DATE: 11/28/2008 17:39:49 / MOOD: don't know

Did you ever…?

by Melech

 

 

 

 

Did you ever really pay much
attention to the many television commercials you see every day?  I never did until just recently and I was
amazed at the amount of time, talent, and expense involved.  A large number of them are very well
written, directed and are informative and entertaining.  However, just as many of these commercials
seem to be intended for an audience with an average age (if not IQ) of
fourteen.

 

Just the other day a commercial
came on, promoting a toilet bowl cleaner. Everything went very well until they
showed the entire family standing in a group and smiling at the sparkling clean
toilet bowl.  Did you ever do that in
your house?  I never did.  Well, I did once.  I invited my neighbours in to smile at my toilet bowl and now
none of them are speaking to me.

 

Another commercial that unsettles
me is the one where someone spills a whole plate of spaghetti, meatballs and
red sauce on the white carpeting. Their only concern was that it had splashed
on a woman’s shoe.  No one cared about
the carpeting because the hostess had this amazing new carpet cleaner that
would take the stain up straight-away. 
My first thought was, “why anyone would be eating in the living
room?”  My second thought was that if
anyone made a mess like that on my white carpeting, I would be doing
hard time in a maximum-security prison.

 

Another particularly annoying
commercial is the one where the husband brings a shirt to his wife and
says;  “Honey, ring around the
collar.”  Also, there is a group of
neighbourhood children in her back yard looking at the laundry hanging on the
clothesline and they are singing; “Ring around the collar.”  The poor, exhausted, overworked wife looks
like she has just been sentenced to a death march.  Why didn’t she just tell him to wash his neck or to be happy that
the ring around the collar was a perfect match to the ring around his
neck?  Her next move should have been to
threaten to have those kids in her yard arrested.

 

The vast array of commercials for
toothpastes, mouthwashes, soaps and deodorants get on my nerves.  How is it possible that someone doesn’t know
that their teeth are the same colour as a sunflower, or that they have the
breath of a goat, or that they smell like an old mattress that was left in a
damp cellar for three years?

 

Advertising for laundry detergents
and fabric softeners are very misleading. 
They always show someone who has just finished doing their laundry.  Because they have used a particular brand of
detergent and/or fabric softener, they bury their face in the laundry, inhale
deeply, and suddenly, they arrange their facial features into a pattern of
imbecility. Their eyes are vacant, and they have a mindless look and an empty
smile. My only guess is that they have experienced a religious miracle. 

I tried that once.  When my laundry was finished, I buried my
face in it and inhaled deeply.  Maybe I
inhaled too deeply because when I regained consciousness, I woke up on the
floor and realised that there was a half-hour of my life I would never get
back.

 

The list goes on and on, but the
commercials I never pay any attention to are the ones where they find it
necessary to scream at you.  Obviously,
they do it to get your undivided attention. 
Whenever a particularly loud commercial comes on, I turn off the sound
and go into the kitchen for a cup of coffee. 
When I return to the TV room, there is the commercial for a certain
brand of shoe insoles that will allow you to spring fifteen feet off the floor
and run like the wind.  I never bought
those insoles because I only have ten-foot ceilings in my house.

 

I called my sister and asked her if
she ever invited her family and her neighbours into her bathroom to smile at
the toilet bowl.  She told me to go take
a nap and she hung up on me.

 

 

“Did you ever…?” is a weekly newspaper column by Melech

©Copyright
2008 by Melech.  All rights reserved

The
next column will be posted on December 06, 2008

File#RBCOL27

View Entry

DATE: 11/15/2008 00:53:30 / MOOD: don't know

Did you ever…?

by Melech

 

 

 

Did you ever think about all the
amazing things a computer can do?  I was
finally talked into buying a computer when everyone promised me that it
would simplify my life, help me to manage the household budget, balance my
chequebook, keep an accurate and updated inventory of my possessions, and a
multitude of other miraculous things.

 

I brought the computer home and
couldn’t wait to hook it up and begin to simplify my life.  My big downfall came when I tried to make
sense of the instruction booklet.  It
was obviously written by an inmate in an institution for the criminally insane,
who had found a way to get even with the human race.  No matter how many times I connected the cables and wires, every
time I turned it on, it let out several long and high-pitched shrieks, some of
which were only heard by a team of Alaskan sled dogs at the North Pole.

