Suzanne Olsen's Humor Blog - I don't offend some of the people most of the time

Month: January 2010 Page 2 of 4

Making Me Laugh

When the kids aren’t around, which is most of the time, my husband and I watch TV while we eat dinner. We used to watch Seinfeld, but for some reason the networks, in their quest to drive me crazy, put another show in that time slot that I’m not nuts about, so we have nothing to watch.

He spins through the channels and finds a show he likes, but I don’t. Sometimes we’ll watch it, but then I have to eat fast. Other times we’ll watch reruns of America’s Funniest Videos, which I love but he doesn’t. He thinks it’s all stupid and looks set up, but he sits there and laughs the whole time anyway.

When it comes to humor, I like the lowest forms. Some doofus slipping on a banana peel makes me laugh. One of the funniest scenes in a movie I ever saw was the first Home Alone when the kid sets up all those boobie traps and the bad guys fall for them. These were so creative I’m laughing at them right now. One thing happens to the bad guys after another. One falls down stairs on ice and then grabs a door handle that’s been heated so it burns a door-handle shaped  brand on the palm of his hand. His partner tries to sneak in the basement door, but the steps are covered in tar so he ends up walking out of his shoes and has to step really hard to get his feet out of the tar each step, and he’s barefoot, but he’s determined to get up the rest of the stairs. The camera zooms in on a nail sticking up one of the stairs, then zooms to his tender, bare foot heading straight for it, and he’s bearing down hard and deliberately with his feet and the camera zooms in at the time of impact, and he lets out a high pitched, girly scream that has to be the best one ever made in a movie. I love it every time I hear it, which is pretty often. Both guys step barefoot on broken Christmas ornaments and tacks; and one, or maybe both, get clobbered right between the eyes with a bucket of paint swinging from a long rope. Now that’s just funny.

Some of those America’s Funniest videos don’t live up to the name, though. I’m not so sure what entertainment value there is watching an eight year old kid with a loogie hanging out of his nose that’s six inches long and growing. All of the snot videos should be culled as far as I’m concerned.

But I love the hungover brides, the crashing snowsleds, the fat women falling off docks, geese chasing screaming women, jackasses chasing screaming men, and babies giggling, over and over, for no reason.

I used to love the Three Stooges because of slapstick. Moe smacking everyone on the head, then hitting them in the stomach – that was funny, but my favorite was when he’d take his two fingers and jab somebody in the eyes. Except that Larry got wise to him and started putting a hand up so Moe’s finger’s wouldn’t reach. He’d say, “nya, nya, nya,” which got Moe pretty riled up. There was a take on this in the movie Something About Mary when Ben Stiller is fighting with Mary’s little dog, and he’s wrestling with it around the room, and the dog’s biting him wherever he can sink his teeth, and finally Ben Still rares his arm back and you see those two fingers going at the dog’s eyes, which made me about wet my pants, and then the dog puts his paw up to block the jab. That’s exceptionally funny.

Well, I have to say I’ve made myself laugh typing this, so that does it for me.

Cleaning for the Maid

I don’t have maid service, but I have friends who do, and they always clean their house before the maid gets there. Does this make sense?

How about going to the dentist? Do you brush your teeth extra well just before the appointment? And floss. Thoroughly floss between those teeth until you taste that faint metallic flavor that let’s you know you should not have waited until the day of your appointment, in spite of the fact that you hate flossing so much you’d rather pull your own teeth one by one than floss them? Like the dentist isn’t going to look in there and guess that your teeth spaces haven’t seen a strand of floss since the morning of your last appointment.

My friend got a gift certificate for a pedicure for her birthday. She can’t use it, though, because she’s embarrassed that her heels are all dry and cracked, and she doesn’t have time to rasp all that tough, dead skin away. Of course she knows that it’s part of the pedicure to get that poor, abused foot to look good as new, but she wouldn’t think of taking those feet in there and having someone see them up close. And the longer she waits, the worse the heels get so it’s a viscous cycle.

