Echoes From the Loafers’ Club Meeting

I’m taking a statistics class in night school. I hate it.

Then why are you taking it?

Because it will pay for itself if it keeps me from buying lottery tickets.

Driving by the Bruces

I have two wonderful neighbors — both named Bruce — who live across the road from each other. Whenever I pass their driveways, thoughts occur to me, such as: Why do movie theater promos and trailers have to be so loud? We haven’t even had time to fall asleep yet. Mention the word “colonoscopy” in a crowded room, and there will be so many gasps from men that it will suck all the air from that room. Drinking tear-free shampoo hasn’t been proven to be an effective cure for depression.

The cafe’s complaint department

“Yes, sir, is there something wrong?”

“My soup. Taste it.”

“I can assure you that the soup is excellent.”

“Taste it.”

“Sir, we made the soup this morning out of the finest ingredients.”

“Taste it.”

“OK, I’ll taste it. Where is the spoon?”

“Ah ha!”

There are few things better than ice cream on a cold day

The roads had been icy. The Zamboni went by twice. The mail female had filled the mailbox with important stuff. She’s done a great job after replacing a mail male rural carrier. The weather was disagreeable — cold and windy. I shuffled to the mailbox while dressed in a tattered coat, well-worn sweatpants and an ugly hat with earflaps. Earflaps? I know that many of you believe that any man living here who still has his ears is a sissy. A mailbox’s location determines whether a person can dress like a troubled hermit or not when retrieving the mail in daylight.

The cold, snow and ice triggered a hunger for ice cream.  

“Would you like to hear our flavors?” asked the server in an ice cream shop, later that same day.

“Sure.”

She rattled off about 40 different kinds of ice cream. It was impressive.

I ordered vanilla.

I should have felt guilty, but I didn’t. The ice cream was too good.

Clinic conversations

I spent time at a colossal medical clinic where they worked to solve problems that I didn’t know I had in ways that I couldn’t understand. I’d driven through a multi-leveled parking ramp where many oversized vehicles had corralled two spaces. I had a ticket that permitted me to park, but I needed a hunting license to find a parking spot.

While awaiting appointments, I jotted things in a small notebook, my constant companion. Some of the quotes I wrote down were real, but most were imagined.

“Guess how many stitches you were given. Get it right and you get a free piece of pie in the clinic’s cafeteria.”

“This device that you are hooked up to makes a high-pitched alarm that only a patient can hear.”

“I know that laughter is the best medicine, but I decided on a hip replacement instead.”

Patients are honest with one another, often sharing more than needed.

“I’m going to quit taking these pills,” said the woman.

“Why, do they make you feel poorly?” I responded.

“No, they make me feel too good. I’m being nice to people I don’t even like.”

In local news

Paul Bearer has been a mortician so long, he can’t say anything nice about anyone who is still standing.

Barbershop closes. Butcher shop quartet forms.

Cheese factory explodes, leaving a terrible mess. The brie was everywhere.

Naturally

I saw a rough-legged hawk. As a boy, I called it a Christmas hawk because it appeared during that season. Similar in size to a red-tailed hawk, it has smaller feet that allows the rough-legged to perch on thinner branches than the red-tailed, often called a “tail” by hawk counters.

A northern shrike perched high on a small tree at the edge of a field. A shrike is grey on the head and back, white on the chest and throat, with black patches on wings and tail, and a black mask across the eyes. The shrike is a predatory songbird. Unlike hawks and owls, it doesn’t kill with its talons, but with its sharp beak. It hunts from an exposed perch, darting out swiftly after prey that may be forced to the ground by the shrike’s feet. Prey is sometimes impaled on a thorn to be eaten later. This earned the bird the nickname, “butcherbird.” The shrike resembles a mockingbird. In our warmer seasons, we might see a loggerhead shrike.

Meeting adjourned

Kindness isn’t a big thing. It’s countless little things.