 

In desperation, I called my
neighbour Mark and asked if he could help. 
He had it all connected and hooked-up within a matter of minutes.  I still haven’t forgiven him for that, but I
was pleased when he tripped over a cable I left on the floor, fell against the
edge of the door and chipped a tooth.

 

I began typing, but nothing
appeared on the screen. When I told Mark the computer didn’t work, he let out a
sigh of exasperation, reached over and turned it on.  The screen lit up and announced that I had to select a
password.  After the computer rejected
every password I tried, it finally accepted the only word I could think of at
that time.  That word was “help”.  A menu appeared and Mark said I had to
select a program.  I told him I didn’t
want to watch TV, I wanted to work on the computer.  He patiently explained what that meant and then he suggested that
I take a night school course at the local high school. 

 

I took Mark’s advice and signed up
for the beginner’s course .  I
was the only student in the class over eight years old and who didn’t need a
booster seat to reach the keyboard.

The teacher asked if this was my
first time using a computer. I told him I had used it a few times to prop open
the door whilst I moved some furniture around. 
He totally ignored me for the remainder of the six-week course.  The only time he spoke to me again was to
recommend that I drop the course and get a private tutor.  Once again, I turned to Mark and begged for
his help. He reluctantly agreed.  When
our first session began, he told me I had a very good computer with a lot of memory.  I asked him if the computer remembered how
to turn itself on because I had forgotten. 
That was the first time I ever saw Mark cry.

 

After a few weeks, I had limited
working knowledge and when I finally learned how to balance my chequebook, I
discovered that the bank had been right all along.

Mark showed me how to use the “help
function” and then he told me that his wife would not allow him to come here
anymore. My sister said she was surprised that my computer hadn’t “crashed”
yet. When I told her it was very safely placed on the desk and couldn’t
possibly fall off, she hung up on me.

 

Maybe someday I will really learn
how to use the computer and it will not get so angry with me and refuse to
answer me when I use the “help function”.

 

 

 

“Did
you ever…?” is a weekly newspaper column by Melech.

©Copyright
2008 by Melech.  All rights reserved

The
next column will be posted on November 22, 2008

 

 

File #RBCOL26

View Entry

DATE: 11/08/2008 06:07:40 / MOOD: don't know

Did
you ever…?

by
Melech

 

 

 

Did you ever question the whole
Telemarketing operation and how or why it works?

When I received a bill in the post
for a Life Insurance policy that I never ordered, I rang the customer service
department of the company.  The woman
who answered the phone said: “Good morning. This is Grunella speaking.  If you are calling to report that you are
dead, we will not pay on the policy unless you have given us a two-week notice
that you were going to die.  Also, we
need medical documentation and the original death certificate from the
Coroner.”

I assured her that I wasn’t dead
and that I was just calling to find out why I had received a bill for an
insurance policy that I never ordered. 
I gave her the policy number and waited while she looked it up.  Finally, she came back on the line and said:
"Our telemarketers tried to call you but you apparently had a block put on
your telephone to stop all telemarketing calls.  Do you think that’s a nice thing to do?  How can our staff do their job if they can’t reach you?” She
accepted my apology for the phone block and asked when I was going to have it
taken off.   I promised to do it that
same day.  Then I asked: “If your staff
couldn’t reach me, then how did I get this policy?”  She said they didn’t want me to miss out on such a wonderful
offer, so they just went ahead and signed me up for the policy because the
first month was free.

“If the first month is free,” I
asked, “then why did I receive a bill demanding that if I didn’t make payment
immediately, the bill would be turned over to a collection agency?”

“You didn’t read the fine print.”
She replied.  “The first month is free
only if you had died in 1948 on an uncharted island off the coast of Norway
during an attack by killer herring.”

I took a deep breath, calmed
myself, and waited until the stroke passed and then I told her that I wanted to
cancel the policy. 