I never go to the hairdresser without washing my hair first. I know she’s going to stand behind me and fluff my hair up while she’s asking me what I want to do this time, and I don’t want to be looking at myself in that gigantic mirror with bed-head hair pressed in weird patterns or sticking out like fake fur. So I shower, wash my hair, condition it, blow it dry, style it and spray it, then go to my stylist so she can wash it two more times, condition it, blow it dry and style it, then put on tons of hair spray. After saying my thank you’s and I love it’s, I dash home and jump in the shower to shampoo out all that hairspray (all hairdressers are heavy handed with hairspray), condition it, blow it dry, style It, and spray it lightly the way I like it.

When I go to the doctor, I take an extra careful shower, then take a washcloth and scrub really well behind my ears. This is carry-over from childhood. I remember my dad doing random ear testing. Just out of the blue you’d be walking from the living room to the dining room and he’d spring out of nowhere and grab you by the ear and flip it forward to expose that white, protected skin that somehow always managed to attract dirt like dust to a TV. No matter what, the outcome of these sneak inspections was me marching to the bathroom for a good scrubbing, followed by another inspection. Just like my dad, doctors seem to always want to poke around your ears even if you came to them because your big toe is throbbing. I’m not ever going to fail another ear inspection, especially one I know about in advance.

I can understand on a purely intellectual level why we shower before getting into a hot tub or swimming pool. The public health might be compromised by the gazillions of bacteria and microscopic vermin that infest each and every one of us. But wouldn’t a hot tub kill them all? It about kills me after ten minutes. I’m boiled clean. That’s not the same as a pool, I suppose, but still, what’s the point of taking a shower when I slather on half a bottle of the greasiest sunscreen I can find just before I jump in the water? The oil slick around me reflects the sun and nearly blinds everyone. The floating bumblebees that are always in pools don’t fare too well if they drift into my wake. Surely bacteria can’t live through that.

Another thing people do is comb their dog out before taking him to the groomers.  They’ll take the brush and tug away at those mats to try and make it look like they actually have been brushing the dog daily. As all those clumps of hair form a ring on the floor, the poor beast yelps like a coyote that didn’t crouch low enough when he went under an electric fence. I guess these people think they can convince the groomer into thinking that they actually followed through on the promise they made at the last grooming.

Are we just fooling ourselves? You bet we are. And thank goodness the pedicurist doesn’t comment on the fresh layer of raw, pink skin where the calluses used to be. But does the maid keep quiet about our efforts to hide our messy habits? It probably depends on the tip, and the dirt we didn’t have time to get to because we were too busy scrubbing behind our ears and flossing.

My Son’s Got a Job!

Happy days! My son started working today. He actually got hired and went to an orientation last week, but didn’t know when he’d get any hours. He got hired as a floater, which is a strange word because I’ve heard it used to describe something in the toilet. But in his job, it means he’ll fill in where needed. This afternoon he was over at his friends’ house and got the call that they needed him to work tonight.

I had asked him to whittle down some of the pile of laundry in his room, and I think he got one load done, which I give him a ton of credit for doing. But apparently the clothes he needed for work weren’t in there, so he had to rummage through and find the least dirty things. Then he tossed them in the dryer for a few minutes to “iron” them and raced out the door.

I am so excited I could get drunk. But instead I have to finish editing a book TONIGHT, so this post is going to be very short. So I won’t feel guilty, I’ve included something I got in an email. I deleted the inevitable part at the end that says, “If you want to get rich in 24 hours, send this to ten of your friends.” Ain’t I sweet?

Mathematics & Arithmetic

Romance  Mathematics

Smart man + smart woman = romance

Smart man + dumb woman = affair

Dumb man + smart woman = marriage

Dumb man + dumb woman = pregnancy

______________________________

OFFICE ARITHMETIC

Smart boss + smart employee = profit

Smart boss + dumb employee = production

Dumb boss + smart employee = promotion

Dumb boss + dumb employee = overtime

_____________________________

SHOPPING MATH

A man will pay $20 for a $10 item he needs.

A woman will pay $10 for a $20 item that she doesn’t need.

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GENERAL EQUATIONS & STATISTICS

A woman worries about the future until she gets a husband.

A man never worries about the future until he gets a wife.

A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend.

A successful woman is one who can find such a man.

_____________________________

HAPPINESS

To be happy with a man, you must understand him a lot and love him a little.

To be happy with a woman, you must love her a lot and not try to understand her at all.

