie “South Park” and the song in the movie “Blame Canada”. One of the great exports from Canada, The Mackenzie Brothers. Love their “Twelve days of Christmas”.

They had a really fun movie “Strange Brew”. Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell and Gordon Lightfoot all from Canada. So is Jeopardy Guy, Alex Trebeck.

But all that’s another story. Back to Liechtenstein. The Prince’s family goes all the way back to the twelfth century. And that is a lot of way to go back to. Something like nine hundred years. To have lasted that long and ruled a country you must have something going for you.

Think the country is where Leonard Wibberly based his novel “The Mouse That Roared”. As usual, Peter Sellars was very good in the movie, invaded the United States and all.

Liechtenstein it seems used to be called Vaduz and Schellenberg. Till the family bought them from the Holy Roman Emperor. Seems he was in need of some cash as emperors  usually are. Once they had some land, the family could be taken seriously. These days the country has a low corporate tax so it is overrun by successful businesses. So it should be easy to get a job if I need some extra retirement cash.

‘Course a yodeling gig might just be the thing for a retired Uncle Bardie.

The Night Job

It’s rough being a super hero these days. The things you have to put up with. For instance:

S walks into the living room and yells to his wife in the kitchen, “Honey, I can’t get the stains off my outfit. Any idea what will take blood out?”

“If it’s yours, no,” she yells back. She’s fed up with this superhero gig.

“It’s just a little nose bleed.” S walks into the kitchen. Goes over to give her a smooch.

She’s not in the mood for smooching. She’s ready for combat. “I am not going to do any more cleaning up after one of your night forays.”

“But it’s my job.”

“No, your job is to drive a bus, Ralph.” She pushes him away. She is not having any of his excuses this time.

“That’s my disguise job, Alice. My real job is to fight crime. Since crime happens most at night, I have to go out every night and fight it. You know that.”

She goes over to the coffee pot and pours herself a cup. “All I know is that you were quite normal. A good husband and all. Then you saw that ‘Avengers’ movie and some bug must have bit you.”

“I’ve got to do what I’ve got to do. I told you that I received a call from the Planet Varsa. They gave me strict orders. If I don’t do this, they will come and destroy the earth. They said they needed one man to prove that the earth was worth saving. I asked them how could I prove to them that I was that man. You know what they said?”

“Yeah, go suit up in some purple spandex and a t-shirt with a big-ass S on it. Oh, and don’t forget the cape. It’s gotta be periwinkle. It can’t just be blue. Periwinkle, geez. Even Superman wears a blue cape.”

“It’s not just any blue. It’s phthalo blue.”

“What?” She is really laughing now. “What the heck is phthalo blue?”

“That’s the color of Superman’s cape. That’s what it is. Everybody knows that.”

She’s starts to choke on her laughter. Finally she catches her breath and calms down. “C’mon, Ralph, you expect me to believe that cock-and-bull story of yours. Some idiot from God knows how many billions of light years away wants you to be a crime fighter. He just up and calls you. Give me a break.” She laughs again. She can’t help herself. It happens every time she imagines her husband in that get-up.

“I’m telling you. It’s true, Alice.”

“Look, I’m going to my mother’s. You call me when you’re ready to settle down and be the nice, lovable Ralph I married.” She goes to the sink and rinses out her coffee cup.

“Before you go, can you just show me how to get this blood out?”

She shakes her head, walks over to him and takes the suit. “You’re phthalo to the point of being pathetic. You know that.”

He takes her in his arms and kisses her. After a long embrace, she looks him in the eyes.

“You really have to do this?”

“I really do.”

Alice pushes her husband away. “Well, if you gotta, you gotta.” Her voice has resignation in it. “You be careful out there, you hear?” A look of love for her husband fills her eyes. She kisses him lightly on the lips. “Sit down at the table and I’ll make my big superhero some breakfast. But first, I have to take this out to the laundry room. Okay?”

