s Tr eA m # 4 5

Happy birthday, Hemingway! You’re one in a million. No, you’re one in a billion. No, you’re one in a trillion. No. You’re one. Yes. You’re one. Well, you WERE one. And, you’ve won! A brand–new toaster–oven. You like toast, don’t you? Who doesn’t like toast? My grandfather only likes toast in the morning. After that, he refuses anything that is or could be toasted. He thinks that toast, later in the day, will be too hard on his teeth. For the record, I do not burn his toast. The toast I toast for him is always lightly toasted. So I don’t know what he’s talking about. But he is beginning to act his age. Or, rather, more and more, he’s beginning to act his age—you might say he’s “running on automatic pilot,” that is, so to speak, more and more. He can’t process most new data. He’s content to recycle all of the old data—rather, what’s left of all the old data. But he does like crackers. He’ll eat crackers any time of the day. He doesn’t crush the crackers into his soup. Rather, he’ll slurp a spoonful of soup and then he’ll munch off the cracker in his hand. More and more, he has difficulty opening a single–serving cracker’s plastic package. He also has difficulty putting on a seatbelt. He makes many tasks harder than he needs to make them. Just resting his cane against a wall will, for some reason, cause him to loose—or rather lose—his balance a bit. In fact, once, just trying to set that damned cane against a damned wall, he toppled all the way over. At least the cane stayed put. I’ve tried to show him that he’s putting too much effort into it—that there really is very little involved in the act of resting a simple cane against a wall. He doesn’t even use the cane correctly. He just sort of drags/bumps it along. He also hunches all the way over to tie his shoe laces. He says he can't lift either of his legs to rest on the opposite knee. And now it’s going to rain again. And today he’ll want to visit Betty, but that’s every day. Last week, when he had a nosebleed, he refused to set foot outside of the house for forty–eight hours. Well, he made one exception—to visit his quack. The quack prescribed Sing-U-Air. He’s been coughing a lot lately—Pop has, not his quack. He coughs most when he wakes up in the morning or finishes a meal. Now he wakes up singing, “The hills are alive with the sound of music...” That’s all he sings because he doesn’t know the rest of it. He doesn’t want to eat nuts anymore, he says, because he bites his lower lip too much. Last Saturday night Spiffy and I found ourselves at the 50th Anniversary Festival of Heyvern Hills. Our visit wasn’t intentional, but there it was. Sunday afternoon, I revisited the festival, intentionally. I did so to “gather material.” I was seeking a story—well, another one. I found another one, too, but it presented itself on the other side of the pond. I also happened upon the actual the hills of Heyvern—you can’t really see them at night. They aren’t very hilly. And they appear to be manmade—unless there are other hills, hillier hills, elsewhere in Heyvern that aren’t (manmade). I felt very good about my little adventure yesterday afternoon. Yes, I know, as far as adventures go, it was a rather conservative one. But it felt good. Lots of walking and sweating. Later, whilst dining at the Orange Garden, Pop said that I must be the only fully ground American male—rather, fully grown American male—who doesn’t care for sports. That made me angry. Fans of professional sports fail to realize that they’re rooting for athletic mercenaries. Players for the Bears, Bulls, Hawks, Cubs, Sox, etc., care more about their contracts than the jerseys they wear. More oft than not, they’ll follow the highest offer. And how many of them are actually from Chicago—or even Illinois—anyway? They’re handsomely paid to represent your home town. So they’re mercenaries. And you—if you’re a fan of pro sports—have been effectively conned. But the thrill of being a sports fan doesn’t involve the intellect. What’s more, my anger is never useful. My anger is always, always, always self-destructive. That’s StepDude’s influence at work. Bottom reached? 

21 July 2008