______________________________

LONGEVITY

Married men live longer than single men do, but married men are a lot more willing to die.

______________________________

PROPENSITY TO CHANGE

A woman marries a man expecting he will change, but he doesn’t.

A man marries a woman expecting that she won’t change, and she does.

_____________________________

DISCUSSION TECHNIQUE

A woman has the last word in any argument.

Anything a man says after that is the beginning of a new argument.

_____________________________

HOW TO STOP PEOPLE FROM BUGGING YOU ABOUT GETTING

MARRIED

Old aunts used to come up to me at weddings, poking me in the ribs and cackling, telling me, “You’re next.” They stopped after I started doing the same thing to them at funerals.

This Is What Poetry Should Be

I just thought of a poem I read when I was in high school and spending the night at my grandmother’s house out in the country. Gramps, we called her. It was in a coffee-table book of collected poems, most of them boring, meaningless, confusing, and of no value whatsoever to a freshman in high school. I hope you don’t think I still feel that way about all poetry. I’ve since come to appreciate three other poems, one of them you may have head of that starts out, “There once was a hermit named Dave.”

This particular poem was about sleeping at the foot of the bed. It’s written by a kid whose big family always has a ton of out-of-town company. When the aunts and uncles and cousins arrive, he’s the youngest so he knows he’ll have to sleep with what sounds like 4 or 5 brothers and sisters and cousins, and since you can’t get that many side by side in a bed, he ends up sleeping with his head at the foot.

I don’t know how I discovered the poem – I must have been immensely bored, but when I read it I laughed out loud. My grandmother, who loved a good joke, heard me and wanted in on it. When she read it she threw her head back and laughed so hard she started sliding out of the rocking chair. All five of her chins jiggled. She raised a meaty arm and covered her mouth with sausage fingers the way some people do when they laugh really hard. Her’s was a laugh that came from down in her belly and wheezed it’s way up her throat until she lost her breath and started coughing. Tears welled up in her eyes and she swabbed them away with the back of her hand. This went on forever, with her changing arms and pushing with her feet to try and stay in the rocker. Her ample bosom pumped with each laugh, rising and falling rapidly over her barrel of a belly.

You can’t watch a spectacle like that and not laugh yourself, which just feeds the other person’s laughter, which feeds yours, and it could go on until infinity except that one of you gets exhausted or has to go to the bathroom. Then you both take some deep breaths to calm down, and say that was the funniest thing you ever read, then one of you, against your better judgment, looks back at the book and laughs all over again, which sets the other one off.

If you’ve not had this experience, you’ve missed out on one of the greatest highs of life.

Like I said, I just thought of the poem, so I Googled to see if I could find it. Sure enough, the all-knowing Googled delivered. I read it through again, and I laughed all over, except not as heartily. It’s like in the movies when there’s a funny scene and no one else laughs. It’s just as funny, but it doesn’t seem as funny if you’re the only one laughing.

The reason this poem is funny is because I can picture this kid down in the bed with somebody’s gross old toenails in his face and the covers over his head, and people kicking him in the chin when they change position, and bristly legs rubbing against his arms. I’ve actually slept at the foot of a bed. I loved those slumber parties with a bunch of girls and everyone wanted a piece of the mattress so you had to alternate in the bed to accommodate as many as possible. My daughter has had sleepovers and I’ve done a late-night headcount and found five of them on the hide-a-bed: three up and two down.

If you’ve never slept like this, you’ve missed out on one of the greatest indignities of life.

Finally, this poem is so funny because there are creative little rhymes. I’m not a big fan of intellectual poetry, even though I had to read a gob of it to earn my English degree. Shakespeare I like, but only the comedies. Most of those other guys I can easily do without, especially the ones who don’t even have the decency to make their poems rhyme. I like ‘em rhyming cleverly or not at all, and they need to tell a story. Which I guess is why I like the foot of the bed poem so much.

I’ll recommend it, but If you read it, you may not find it as funny as I did. When someone describes something as hilarious and goes on and on, by the time I read it I’m not that impressed. Like those emails that say this is the funniest thing you’ll ever read. It never is. Mostly it’s some stupid, worn out thing that’s way too long and you can know the punch line by the second sentence into it. But I hope if you read this poem you’ll get a laugh. It may help if you find a big, jolly grandma to read it with.