“Okay,” he says thoughtfully. And goes to the table and sits down. She leaves the room, humming.

“It took three wives and I finally found one who will let me be the S I am supposed to be.” Then he calls out to his wife, “By the way, I’m going to need a new mask.”

In the laundry room, Alice rinses Ralph’s costume. There’s a smile on her face. Then she says, almost whispering so her husband won’t hear her, “That guy from Varsa is right. He’s going to need a sidekick. Otherwise.”

God’s Day Off

Sunday is God’s day off. I know what you’re thinking. Saturday is the Seventh Day, and the Big Guy gets the seventh day off. I’m here to to tell you that is so Old School. Just check most calendars. The week starts with Monday. Not Sunday. Sunday is now the seventh day and that’s God’s day for R and R. It’s in the Good Book, you know.

Come Sunday, He’s really tired. Running the universe is one thing. Easy peasy. Answering prayers, well, that’s a totally different thing. You’ve heard the saying, “You can please none of the people all the time, some of the people some of the time, and all the people none of the time.” That’s prayers for you. Like Ringo sings, “It just don’t come easy.” And like a recent president used to say, “It’s hard.”

But God does His best to keep the whole thing rolling. I would say that He does a darn good job of it. Oh, sure. He gets help from all those angels. But you know what they say? The buck stops here. God keeps hearing that, and it’s about to piss Him off. He’s got patience up the wazoo but enough is enough.

So it’s not too much to ask that the Big Guy get one day a week off. He’s been thinking about a vacation but He’s having a rough time training someone to do the work while He’s gone. He would let Jesus run the show when He’s gone. The thing is Jesus is off trying to save another planet. Been sending emails back to Heaven saying that He’s finally found a race more stubborn than human beings.

Holy Spirit don’t have the time either. She’s been in a scuffle with a bunch of rebellious angels. Can’t break away for the time being. God tried out Moses but he kept dropping things. And King David has this thing going with some angel named Bathsheba. He can’t spare the time either. Buddha just refuses. He says he’s definitely not in the god business.

So, for the time being, all God’s getting off is His Sundays. It gives Him a chance to sleep late. Have breakfast in bed, served on a golden platter by Mrs. G herself. She keeps telling Him to lay off the bacon. He’s told His people no bacon. So why not Him? He tells her, “There’s an exception to every rule. And since I make the rules, I can make the exceptions.” She would have pushed the subject but she decided she had better not. He’s pretty good with those thunderbolts.

Next He goes out for a game of golf. He’s a two under par player. He likes to tee off with the Archangel Gabriel and work on improving His score. Used to play with Michael but Michael has a tendency to take things way too serious. Satan tried to talk God into a game of touch football but Jehovah wasn’t having any of that. Golf’s the game for Him. ‘Doing it for the exercise,” He says. God has been trying to shed a few pounds lately. Wants to get down to his ideal weight of 188. Since He is not averse to a little wager on the side, He and Gabe have a running bet. The winner buys the other dinner.

And just to show that He’s a caring husband, God picks up a dozen red roses for the Mrs. on His way home. At the end of the day, He gets a good night’s sleep and He’s ready for a new week.

Now what does this mean for you and me? Means we have to keep the prayers to a minimum on that seventh day. God’s assistant, a guy named Mercury, has been known to put them in the spam folder. Then they get deleted at the end of the day. So a word to the wise.

If there is an emergency, you can always call the Heavenly 9-1-1. Not sure who you’ll get. But if Michael is on duty, talk nice to him. He’s been known to kick butt just because someone was in a rush. Be prepared to duck. He’s got a mean left hook.

Solly and the Garbage

They say Solomon was the wisest guy who ever lived. But how wise can a guy who marries seven hundred women be? After all, that is seven hundred wives telling him to take out the garbage. Just where was he going to put all that garbage?