 

 

She told me I couldn’t cancel the
policy for 35 years, and that if I died before then, I would have to make
provisions in my will for the rest of the policy to be paid.

“How can you have my signature on a
legal document when I never signed anything?”

“It’s your own fault.” She replied.
“I told you that our telemarketers couldn’t reach you by phone, so we just went
ahead and signed for you.  Now, when are
you going to pay this bill and when are you going to have that block taken off
your phone?”

I told her that I wasn’t going to
do either one, and that I was going to send the bill back to them with the word
“cancel” written across it.  She said I
couldn’t do that until after I had been dead for at least three months.  I hung up on her.

Three days later I received a legal
notice from a collection agency.  I
called them and explained the whole story. 
The agent said: “We’ve had a lot of trouble with that company, so why
don’t you just go ahead and pay it? It will make my job a lot easier.”  I hung up on him, waited for the second
stroke to pass, and then I rang my attorney. 
He told me to send all the documents to him and not to worry about it.

I never heard from that insurance
company or the collection agency again, but I still cannot stop worrying that
even now, some telemarketer is signing me up for something and the whole
process will start all over again.  When
I told that to my sister, she said I sounded like a “case history on paranoia”
and she hung up on me.

 

 

-        
- - - - - -

 

 

“Did you ever…?” is a weekly newspaper column by
Melech

©Copyright 2008 by
Melech.  All rights reserved

The
next column will be posted on November 15, 2008

 

File#RBCOL25

 

View Entry

DATE: 11/01/2008 02:30:44 / MOOD: don't know

“Did
you ever…?”

by
Melech

 

 

Did you ever think about the amount
of time, money and effort some people put into physical fitness?  I am totally in favour of staying fit and in
shape, just as long as I don’t have to put and time, effort, or money into it.

 

A few weeks ago, I saw my
neighbour, Mark, jogging.  We are about
the same age, but he is in great physical shape and was able to wear the same
clothes he wore back in high school, until his wife made him throw them out
yesterday.  I took a long look at myself
in the mirror and didn’t like what I saw. 
My chest had fallen down around my stomach, my double chin had made my
neck disappear, and I could have sworn that my skin used to fit better.  Junk food and gravity had taken its
toll.  It was time to do something about
it.  I went outside, stopped Mark as he
was passing my house, and asked him if we could jog together.  He reminded me that I got out of breath when
I chewed gum; so maybe jogging wasn’t a good idea.  After a lot of insisting (and begging), he reluctantly
agreed.  He said that he would slow his
pace so that I could keep up with him. 
We were only jogging for about thirty seconds when I bumped into him,
stepped on the back of his shoe, and he hit the ground.  I still don’t know why he was so angry.  He only needed two stitches.

 

My sister suggested that I cut out
the junk food and buy some kind of exercise machine.  After I threw out every bit of junk food in the house, I noticed
that my refrigerator, pantry and cupboards were empty.  I went to the local health food shop and
bought all kinds of food that was supposed to make me healthy and trim.  When I wanted a snack, a rice cake sounded
good.  I was more than half finished
with it before I realized that I had been eating one of my cork coasters.  The rice cakes and the cork coasters looked
and tasted so much alike, it was an easy mistake to make.  The rest of the health foods gave me a
blinding headache, stomach cramps, sore kidneys, and the desire to run away
from home.

 

The sporting goods shop had an
exerciser for beginners.  It was two
long tension straps that you attached to your door handle, whilst you held the
other two ends to do bodybuilding exercises. 
The instructions said to lie on the floor, attach one end of each strap
to the door handle, and the other ends to your feet.  I must have done something wrong because when I attached the ends
of the straps to my feet, both legs flew up at an incredible speed, and I was
slammed up against the door, standing on my head.  I decided to try the easier exercise, where you hold one end of
each strap in your hands, pull, hold, and release.  I must have pulled too hard because the door handle flew off of
the door and hit me squarely in the forehead. 
When I regained consciousness, I decided to return the tension straps to
the shop and tell them that they were too dangerous.

 

On my way home, I stopped at the
supermarket and bought some real food, and then treated myself to an ice
cream sundae.  Mark was sitting on the
front porch with his wife. When they saw me, they went in the house.  I guess Mark isn’t speaking to me again.