I found the poem in The Best Loved Poems of the American People by Hazel Felleman. It’s called “Sleepin’ at the Foot O’ the Bed, by Luther Patrick. If you copy this very long link into your browser, it will take you to the book and the poem is on pages 525 and 526. http://books.google.com/books?id=puxcAQOneC8C&pg=PA526&lpg=PA526&dq=poem+-+sleeping+at+the+foot+of+the+bed&source=bl&ots=9IShNucvWv&sig=xqSMDBS5erYt79VsOSYyvEofCKo&hl=en&ei=qKxTS-qNF4ngtgOim82GCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CAoQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=&f=false

The Church Lady

First a disclaimer. Just about everything I write is more or less not true. I exaggerate, change things, and make stuff up. Sure, you may find an ounce of truth buried here and there, but mostly it’s all a pack of lies.

Now that that’s out of the way, I went to Mass today, which is the truth. As usual at our Catholic service a lot of people were traipsing back and forth up to the altar. We had a couple of guest speakers trying to persuade us that the church building needs many, many very expensive improvements. They had a nice slideshow to demonstrate what things would look like after all the work is done, and though it was hard to tell the difference between the old and proposed new, I took their word for it.

I guess I noticed what people were wearing when one of the speakers walked all around the front of the altar to get to the podium, which took about fifteen minutes. She was a younger woman and very attractive. I liked her outfit because she was thin and her fitted black turtleneck didn’t show any cleavage. She had on a subdued wool skirt, tights, and boots – it was a classy look and something I’d wear if I looked like her, which I’m working on with my newest diet.

Then along came the ladies who serve Communion, and they were a diverse group with one thing in common. All of them liked to eat, and none of them owned a mirror.

One in particular stood out. I’ve seen her many Sundays, and she always looks like your normal, standard, middle-aged Catholic woman attending a casual suburban church. Matronly might be the best word to use here, which is a synonym for dumpy. But today she was going for a different look. She had on a top that bared quite a bit of cleavage. Since she liked to eat, the cleavage had migrated south, but this top gave a good chase and ended up about midway down the slope.

But that’s not all. She had on a pair of stretchy pants made of a clingy brown fabric that left nothing to the imagination. Because she liked to eat, onlookers got a full view of what looked like golf balls peppered underneath the thin fabric in her thigh and rump areas.

She topped her ensemble with a pretty taupe colored sweater that I’m sure she thought extended over her hips and bottom, but it gave up about halfway down in the back. In fact, it curved up toward her waist, but that was probably because she kept pulling the front sides down which created the arc in the back.

Call me old fashioned, but I’m not sure this is the best look for church. The young girls wear their low-neck tank tops, but that’s all they own and if you scold them, like I do my daughter, they’ll use their long hair as a cover up. And yes, they wear skintight jeans, but the fabric is thick and so tight it doesn’t reveal anything. Plus they top it all off with long, hooded sweatshirts that make them appear slouchy and kid-like.

Middle-aged women, on the other hand, must have closets full of frumpy clothes that would be so much more appropriate for church. Which brings me full circle to my original comment that these women must not own mirrors.

Now I know I’m going to wake up tomorrow and have regrets about what could be misconstrued as catty remarks, especially involving women at church. But in my defense I’m only reporting what I saw, and in my defense, if that woman didn’t want to end up on this page, she could have dressed in a gunny sack and we’d all sleep guilt-free tonight. So in a manner of speaking, it’s her fault she’s here.

And like I said at the beginning, it could all be a pack of lies anyway. As the humorist Lewis Grizzard once said, “My mother believes that men landing on the moon is fake and professional wrestling is real.”

I Have Regrets

I have regrets. I hate this about myself. One day I’m all gung ho and do or say something, like write a blog post about my son, and the next day I think of all the  reasons I shouldn’t have done it.

I don’t want my son to leave my home. Heavens no. I love him so. I hope none of you got the wrong impression yesterday or read between the lines that he’s driving me crazy because HE’S NOT. Sure, who wouldn’t want someone to pitch in from time to time, or arrive home before 2 am, or get up before 2 pm, or stick around for more than 2 minutes in his waking hours? Still, he’s a fine young man and I’d punch you right in the nose if you ever said different.

