(Blog number one) STUFF ABOUT THINGS

          BE LIKE DAD AND NOT LIKE SIS

I read an autobiography by Judge Judy and in it she mentioned that she went to the toilet in the middle of the night and her husband forgot to put the lid down and she fell in, so she went in to where he was sleeping, straddled him and banged pots together over his head.  

Not putting the lid down seems to be a common complain among women.  My niece told me that she once asked her dad (my brother) to always put the lid back down when he was done urinating and he told her, "Sure - if you promise to always make sure it is up after you finish."  She thought that very insightful.

I myself urinate sitting down, because no matter how careful a man is at urinating while standing, urine often goes elsewhere than in the toilet.  AND ALL MEN KNOW THIS!

I always check the position of the seat before I sit down.  It was automatic from the start.  Do women sit without looking where they are sitting?  Very curious.

OLD IS FUN

Strange thing about getting old is that all the things people said would happen, happen.  For instance, they say your eyesight will get worse, as will hearing, energy and a non-hurting body.  Short term memory goes too.  Fortunately, the logic circuits seem to improve with age.  Say you are looking for the cream in the refrigerator and you can't find it.  This will happen.  While you are looking you notice that the sack up there on the top shelf seems to contain garbage.  "Aha!" you think, "If a sack of garbage is in the refrigerator, then that must mean that the container of cream is..."  You look, and sure enough.  There's the little bugger lying there in the garbage can, right where you put it.  Brilliant man!

You will many times lose your glasses simply by going from one room to another.  Your wallet will disappear, your favorite pair of pants will be nowhere to be found.  This part of loss of memory is a real drag.  But due to good thinking of the part of the Creator, those things that are most important to remember will not be a problem.  I have never forgotten to breathe or to eat or to drink.  I remember to eliminate and urinate whenever necessary.  I may forget where I left my car, but at least I'll be comfortable while looking.

STRANGE THINGS

When I was fourteen years old, walking on creek ice in northern Iowa in the middle of a cold winter, I chanced upon about a dozen leopard frogs lying on top of the ice of the creek.  I was walking on the ice because deep snow lay on the banks and in the field of the pasture.  The creek had been frozen enough to walk on for at least a coupla months.  I remember kicking one of the frogs but I can't remember whether it moved or not, but I assumed it didn't because if it had, I would probably have kicked the others. And I didn't.  Lying stuck to the ice, I assume they must have been warm when they landed there.

Frogs winter under the water, in the mud at the bottom.  No part of the creek had been open to water since November and this was February.

I never told anyone about this, not my family nor my buddies until I told it in a Biology class.  I wanted the teacher to tell me how this could be, this that I saw.  Of course he couldn't.  I told another thing at the same time which resulted in another strange incident involving my mind that I will describe a bit later.

Since that day, I have told this numerous times, always with the caveat that I have no explanations.  Until one day I heard coming from my lips, "The only way this could have happened is if they were dropped from a flying saucer."  I said this in jest, but as I thought about it I realized it was the ONLY explanation I could think of.  I go further now - in jest (partly) as follows;  The saucer people picked up the frogs in summer, examined them, and then released them several months later, back where they found them, not knowing that water becomes solid below 32 degrees F.

Now, the thing I was going to describe about my mind is this: In that Biology class, after I told about the frogs, I told about dowsing for water. The whole class laughed at me, ridiculed me and I completely forgot that I had ever dowsed until about twenty-five years later.  My mind took that incident and negated it as if it had never happened.

We (me and my siblings) had a favorite uncle we called "Uncle Auggie."  One day he came to the farm and showed us how todowse.  We cut a switch from the cottonwood that grew over the water pump, held it before us and dowsed.  I spent all the rest of that day dowsing.  After I realized late in life that I had once been able to dowse, I tried it, but it didn't work.  But I still remember the pull of that switch in my hand.

Augie wasn't his Christian name, but that's all that we knew him as.  We also had an "Aunt Aunie," whose real name was "Wilma." One day someone asked her why we called her that and she said she didn't know - that we had always called her that. 

Uncle Augie would take out his false teeth (I thought they were real), he would take a five inch spike from his pocket and stick it up his nose to the hilt.  I always thought this was real and tried to imagine where it went in his head.  It was only when I was in my thirties and thinking about him that I realized he always had it in his pocket and it was always shiny.  Obviously a trick.

He would squeeze his nipples and milk would come out - just a drop, but it was there.  He was the only adult that ever talked to me.  Good uncle for a kid to have.

Uncle Augie was a handyman - a carpenter.  He learned in a CCC camp - camps developed by President Roosevelt during the depression to help get people back to work and help the environment planting trees, building earthen dams, etc.  He was in New Guinea in the Engineers during WW2.  I always pictured him away from the fighting, nailing boards and such.  It was only later that I learned the Engineers were usually ahead of the infantry front lines, building bridges and such so the infantry could cross.  Also, I learned that New Guinea was a tough fight, nasty jungle and mountain terrain.  He never talked about his experiences there.

I digressed, didn't I?  I can do that.  It's my blog.  Don't forget that.

My wife and I fought a lot in our early married life.  Always her fault.  One day we were sitting at a table in downtown Sacramento, arguing, and she looked intently into my eyes and very deliberately stated, "Don, I am NOT Shirley (my first wife).  Now she had said this to me before, but I had always sloughed it off.  This time I heard it.  As soon as it penetrated my thick skull, I saw a hazy face leave hers and go up and to my left and disappear.  Teresa's (my wife) face looked different - like a stranger's. 

I was "scientific" at that time, so I knew that such a thing couldn't happen, so I dismissed it - not even consciously, just "that's the way things are."  Only years later when my mind had loosened up a bit to allow for strange things did I remember that incident.  I even have an explanation for what happened that fits in perfectly with my belief systems, but it doesn't belong in a blog.  The explanation doesn't belong.  It's my blog.  You forgot, didn't you?