Putting My Toys Away

My butt implants have slipped, but now I have killer calves. That's the last time I will go to Costco for cosmetic surgery.

I posted that online.

What the hell is wrong with me?

Is it nature? Is it nurture? Did my pony kick me in the head?

I am an old man and still don't know what happened.

But I have some thoughts.

First, here's a small digression. In my accounting career, I often dealt with guys who cheated others out of their dough. I concluded that they stole because of what they heard after holiday dinners. I pictured them as a ten-year-old listening to their father and uncles talk about how they financially screwed people. That ten-year-old grew up to be a money-grabbing A-hole.

I think about what I heard my own relatives say in the past.

First, there's my aunt Dorothy. She was less than 5 feet tall—one of those elementary school teachers who was shorter than her students.

Dorothy once observed that one woman looked about as happy as a chicken with a severe case of hemorrhoids. I also heard dear Dorothy say stuff like:

• He sounds like a sick calf in a mud puddle.

• If it has tires or testicles, you've got trouble.

My brother Pete could twist a mundane event into a gut-wrenchingly funny tale. His memory was so good that he recalled things that never happened. Pete loved describing when Uncle Roger needed hemorrhoid surgery, and he reacted negatively to the anesthetic. The doctor skipped the inflammation in Roger's backside and did an emergency tracheotomy. Pete told the story from Roger's point of view. He focused on what it was like to awaken with a tracheotomy tube, not able to speak, and wondering why he still had hemorrhoids.

Pete told me about how he got his first pet. He was tending bar in a small-town tavern in Minnesota. One frigid and lonely evening in January, the only customer said he could not afford to feed his dog. Then he asked Pete to hold the dog while he shot it. The alky apparently had money for booze but not enough to feed his dog. Pete called the dog Bud, short for Budweiser.

Before Pete died, he wrote his own obituary, which included the following line: "Don't tell my mother I am in advertising. She thinks I am in prison."

Finally, here's a quick memory of my father. In his dying days, he was housed in a VA hospital. He shared a room with another vet. One evening, my sister, Betsy, visited the old man. She was about forty and his favorite daughter. When she arrived, she noticed the roommate was fast asleep, mouth hanging open, drooling, and snoring. That would have been fine, except his junk was hanging out for the world to see. Betsy looked at Pop, who said, "That guy doesn't put his toys away after he's through playing."

Please don't blame me for being me. I never had a pony, I've never cheated anyone out of their dough, I had enough money to feed the dog, and I put my toys away when I'm through playing.