As for the blog about taxes a couple of days ago, I did not mean to imply that rich folks don’t contribute enough to our country. I like hanging on to my own money, too. Not that I mind paying a little extra in taxes to help out the needy, but I’m more comfortable than many people, so who am I to point fingers at the wealthy? You know, Warren Buffet said he pays less taxes than his secretary, and I find that fascinating. But if I’ve in any way implied that the wealthy don’t contribute their fair share because they can afford the very best advice from their tax accountants, shame on me.

I go through the day talking to myself about what I ought to have done. “Why don’t you start a load of wash?” I’ll ask. Then I head for the laundry room and see that the sofa cushions could use fluffing, and since it will only take a second, I stop to do it. I see a dishtowel stuffed in the crack think, “I wonder how that got there?” then pull it out and take it to the kitchen, where I find dishes my darling sweet children have lovingly left on the counter because they must worry I don’t have enough to do. I load those in the dishwasher, then put the toaster my daughter abandoned once her toast popped up back into the appliance garage. Which reminds me I need to run out to the garage and get the pair of new shoes hiding in my car so I can sneak them in while my husband is at work. While I’m out there I grab a light bulb to put in the bathroom, and after I’ve screwed it in, I kick my daughter’s thong like it’s a soccer ball from the bathroom floor into her bedroom, just in case someone drops by.

Eventually I recall the laundry. “You should have done it earlier, then you could be putting it in the dryer by now,” I scold myself. “Why did you get so distracted?”

And by the way, my husband is not a cheapskate. I hope I didn’t give anyone that impression. He loves to go on golf trips with his friends, and likes wearing nice things. What man wouldn’t? It just upsets him a tiny little bit when I bring bags of new wardrobe items in the house. He thinks I’ve got plenty of clothes, and of course I do. I love those sweaters I got back in the 90’s. And I know good and well if I just hold on, my shoes will come back in style again soon, and polishing and buffing them is helping my arms stay in shape. No one would know I was wearing them when I went into labor with my son. I do sneak in my fair share of clothes, don’t you worry about that.

Well, I hope I haven’t offended anyone new today. I do try so hard to be pleasant and kind. Although I do have my moods where I can get just a tad bit cranky, and I aways regret it. Honest I do.

Fly Away, My Son

My son is taking a break from college and living at home. He just got a job today, but it will be some time before he gets a paycheck and enough saved to move out with friends.

Meantime, I need to know exactly when the statute of limitations runs out for being a mother. I know I’ll always be his mother, and I’ll always be there for him, and I will always love him, but I’m wondering how long I have to do his laundry.

I’d be more inclined to continue in the role of his personal slave if he were nice. But he’s trying to be independent, which means he wants to do his own thing. His own thing is leaving his shorts on the bathroom floor and his dirty dishes in the sink.

It’s just like old times, with me griping about it and him arguing but picking things up because, after all, I was the boss of him. He no longer feels that way. Two years of college and being on his own taught him to do what he wants when he wants.

As for me, while he was at college I got used to having a fairly clean house and reduced workload. My vocal chords were healing from nagging him. Now he pays lip service to my requests but doesn’t follow through, or he just blatantly says NO. He’s an adult after all, and why should he do what his mother says when it’s so stupid anyway? His shorts aren’t bothering anyone, for crying out loud.

It’s not just that he doesn’t do what I ask; he’s down right defiant. I’m helping write a book about global warming, so I’m acutely aware that the convenience of electricity comes to us with a cost in CO2 emissions. I ask him to turn off a light when he leaves a room and he argues. He says there is no global warming. I retaliate with all the scientific evidence, spewing facts as I follow him from room to room while he scrambles to get out of earshot. Finally he tells me to leave him alone and turns off one token light to make me go away. Later, when I return home from my daughter’s swim meet, he’s gone and has left practically every light in the house on. Granted, this is pretty normal for him, but I take it personally.

I have refused to do any more of his laundry. If he wants to be an adult, he can have the responsibilities of one. I was trying to get caught up with the wash today and found several of his items suspiciously buried in the sorting baskets, like maybe the laundress wouldn’t notice they were his. This morning he asked me to pour a bowl of cereal for him. Where does it end?