 

I called my sister on the phone and
told her what a total disaster this whole physical fitness thing had been.  When she suggested that I join a health
club, I pretended I didn’t hear her and I changed the subject.

 

 

 

 

“Did you ever…?”
is a weekly newspaper column by Melech

©Copyright
2008 by Melech. All rights reserved

Next
column will be posted on November 8, 2008

 

 

File#RBCOL24

 

View Entry

DATE: 10/25/2008 19:11:40 / MOOD: don't know

Did
you ever…?

by
Melech

 

 

 

Did you ever wonder about the most
enigmatic creation on the face of the earth? 
I am referring to women.  I have
the greatest amount of respect and admiration for them. 

I can only guess that they are all
born with supernatural powers far beyond those of mortal men.  Even Superman was baffled by Lois Lane.

The other night, some of the guys
were at my house for our weekly card game. 
We get together once a week and I watch them play cards.  I haven’t been allowed to play for several
weeks.  Mark said I get on his nerves
and throw off his game.  Steve told me
that if I outbid my partner one more time, he was going to staple my lips shut.

Dennis fell apart when instead of
calling trump, I hollered “bingo”!  Doug
threatened to go home after I spilled my cup of coffee on the score pad and
they had to start the game over again. 
So now, Mark, Steve, Dennis and Doug play cards.  I have permission to watch, but only on the
condition that I don’t talk or sit at the table with them.

In between games, the conversation
turned to women.  Mark said that whilst
his wife was out grocery shopping, he went down to the basement, hid under his
work bench and was snacking on junk food when his wife called him on the cell
phone and told him he was going to ruin his appetite for dinner with that junk
food.  How did she know?

When Steve came home from work, his
wife was angry because somehow or other she knew that he threw away the lunch
she packed for him and he bought two double cheeseburgers, chips, and a chocolate
milkshake.  How could she have possibly
known that?  Doug’s wife told him to put
on a jacket before he went out because as she said to him; “Don’t you think I
know when you’re cold”?  Dennis reported
that whilst his wife was out of town visiting a sick relative, she knew that he
hadn’t started the list of chores she left for him to do.

This conversation brought back a
rush of childhood memories.  I always
suspected that my mother had x-ray vision, super hearing, ESP, and was an
infallible lie detector.  As I got
older, I realized that all women had these awe-inspiring powers. 

 

They can be at the other end of the
house and still know if you are feeding the dog at the table, teasing your
sister, eating candy before dinner, or any of the million things that kids
do.  Once, when I was about ten years
old, I was six blocks away from my house smoking a cigarette.  When I got home, my mother said the next
time I smoked a cigarette she was going to tell my father.

I can’t even begin to count the
times I was talking to my sister on the phone when she would shout at one or
all of her boys for something they were doing in another part of the
house.  When I asked her how she knew,
she said; “I just know.”

After the card game broke up and
the guys went home, I called my sister on the phone to tell her about our
conversation.  As we were talking, she
said; “You shouldn’t be drinking coffee this late at night, and don’t make
those faces at me either.”

I got scared and hung up on her.

 

 

-        
- - - - - -

“Did you ever…?” is a weekly newspaper column by
Melech

Copyright ©2008 by Melech.  All rights reserved

The
next column will be posted on November 01, 2008

File#RBCOL23

 

 

 

 

 

 

View Entry

DATE: 10/18/2008 01:52:56 / MOOD: don't know

"Did you ever...?"

by Melech



Did you ever wonder how much (or how little) time and thought that some people
put into buying gifts? Over the years, I have received several nice gifts and
several hundred gifts that the Salvation Army made me take back when I tried to
donate them. I also tried to donate them to a homeless shelter, but they took
one look at the gifts and threatened to have me arrested.



One Christmas, my aunt Delfina knitted a sweater for me. One sleeve just barely
covered my elbow, and the other sleeve dragged on the floor. The back of the
sweater came to just above my waist, and the front came to just below my knees.
It was so tight around the middle that it could not be worn by anyone who
weighed over 80 pounds.