The garbage had started filling up the moat around Jerusalem sometime near 950 BCE. In Solly’s daddy’s time, Jerusalem had been a one-horse town. Not enough garbage to shake a stick at. But now Jerusalem was more like the Big Apple of ancient times. It had a dozen or so skyscrapers, and a temple too. The Donald Trump of that time, a Levite named Cohen Cohen, just kept building and building with all the money coming in from his monopoly of the sheep concession.

Why would a monopoly on sheep bring in so much cash? Well, I’m here to tell you that you can’t have a sacrifice to the Lord High God without a sheep. It just wasn’t done. And it couldn’t be just any sheep. It had to be a pure one. That is where Cohen Cohen came in. He had all the unblemished sheep in the land.

Anyway the garbage had been accumulating for quite some time. Solly’s wives were hearing all his bitching and moaning about it since he didn’t seem to have the time. He was too busy splitting hairs, playing the wise guy game. Like who gets the baby? Hannah or Maureen?

All the king’s men and all the king’s horses decided something had to be done about the garbage. So they went to the wives. The wives decided old Solly just wasn’t doing his job, like a good husband should. After all, it’s the husband’s job to take out the garbage. Right then and there they went on strike. Cut him off from his regular harem visits.

Solly was a virile man, a real manly man he was. A Schwarzenegger among kings. So, no harem visits for a couple of months, and he’s a raving lunatic. Called in the local prophet and demanded, yes demanded, some answers.

“You’re the wise guy around here,” prophet said. The prophet’s name was Spot.

“What does that mean?” Solly asked. “I’m the wise guy around here?”

“Just what it says,” Spot smarted back. Anybody else and Solly would have had his head, but it was No-chopping-off -the-head-of-a-prophet month.

Solly was so mad all he could say was, “Out, damned Spot.”

What to do? What to do? Solly wondered. If he was so wise, why couldn’t he figure this one out. Finally he begged one of his favorite wives to come see him. Her name was Betty # 32.

“Betty # 32?” you ask. Yep, Betty #32. Because Solly had a lot of wives. It was like he was Mickey Rooney and Brigham Young with a quite a bit of Errol Flynn all rolled into one guy. And he couldn’t remember their names. So he started calling them Betty and making them wear t-shirts with their number on it. When you’re a wise king, you can make snap decisions like that.

There was a good reason that Betty # 32 was one of his favorites. She had curves down to her toes. Her curves had curves. She could make Mae West look like a bean pole. That’s the kind of curves she had. And she had flair too. Instead of the old drab gray muumuus the other wives wore, she ran around the palace in a hot pink t-shirt, and it showed off those curves. Man, did it ever.

Betty # 32 got the call from her hubby. She wiggled her way into the king’s audience chamber with that come-hither smile on her face that he loved.

“What’s up, Doc?” She always called him Doc. No Sire-ing for her. It was her way of letting him know his place. Her family’s ancestry was a direct lineage all the way back to great-to-the-tenth-great grandpappy Jacob himself. If Solly was royalty, she was a blue blood of blue bloods. Her blue blood trumped his royalty any day.

Besides he was the son of a brigand and a shepherd. His daddy, Little Davie Crewcut, had only one claim to fame. His band beat out Goliath and the Philistines in a Battle of the Bands way back when. Only thing that put him on the throne was his audacious harp playing and his song-writing. Boy, that man sure could write some Psalms. All the Israelites said so.

So here in the audience chamber Solly and Betty # 32 had a little tit-for-tat. Finally Betty came to the point. “Take out the garbage. Darn it.”

As we all know, that was that. He sent that garbage downriver to one of the ‘burbs. Place called Sheol. The folks in Sheol were none too happy about that. It was such a nice neighborhood, and suddenly there’s all this smelly garbage. I mean, you did not want to be downwind to Sheol on a Thursday morning when Sol took out the garbage. Those folks swore they would get even. But they never did. They didn’t have time. They were too busy burning garbage.

The good news was that there was a hot time in the old harem that night. The next morning Solly took his place on his throne with a smile on his face. That was some smile.