Tag: Humor

General interest/Optimism Collection
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What Your Tote Bags Say About You

by Fran Johns

Do you really, really need one more?

I recently, happily became a Friend of Medium, which comes with a limited edition tote bag. I’ve actually been a Medium friend for several years — it’s a great platform with interesting writers and readers — but now I’m a Friend, capital F. That is to say, I increased my membership fee.

It’s not a ton of money in the grand scheme of things. I like the fact that now I can send stories, via Friend Links, to non-member friends who have long grumbled from behind the impenetrable paywall, and Medium writer friends will benefit from my attention to their stories.

But I asked them to hold the tote bag.

Not that I don’t love tote bags!! Cloth bags, canvas bags, reusable paper bags. Grocery bags, destination wedding swag bags.

But I can’t throw them away. I have, by rough estimate, 572,364 of them. I think there is a law somehwere prohibiting the disposal of a reusable bag — even for people who don’t live in California.

Here’s the inescapable truth: your life is in your tote bag collection.

This may be why, other than fear of criminal indictment, you can’t throw them away.

Speaking of criminals. In a very long history of parking my car in sketchy areas of San Francisco, only one time did thieves break in. I know enough never to leave ANYthing in a parked car. But a canvas bag containing a few of my favorite canvas bags, just so as never to be without a bag? Who’d have thought. Sure enough, some evildoer smashed my back window and snatched my bag of bags. Hopefully they are still in circulation . . . somewhere.

When toting stuff around on miscellaneous errands my mind often drifts toward existential questions. Foremost among these is the speculation that today’s endless catastrophies often feel like the End Times.

But somehow, if the planet implodes or whatever weary planets do, I have a sense that our tote bags will survive — relics to be pondered over when some new civilization looks back on us eons hence.

Maybe I’d better get the Medium Friend Tote just in case.

America Collection/General interest
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What Can I Say, After I Say I’m Sorry?

by Fran Johns

THE CASE FOR NICE OVER NASTY

Photo by Kristina Paparo on Unsplash

A recent Miss Manners column — you DO follow Miss Manners, don’t you? — featured her response to a Gentle Reader who had been called out for being, well, too polite. This was because Gentle Reader delivered a cupcake with an apology for a minor misdeed.

Excuse me?

If only I had a nickel for every cupcake apology/thankyou/etc I have delivered over the years. Not to mention the yellow tulips . . .

But Gentle Reader writes that he or she had been accused of etiquette that was “merely performative.” (Which, Miss Manners notes, is indeed what being polite is all about.)

Photo by Aneta Voborilova on Unsplash

We should be worried, gentle readers.

I yearn for a return to politeness. Courtesy. Peformative etiquette. The right to deliver cupcakes when you need to apologize.

Considering the contentious times we live in, what if a hostile, angry anti-etiquette movement emerges? Protesters showing up at every sickroom door, accusing well-wishers of showing off by bringing cards or bouquets. Mass-produced Stand Up for Rudeness! signs.

They’re probably already at work. Don’t Be Glad, Be Mad! (I can think of a lot of others, mostly too impolite to print.)

Photo by Mark Jones on Unsplash

The anti-etiquette folks believe our actions “should reflect our true feelings, however offensive they may be.” Or something like that. The bottom line is: courteous people are making the discourteous people mad.

We are in deep trouble, folks. Some true feelings really might need re-thinking. I’m particularly worried about ‘Honest Nastiness’ — protest posters for which are probably already in mass production.

My own true feelings are usually “Geez, I am really, really sorry for that stupid whatever;” nasty hasn’t ever worked for me. But what if the Honest Nastiness true believers organize? And join forces with random anti-cupcake people?

The inevitable next step? Those are the same folks who support open carry.

Which brings us to scenes of little old ladies (me, for example) delivering cupcakes to innocently wronged friends only to be confronted by crowds waving Pro-Rudeness signs — and packing heat.

Photo by Maxim Hopman on Unsplash

This is going to make it hard to say I’m sorry.

Considering how often I mess up, buy cupcakes and apologize, and how nervous I get in the presence of firearms, I’m in the deepest trouble of all.

Please consider joining me in the Return to Gentleness Movement. Unless the idea is offensive to you. In which case . .

I apologize. Could I bring you a cupcake?