Another memorable gift was a pair of slippers that were so short and so wide, I
can only guess that they were made for a hoof, rather than a foot. I have no
real proof of this yet, but I strongly suspect that those slippers were made by
an ex-horse trainer who was sacked from his job because he tried to make the
horses wear slippers when they were indoors.



I have also received an assortment of "clip-on" neckties, none of
which were long enough to reach the middle of my chest; mismatched socks; a
baseball cap that would only fit a watermelon; and several neck scarves. The
scarves were also knitted by Aunt Delfina, and they were so long, that as they
trailed out behind me, I could only think of the hideous fate of Isadora
Duncan.



How could I forget the straw Panama Hat? The label boasted that it had been
woven underwater. I wish they had left it there.



The bathrobe was so huge, my arms disappeared and I couldn't walk without
stepping on the front of it. The back of the robe trailed out and remained two
rooms behind me. I found out later that the robe had been made by two former
circus tent-makers with poor vision.



All the many books I received were all written in obscure foreign languages
that I had never heard of. The only book written in English, was by an inmate
on death row who said that our judicial system was unfair and that he never
would have committed all those crimes if he knew that he was going to get
caught and punished. When I tried to donate all those books to the library,
they threatened to revoke my library card.



When my neighbour, Mark and I were discussing this, he said he stopped
celebrating his birthday two years ago when his twin brother forgot his
birthday. My other neighbours felt pretty much the same, because they had all
been the recipients of totally useless gifts.



I really thought they had the right idea, so I called my sister on the phone
and told her that I decided not to have anymore birthdays, and that at
Christmas, I would arrange to get arrested and spend the holidays in jail. She
told me to take a pill and a nap, and then she hung up on me.





"Did you
ever...?" is a weekly newspaper column by Melech

©Copyright 2008 by Melech all rights reserved

Next newspaper column will be posted on October 25, 2008

file#RBCOL22

 

LOOKING FOR RECIPES ?  

melech-recipes.blogspot.com

 

 

 

View Entry

DATE: 10/11/2008 04:24:23 / MOOD: don't know

Did
you ever…?

by
Melech

 

 

 

Did you ever do your best to help
someone who was totally unappreciative of your efforts?  Last month, my neighbour Mark decided to put
a room addition on his house and I offered to help.  He was very apprehensive about it, but finally agreed when I
promised not to use any power tools or offer any advice.

Whilst we were waiting for the
lumberyard to deliver the materials, we started to measure and stakeout the
area for the addition.  Was he
satisfied? No!  He said he had to re-measure
because he did not want a room shaped like an obtuse triangle.  Some people just cannot be pleased.  After he finished measuring, I began
hammering the stakes into the ground when suddenly I shouted; “Mark! You’re
rich! I struck oil!”  He told me I had
broken the water main.  He went into the
house to call the department of water and sewers while I watched his garden
become a swamp and his garage tilt slightly to the left.  The stakes I had driven into the ground
disappeared, and we never did find his hammer or tape measure.  I told him he could have mine, but he still
wasn’t happy.

Two weeks later, the ground was dry
enough to begin work again.  Even though
I thought everything went exceptionally well, Mark did nothing but
complain.  First, he said I nailed his
shoe to the floorboards on purpose. 
Then he said I put the upright boards too close together. I disagreed,
and when he tried to crawl between the boards to prove it to me, he got stuck
halfway through. He yelled at me to help him get unstuck, and when I asked him
which end he wanted me to save first, he told me to go home.  I came back later with coffee and doughnuts
as a peace offering.  By that time, he
and his wife had finished pulling out all the splinters and he was ready to
work again.  As I was handing his coffee
to him, I accidentally spilled it into his shoe.  This gave him something else to complain about.  I still don’t believe he sustained second
degree burns on his foot, but he said he couldn’t work anymore that day.

 

 

The next day, when I saw Mark
limping out of the house to begin work on the room addition, I went over to
help.  While he was on the roof nailing
the boards in place, I notice that two of the uprights didn’t look quite
straight.  I tried to straighten them
with the sledge hammer but they broke in half which made part of the roof fall
in.  Unfortunately, it was the part
where Mark was working, so he came down with the roof.  Whilst he and his wife were in the hospital
emergency room, I cleaned up the mess as best I could and waited to hear news
about Mark’s condition.  It was hours
before they came back home because his wife also had to take him to the dentist
to have two teeth capped.