It probably sounds like I’ve raised a spoiled brat, but honestly he used to be such a nice young man. Compared to some of the horror stories I heard from friends, I thought I was pretty lucky. Now I think that he was just a late bloomer.

If any of you have any advice, I’d love to hear it. I figure I’ll just bide my time until he’s ready to spread his wings and fly the hell out of here. And I used to think Christmas breaks were long.

Black Cat Blues

Today on the way home from walking with my girlfriend, a black cat darted across the road in front of me. I nervously laughed it off. After all, I’m a woman of the technical age. What’s an old superstition got to do with anything? How can the color of a cat and the time it crosses the street cause me to have bad luck?

I don’t know how, but it happened. What a day. I got home and received a negative response to an email about a book layout. No big deal – everything can’t be a slam-dunk in life. Then another negative responses popped up about the same thing. Crap. The black cat.

I went to tutoring early at the request of a teacher, and I had one student after another wanting help. I don’t mind, but sometimes when no one needs me I get to go home a little early, and right now I’m really busy so I could have used the time. Instead, I had to stay until the end of the school day, almost 4 hours, which is a marathon of tutoring. I don’t know whether to chalk this up to the black cat, but it certainly is suspicious.

When I got home my dog was walking on three legs. She looked so pitiful. My mind immediately defaulted to cancer, hip displacement, broken bone, and all the above. I waited a couple hours to see if she improved, but ended up taking her to the emergency vet and paid $89 to find out her leg is sore. I have to give her doggy aspirin for three days. Black cat.

Plus over the course of the day I’ve bit my own lip eight times.

Now I’m writing this blog and I’m having a hard time thinking of anything humorous at all. When you’ve got the specter of a black cat hanging over you, how can you think of anything funny? What’s amazing is that my dog was in the car with me when the black cat crossed, and she’s had a rough day, too. First the sore leg, then the trip to the vet, which she hates. Then the doggish humiliation of a stranger poking a rectal thermometer in her bottom. She didn’t like that one single bit. If she could talk, she’d say: BLACK CAT!

Oh, and on the way home from the vet I meant to stop and get toilet paper because there are about three squares each on the last rolls in the house. But I didn’t remember, and now in the morning, after the coffee, I’m going to be SOL, as they say. If that’s not the curse of the black cat, I don’t know what is.

Even though it’s not very late, I’m going to bed and pray that a tree doesn’t fall on the bedroom in the night. I wonder how long a black cat curse lasts? Is it 24 hours, or until sunrise? Or seventeen years? I hope this cat will be lenient.

The Rich Fight Back

I wrote about perpetual elections yesterday. Today they had an article in the paper explaining Measures 66 and 67. Basically, if you’re making $120,000 as a single person or $250,000 as a family, you’re pretty darned lucky, in my book.

However, if Measure 66 passes, you’ll end up paying – up to – a few hundred dollars more in taxes each year. In other words, you won’t be able to get your Lexus detailed as often.

That’s the heartbreak of taxes. And just what are you going to get for those extra hundreds you have to cough up? The promise of better schools and health care for the lowly. Ho-hum.

People in this income bracket generally have plenty of health insurance and their kids are in private schools. There’s nothing in it for them. No wonder they fight upper crust tax increases like cornered badgers.

Every wealthy person I’ve ever talked to is totally against taxes aimed at them, and they say it’s for one reason. They don’t like giving their hard earned money to pond scum who will just milk the system.

Now there’s something we all agree on. Don’t you just despise those people you hear about all the time who take total advantage of our government? You know the ones I’m talking about. The low lifes who hide money in overseas accounts, who know the tax codes and every trick to get deductions, people who entertain and travel lavishly and write it all off as business expenses – these are the kinds of people who sponge off the government without a care about how it affects honest, hard-working Americas like you and me. Oh wait, that’s the rich folks doing all that. I get so confused sometimes.

If we could put all the money the rich finagle the country out of because of the tax structure in one pile, and all the money the poor get in food stamps and welfare and subsidized health care, I wonder which would be bigger?