America Collection/General interest
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Solving the Abortion Rights Problem

by Fran Johns

A SIMPLE, EFFECTIVE PLAN ACCEPTABLE TO PRO-CHOICE AND ANTI-ABORTION SIDES ALIKE

Photo by James Wainscoat on Unsplash

I don’t know why nobody’s thought of this before.

Recent news of the Florida Solution (isn’t Florida coming up with great policies right and left?) to its peacock problem suggests the perfect answer to the testy abortion debates. Universal Vasectomy!

(We will set aside the peahen here. Peahens have never had access to reproductive choice so what do they know? We could ask growing numbers of women in choice-less states. But it’s mostly the peacocky guys making laws anyway, and they pay little or no attention to the reality of us peahenny women.)

Clearly, if Universal Vasectomy were put into place the whole abortion problem would go away, and women could set about accessing the reproductive care that they — and presumably peahens — deserve. 

This policy, as described in a New York Times article, “would allow peacocks to continue acting like dominant males, displaying their dazzling feathers and assembling their harems, though they could no longer fertilize eggs.” Does this make sense, or what?

The same issue of The Times carried another article which sums up the need for UV: An 89 year old man voting against Ohio’s sneaky attempt to restrict abortion was quoted thusly: “If men was having babies there wouldn’t be none of this nonsense.”

OK, how is this going to work, you ask. Easy peasey.

All we have to do is set up a national trap-and-release program for all males of the species. Each will then be given the choice — imagine! individual choice! — of either assuming full responsibility, in perpetuity, for any fertilized egg that may result from any future sexual adventure for the rest of his natural life — or, Snip! 

There will admittedly be costs involved, for things like reimbursement to physicians administering the simple procedure (I suggest that thousands of women MDs who have endured harassment or worse will eagerly sign up for the program.) Solution: take it out of the defense budget. Who’s going to notice a few billion there? Especially after the need for dazzling- feathers displays concurrenty diminishes, a peripheral benefit. 

Once this innovative program goes into effect in the U.S., countries around the globe will recognize it as widely satisfying and at the least cost-effective, and quickly follow.

Voila! World peace.

I rest my case.

America Collection
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Four Things You Cannot Fix at 3 AM

by Fran Johns

A CAREFULLY RESEARCHED SELF-HELP GUIDE

Photo by Megan te Boekhorst on Unsplash

1 — That small, niggly message from your stomach that says it needs a couple of peanut butter-filled pretzels. Maybe just three or four? Please? You can ignore this, but you can’t fix it — unless you get up and go find that bag of peanut butter-filled pretzels. Really bad for the teeth.

2 — The problems your favorite niece is having with her mother. OK, the parents’ divorce was hard on her and now she doesn’t like the stepfather. So she’s going to drop out of school and join her brother in the ashram. You can rewind that reel as many times as you want; it’s going to come out the same. Have you ever fixed anything with that bunch?

3 — Democracy. I know, I know. You should’ve signed up for another few hundred postcards or letters with Activate America or Vote Forward or whatever, but you quit. Should you get up and fill out another form? Or send $5 to a few more candidates? Before breakfast? C’mon. Really now.

4 — World hunger. You are in that tiny percentage of people around the globe able to hunker down in a comfy bed after a perfectly good dinner, without a care in the world. Guilt will not lull you back to sleep.

You could, however, get up and go find the bag of peanut butter-filled pretzels.

America Collection/General interest
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Survival in the Friendly Skies

by Fran Johns

WHEN PLUNGING TO YOUR DEATH IS IMMINENT

Photo by Richard R. Schünemann on Unsplash

Airline passengers fall into two groups: those who can handle turbulence, and those who cannot.

I cannot.

So when we started bouncing around somewhere over Kansas I went into full freak: teeth clenched, hands gripping arm rests, eyes squeezed shut, feet applying brakes via the seat in front of me.

A flight attendant voice came over the speaker: “Garblegarblegarble Emergency garblegarblegarble Emergency.” The seat-belt sign shone a desperate white. Again: “Garblegarble Emergency . . . garblegarblegarble Emergency. Garblegarble.”

I prepared to die. Mainly, I was running through the list of things I hadn’t finished, stuff I had planned to leave beautifully organized for my mourning children, the dead flowers and moldy coffee cup from my departure a week ago. Then I started thinking: my laptop will go down with me; how can posterity survive without my laptop?

The couple next to me kept right on scrolling through their devices. Eating pretzels, for heaven’s sake. Who eats pretzels on their way into the hereafter?