When they finally came home, I went
over to see how Mark was doing.  His
wife said he had to stay in bed for a few days and that she had called a
construction company to finish the room addition.  I asked her if that wasn’t going to be very expensive, she said
yes, but if Mark tried to finish the project himself with me helping him, the
divorce would cost much more.

The room addition is finished and
it looks great. I was telling all this to my sister. She said her husband was
going to put an addition on their house too. 
I told her I would be glad to help him with it, but she hung up on me.

Some people just don’t appreciate
anything you try to do.

 

 

 

            &nb sp;                       &nb sp;                       - - - - - - -

 

 

“Did you ever…?” is a weekly newspaper column by
Melech

©copyright
2008 by Melech.  All rights reserved.

The next column will be posted on October 18, 2008

 

File #RBCOL21

 

 

View Entry

DATE: 10/04/2008 00:28:58 / MOOD: don't know

"Did you
ever...?"

by Melech



Did you ever wonder how some people make it through the day without taking a
high-powered rifle and climbing a bell tower? I wonder about that every time I
think about my sister. She is the hardest-working woman I know, and I am sure
that most women will be able to identify with a typical day in my sister's
life. Every day is endless hours of cooking, baking, cleaning, scrubbing,
waxing, polishing, organizing, and doing several loads of laundry. I have never
seen her be able to sit for longer than three minutes, or have a cup of coffee
that was still hot. Other members of her family can go for hours without saying
a word to her until she is talking on the phone. Suddenly, everyone wants to
start a conversation, ask questions, and demand her immediate attention. If she
is foolish enough to hang up the phone and address their questions, they lose
interest and go back to what they were doing before she got on the phone.

Rather than see her end up in a Nursing Home, humming and braiding her hair, I
comprised a list of standard cheeky answers to all their standard questions:



Q: Did you iron my shirts?

A: I couldn't. I used the iron for a bacon press and now it doesn't work.



Q: Why is the kitchen drain stopped up?

A: All the grease I purposely poured down there today, has finally hardened.



Q: Where are my shoes?

A: I hid them along with everything else you might be looking for. Now it is
your job to find them or the game is no fun.



Q: What's for dinner?

A: Nothing. The stove went on strike right after I tried cleaning it out with
the garden

hose, the microwave is angry at me because it doesn't like aluminum foil, and
all the food that I took out of the freezer five minutes ago, hasn't thawed out
yet.



Q: Did you do laundry today?

A: Yes, but it is still in the laundry room. I still have to finish spreading
lint on all the

clothes, loosening all the buttons on every article of clothing, throwing out
one sock

from each pair, and shredding everyone's underwear.



Q: Why didn't someone put a new roll of toilet paper in the bathroom?

A: I thought it would be easier if we all hung a roll of toilet paper on a rope
and tied it around our waist.



Q: Where is the remote for the TV?

A: With your shoes that I hid.



Q: Why did they cancel my favorite TV show for a political speech?

A: It's my fault. I telephoned them this morning and asked them to do it.





I told my sister that she could avoid further questions and complaints by
making a blanket statement in which she would assume responsibility for
everything from high food and petrol prices, unusually heavy rush-hour traffic,
mail that hadn't been delivered yet, bad weather, and all the way to the crisis
in the Middle East. She said that my idea had some potential, but it probably
wouldn't work because no one would pay any attention to her while she was
talking, and if they did, they wouldn't remember it three minutes later when
they were looking for something or wanted to register another complaint.



When I commented that we had been talking on the phone a rather long time
without any interruptions, she said it was because no one knew she was on the
phone. She had her cordless phone, her coffee cup, and was hiding in the linen
closet. She finally got to have a hot cup of coffee.









