Echoes From the Loafers’ Club Meeting
"I’m getting nowhere fast."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because the GPS is broken in my sports car."
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: it’s awkward whenever anyone asks me for a word that begins with an A and has two W’s in it.
I’ve learned
• Those who say there is no such thing as a stupid question have never worked in customer service.
• Not all opinions need to be shared.
• People hear you best when you are listening.
In Hartland news
• Bump Whistlebritches hires 70-year-old man because it was like getting two 35-year-olds for the price of one.
• Yoga class members learn that all is well that bends well.
• Loafer’s Shoe Store manager is given the pink slipper.
The visitation
I moved past the deceased. Someone said that he looked good. I suppose he did. I wished I’d had the opportunity to say goodbye. It’s difficult to say goodbye at a wake.
A fellow mourner said that his mother had lived to be 105. His parents had purchased a plot in the cemetery. They had tombstones put in. The tombstones had names, birth dates, and dates of death indicated as 19__. When his father died, they filled in the two numbers on the year of his passing. His mother lived into the 2000s. They had to change the entire year of death for her.
Life is a puzzle
Remember being a kid and having to invent things to do?
We reach a certain age and we have more to do than we could ever accomplish.
Then, if we are lucky, we attain the age where we need to invent things to do again. It happens after climbing hills so steep that by the time we realize that we are over the hill, we are climbing the next one.
She told me that she was either 93 or 39. She claimed she couldn’t remember which.
She was working a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle. It looked difficult. There was too much of the same thing in the picture depicting the finished puzzle.
She said it was hard. She smiled as she said that.
She knew that it would take only one puzzle piece to finish it.
Customer comments
• Doris Mager is an 88-year-old from Florida who travels around the country doing bird programs with live raptors. She said that her father told her to use common sense and that epsom salt is good for everything.
• Ric McArthur of Morpeth, Ontario wrote, "Whoever said 'Do the job right the first time and you’ll never have to do it again,' never shoveled snow off a Canadian driveway, eh?"
• Dan Bagley, a retired locomotive engineer from Nevada, Iowa, told me that he ate sunflower seeds to keep from becoming drowsy while working.
Did you know?
• For the fifth straight year, Americans consider "whatever" to be the most annoying conversational word or phrase according to the Marist Institute for Public Opinion. "Whatever" is the most irritating to 38 percent of those polled while 22 percent report "like" gets on their nerves. "You know" irks 18 percent of Americans while 14 percent want "just saying" stricken from casual conversation. Six percent detest "obviously."
• In 1803, the Louisiana Purchase was completed for $15 million, roughly three cents an acre. The land spanned from Montana to the port of New Orleans and doubled the size of the United States.
• Dogs are sensitive to Earth's magnetism. The research paper, published in the journal "Frontiers in Zoology," said that dogs prefer to defecate with their bodies aligned along the North-south axis under calm magnetic field conditions. The next time you step in something on the lawn, take out your compass and see if the alignment is complete.
• After the Civil War, the U.S. government paid pensions to wounded or impoverished Union veterans and to the widows of the dead. Southern states paid pensions to disabled Confederate veterans. The Civil War pensions became a basis for Social Security.
• Janus, for whom January was named, was the Roman god of doorways and beginnings and was depicted as having two faces.
• The Great Molasses Flood occurred on January 15, 1919 in Boston. A large molasses storage tank burst and a wave of molasses rushed through the streets at an estimated 35 mph, killing 21 and injuring 150.
Nature notes
"Do butterfly houses work?" Not to house butterflies. They are decorative and more likely to be inhabited by spiders and wasps than butterflies.
Meeting adjourned
A kind act makes a fine pillow.