Good Times I Remember?

I've noticed that as I get older, I reminisce. The old days actually come back to my mind with striking regularity.

Thinking back to my high school days, I remember that I was an awkward, shy, quiet teenager. 

I wonder how many other people miss those times?

Bad Law

The State of Washington has passed and the purported Catholic governor signed a law which would force priests to break the seal of Confession. Briefly put, Catholic priests cannot under any circumstances make public any person's confession. It is a basic right of the free practice of religion and religious conscience. The Federal Department of Justice is investigating it as a violation of the First Amendment.

Good. If ever there was an example of tyranny, this is it. You fear Trump? I fear the left in general, and government power in particular. The left wants what it wants, and reason let alone the Constitution be damned. 

Yet before we wag our fingers too harshly at our left wing friends we should remember that, in this case anyway, it isn't only they who wish to swing the cudgel of government power against religious rights. Delaware and Vermont (unsurprisingly to me) have had recent bills die in committee which would do the same thing, while the very Republican states of Montana and North Dakota have considered similar measures. Thankfully none of them passed. But it does show that liberals aren't necessarily alone. In North Dakota anyway, two of the sponsors of the proposed bill were in the GOP.

Any way you slice it, the Washington law is bad law no matter how good the intention; we seem too ready and able to forget about the road to perdition. We have a Constitution precisely that the citizenry may be protected from such disregard for individual rights. We must teach our friends to respect it.

And Toto Too

While waiting for an appointment in an office building one day I was pleased that the music being played over the speakers was decent. A song I hadn't heard in awhile, Hold The Line by the rock band Toto, came up. It was a hit when I was a senior in high school, and I always liked it. It's a great, hard driving, almost arena rock staple.

Then it becomes your ear worm.

All I heard the rest of the day was,

Hold the line!

Love isn't always on time, no, no, no,

Hold the li-i-i-ine!

Love isn't always on time whoa whoa wo-oh

I don't care how great of a song it might be, when something gets planted in your ear and you cannot shut it off, it gets old, and more quickly than you think.

I had not heard Hold The Line in several years. Right this minute, I hope it's several more.

And there it goes again.

Great Uncle Bill

Grandpa Joe once had an old Packard that he really liked. He also had an older brother whom he was close to, and one day the car and the brother came together in what even Joe admitted was a funny story.

His older brother was Uncle Bill. Joe thought enough of him that he named his first son, me Pops, after him. Uncle Bill was as quiet and reflective as Joe was loud and abrasive. But if you told Uncle Bill something you'd better mean it, because he would do it.

One day someone's car had slid off into a ditch, and Joe and Bill went with Grandpa's Packard to try to pull it out. They hooked up to the car, and Bill got in the driver's seat of the Packard because Joe thought he was better at things like pulling vehicles out of ditches. Uncle Bill revved the Packard up slowly, and gently tried to get into gear several times, with no luck moving the stuck car. Joe as was his wont become more impatient by the second, until he finally yelled, "Hell, rip the bumper off her!"

"I knew right after I said it I'd said it to the wrong guy," Grandpa admitted years later, retelling the tale with a laugh.

Uncle Bill's face drew into a huge grin. He raced that engine and dropped it into gear. The car leapt forward powerfully, as a 12 cylinder Packard should. And he ripped the bumper clean off.

As Joe readily admitted, "What could I say? I told him to do it."

He never did say exactly how they got the car out of the ditch though. But that really isn't the point of the story anyway, is it?

Under Pressure

I had a doctor's appointment this past week; got to get my money's worth out of Medicare, you know.

Everything is fine; I'm the picture of health, if that picture is hanging skin and gray hair. But I think my physician had had a bad commute or was mad at his wife or something.

He decided to check my blood pressure. Wrapping the cuff around my arm, he began pumping that little ball to air the thing up. It was getting tighter and tighter, yet he kept squeezing and squeezing on the tiny air pump.

Uh, Doc, that's starting to hurt. Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze.

Seriously, man, my arm is really tingling below my elbow. Pump, pump, pump.

Honestly, Doctor, my arm is blue, no, purple. My arm is purple, Doc. Squeeze, squeeze.

"Doc!" I finally implored in panic.

"Oh, I am sorry!" He finally released the ball. "Oh dear, Mr. Cosgriff! Your blood pressure is 295 over 178!" 

I'm sure it's not, Doc. Try again, on my other arm. The bicep on my right arm is smaller than my index finger just now.

Peeping Marty

Peeps: the marshmallow sugar infused confection (I'm guessing confection as they don't really seem like candy) we love to hate whose eyes are never quite straight. That makes them cockeyed Peeps I guess. But when you got 'em you gotta eat 'em, right?

I just ate a package of five. They're not nearly so caloric as I would have expected. All five were only a total of 140 calories, so they haven't busted my diet. What I eat the rest of the day will see to that, believe me. But, again, ya got 'em, ya eat 'em.

What struck most was the best by date, though. The package was marked best by January...wait for it...2027. So I could have held out on them for not one but TWO Christmases from now, and they'd still be, well, I suppose, fresh.

Were they designed for bomb shelters? Do doomsday preppers stockpile them? One and half, no, better than one year and ten months from now they'd still be fresh. And that's really only the best by date we're talking about. How long would they be any good after that? 

Maybe Peeps are the new Spam. They made the first batch in 1937. They're making the second batch next year.

My apologies. I should have offered a trigger warning for an immanent Dad joke there.

Hero Worship

Most of us, many of us anyway, have heroes. My dad is my hero, I say with pride. But some people forget that even terms like hero can be used hyperbolically. And uncomfortably.

For example there's this plumber, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, who, no matter what he's getting at the Shop, tells me and me brother Phil, "You're my heroes." 

Um, thanks, but we're not. We simply sold you a cutting tool, dude.

It might not bother me so much in a more desperate situation. If Cloyce had burst into the old barn in a panic because his machine quit while he had a hundred and twenty feet of cable lodged in a drain and needed a repair fast and we were able to do that, I'd get the sudden exclamation, "You're my heroes!" But when he says 'you're my hero' for run of the mill stuff, well, it's borderline creepy to me. At least how he says it, that is.

Maybe that just Cloyce's way. Still, I actually shuddered while typing this blog out this morning.