"Did you
ever...?" is a weekly newspaper column by Melech

©copyright 2008 by Melech all rights reserved

The next column will be posted on October 11, 2008



file#RBCOL20

 

View Entry

DATE: 09/27/2008 01:11:30 / MOOD: don't know

"Did you ever...?"   (Camping Trip)

by Melech





Did you ever think about planning a camping trip to experience the great
outdoors? If you did, then you know what I'm talking about. If you didn’t;
don't !!!

A few of the guys in the neighbourhood were talking about it one day and
decided to plan a weekend camping trip in the woods. They talked about hiking
and fishing and cooking over a campfire. It all sounded good. I knew I should
have said "no" right away, but my neighbour Mark, talked me into it.
I couldn't refuse him because he had just started speaking to me again. He
stopped talking to me weeks ago when my garden hose got away from me and I
accidentally sprayed him with weed killer. I tried to explain to him that his
hair, eyelashes, and eyebrows would grow back, but he wouldn't listen to me. As
it turned out, I was right. His hair is growing back nicely and the numbness
has almost left his tongue. His eyebrows and eyelashes will probably take a
little more time.



Nine of us planned to go on this camping trip, but the number dwindled to four.




Steve couldn't go because his wife threatened to leave him and make sure he got
custody of the kids.

Marty refused to go because we wouldn't let him take his dog. His dog is an
annoying toy poodle that is nervous, high-strung, and barks for twenty-three
and a half hours every day.

Carl's wife said he could go only if he took their four kids with. He stayed
home.

Roger's wife threatened to schedule him for gum surgery if he dared to go.

Doug's wife said that was the weekend he was supposed to clean all the
carpeting in the house and help her alphabetise all the canned goods in the
cupboard. I have no real proof of this yet, but I am sure Doug's wife spends at
least three hours a day pouring grease down the kitchen drain and watching it
harden, just so that Doug will have something to do when he comes home from
work. She hates to see him sit and relax.



The trip started out badly. Mark asked how far it was and how long it would be
before we got there; Bob said he had to use the bathroom; and Dennis wanted to
know when we would stop for something to eat.

I ignored them, started up the car, and we pulled out of my driveway.



Several hours later, we pulled into a campsite. We pitched the tents and, after
a lot of trial and error, got a good campfire going which was promptly
extinguished by the onset of a torrential downpour. We all got into our tents
except Bob. A hurricane-force wind blew his tent away and it was never seen
again. He had to share a tent with Dennis. Just as I was beginning to wonder if
we should begin building an ark, the rain stopped. We came out of our tents and
looked around. The entire campsite was under a foot of water. All our supplies
had floated away, and I could have sworn I saw a school of fish swim by.



We all slept in the car that night and told each other that everything would be
better tomorrow. The next morning, Bob, Mark and Dennis went hiking and I
stayed at the campsite to salvage and repair what I could. When the three of
them returned, I had things looking pretty good. There was a good campfire
going and I had made a tent for Bob from a big old blanket I had in the car. I
wish there had been another blanket to build a tent for Mark. I built the
campfire too close to Mark's tent and it burned down. Now he is not speaking to
me again. They couldn't go fishing because I used their fishing poles and
fishing line to build the tent for Bob. When he tried to get into his tent, it
collapsed and it took us two hours to untangle him from the blanket, fishing
line, and broken fishing poles. Now Bob isn't speaking to me either.



We decided to pack up the car and head for home. I offered to help Dennis pack
up his tent, but he said that if I came near him or his tent, he would braid my
lips. Mark took a vote and it was unanimous that I shouldn't be allowed to ride
home with them, but I out-voted them when I reminded them that it was my car.
We drove home in silence except for the sneezing, coughing and scratching. They
had all caught terrible colds, and Mark caught a case of poison ivy.



Bob and Dennis finally got over their colds and Mark recovered from his bout
with poison ivy, but he is still sneezing and coughing. The three of them are
going on another camping trip next weekend, but they didn't invite me. My
sister said that they are probably worried that if I went with them again, they
would all be doing hard time in a maximum-security prison for murder.  When I asked her if she and her husband
would like to go on a camping trip, she hung up on me.











"Did you
ever...?" is a weekly newspaper column by Melech

©copyright 2008 by Melech all rights reserved

The next article will be posted on October 04, 2008

 





File#RBCOL19

 

View Entry