I’m preoccupied by these measures because of the phone calls I continue to receive trying to coerce me into voting against them. The callers, who all sound well educated and refined, are getting desperate. Today a perky lady called and wanted to speak to my husband. When I said he was at work, she wanted to know if he’d voted yet. I didn’t know. Is he going to vote against the measure, she wondered. I didn’t know that, either. Well, would I be so kind as to remind him? I told her he doesn’t ever listen to me. She chortled and complimented me on how funny I am, then asked my permission to call back when he might be home.

I was exhausted by the time I got off the phone. And then it rang again.

This robbing from the rich to help the poor is no new thing. Remember Robin Hood? I’ve seen the movie and those poor people remind me of the poor today. Sure, they’d waste some of the money if they had it, but maybe that’s because they don’t know any better. The wealthy sure waste a ton of money that could benefit us all on the silliest things.

All I know is that if you call me tomorrow, I’m not answering. Some day we’ll all look back on this and ram into a parked car.

I Vote for Fewer Elections

Does it seem like to you that we’re always voting on something for our state government? If not, then you must live in one of the 49 states or territories that isn’t Oregon.

I don’t know why they call them special elections, either. They’re more like perpetual elections. It seems like I’m getting a ballot in the mail on a monthly basis year round. The one occurring right this second is a vote for Measure 66 and 67. You may have guessed that they have something to do with raising taxes.

I’m not familiar with either bill. Politics give me a headache. So does listening to people trying to convince me to vote for their cause on TV. Generally they say that we’ll all be in the poorhouse if we don’t vote how their way, and it doesn’t matter which side they’re on.

I had dinner with my brother, mother-in-law, husband and our kids a couple of nights ago. One of us, and I can assure you it wasn’t me, brought up this latest election and all hell broke loose. I exaggerate, but I like using that term. Let’s just say the discussion warmed up as people’s views were presented. I stayed out of it, not knowing the particulars, and besides with that bunch you can’t win so why waste your breath.

My daughter thought we should vote for the increase because she’s got 45 students in her French class and the teacher is so overwhelmed that no one is learning anything, which is pretty sad for an advanced high school language class. My brother, who never willingly parts with a dime, was against it, although he doesn’t even live in Oregon so won’t be voting. My son said the whole thing was stupid, which covered both sides, and my husband and his mom were against raising the taxes. I watched them bickering back and forth until finally my husband was trying doing something with his arm and accidently banged his fist so hard on the table that French fry baskets flew up in the air. Our waiter rushed right over, looking scared, and asked, “Can I help you with something, sir?”

It gave us all a heart attack, and by the time we recovered, everyone had forgotten what they were talking about. Thank goodness.

I get calls all day long from volunteers wanting me to vote against the bill. They ask if I’ve turned in my ballot (no), am I going to vote against the bill (I haven’t decided), oh, then was I aware that people will lose jobs if it passes? I cut in after awhile and tell them I’ll study the bill and make up my mind soon and thanks for calling. They say, “Well, um, okay, we just hope you’ll consider all the jobs that will be lost if this bill passes, and a…if you need any more information…” then they ramble some more as if both of us have nothing better to do.

My son and husband would hang up on them, if they ever answer the phone, which they don’t. I used to work in an office where people came in the evening to do cold calling and schedule appointments. They were nice people just trying to make a living, so I always think of them and try to be polite. As luck would have it, the batteries are dead in the set of portable phones I bought a couple of years ago. They are the only phones that have caller ID. I was thrifty and ordered replacement ones off the Internet. They were cheap, and it was could have been a scam since I haven’t heard boo in a few days. Where were they coming from, Egypt?  Someone probably took my credit card number and is on the way to Hawaii.

With another week of this election to go, I don’t know how I’ll stand it. Maybe I’ll stay up late tonight and fill in my ballot. Naw, I’m exhausted from answering the phone all day. Maybe I’ll just record an answer on my machine: If you are calling to get me to vote for Measures 66 and 67, press 1. If you are calling to get me to vote against Measures 66 and 67, press 2. If you are calling to ask me if I need to refinance my home, press 3. If you are calling to give me a free week in Vegas if I’ll come to your 90-minute timeshare presentation, press 4. If you are calling….I could keep going to about number 69, then I can say, “If you’re a friend and calling to chit chat, please call me on my cell phone. You know the number. Hope you have a nice day!”

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Copyright © 2021 by Suzanne Olsen