I stole glances at other passengers. You’d think they were relaxing in a stretch limo.

We bounced more vigorously. I opened a conversation with God, who definitively told me She had other things to worry about so that didn’t help much.

After about five minutes, which seemed a small eternity to me, we leveled off. Just like that, the airplane remained in the skies, with me safely buckled into seat 24F. My laptop still connected to wifi.internet.com.

Glory be.

Photo by Jasmin Sessler on Unsplash

When the seatbelt sign went off I made a trip to the restroom. Before returning to my seat I could not resist asking the flight attendant what she had been saying, in those announcements that were totally unintelligible other than the Emergency! Emergency! Business.

“Oh,” she said with a smile. “Someone had pushed their call button. We were just asking them to push it twice if it were a true emergency, as we were buckled in and could only respond if it were an emergency.”

I was happy when the non-garbled announcement came: “Welcome to San Francisco . . .”

End-of-Life/General interest
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The Glory of Modern Dentistry

by Fran Johns

Or – How in the world am I going to pay for all this gadgetry?

Photo by Quang Tri NGUYEN on Unsplash

Dentists, my oral surgeon told me almost as an aside — he’s sticking needles in my jaws, and I’m supposed to feel sympathy? — have the highest suicide rate of any profession. I reflected on this, having nothing better to do at the moment.

After Googling around when I got home I learned that MDs are at greatest risk, but the DDS folks are close behind. This is not research, it’s only Googling, but here we are.

Back to my oral surgeon. I am spending a lot of time with oral surgeons, and oral everything elses, having reached the advanced age at which all that expensive stuff — crowns, implants, you name it — done 25 years ago wants to be redone. Regardless of how loudly I argue that I don’t need another 25 years — could they patch me up for five or six, maybe? — I find myself captive to the stratospheric talents (and costs) of today’s dentistry.

Rather pricey view from (one of) my dentist’s offices (Author photo)

Please do not get me wrong. I am immensely grateful to the entire profession, and the way they have kept me smiling through the years without looking like a toothless goofball. Eating is nice, too. So dentists and I are longtime besties.

But now I’m worried about their depression levels.

I do not want to get into the suicide business, which is a sad and serious issue never to be written about lightly. So I am only worrying about what might make them so sad.

Money? How can that be? Admittedly all that fancy equipment must cost a fortune — and many of my dentists are in an historic, heavily gilded downtown building on which I feel I pay upkeep. But as they all have other patients besides yours truly, and what I’m spending on this averages out to the choice between two weeks in Paris or fix that tooth — well, nobody’s talking minimum wage here.

It must be staring down throats all day. Have you considered how repulsive the view into your throat really is? I thought not. Or it could be the fear that, at any moment, an enraged patient might chomp down and amputate your gloved finger? That would definitely increase workplace anxiety.

Self portrait with (happily only temporarily) purple jaws (Author photo)

In the end, however, I have decided to quit worrying about my dentists’ health and wellbeing. They, after all, are not the ones with purple jaws and occasionally absent teeth. Plus, I’m assuming they can afford therapy, given the bills I am paying.

Now, about that bank I’m planning to rob . . .

America Collection/General interest
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The Joy of Supplements

by Fran Johns

Today’s random health report

Photo by Myriam Zilles on Unsplash

Dietary doomsday may be upon us. For instance, how’s the eicosapentaenoic acid?

And should we be REALLY worried about it?

There’s food — as in breakfast, lunch, dinner, nosh — and there’s Supplement. I grew up on meat & potatoes plus a few vegetables, old-fashioned stuff you cook and eat. But the world seems to be geared to popping pills for daily needs, so I supplement with the best of them today.

One of my children told me to take turmeric with curcumin, so I started swallowing those yellowish pills a few years ago. I have no idea why; sometimes I think they give me desert-sand breath.

Then there’s fish oil. Does everybody take daily fish oil? I sort of think so. That’s where you get the eicosapentaenoic acid. It’s a “fatty acid,” which doesn’t sound particularly yummy when you think about it. Plus, I used to take pride in never having dropped acid.

I am more than a little suspicious of it all. Big Pharma, I think, did a mind control thing on my primary care doctor, the one who said I really should take extra iron, and calcium with vitamin D, and if I’m not mistaken she threw in the fish oil. There is no fish oil capsule smaller than a quail’s egg. After I while, I got a new doctor.

Mostly, I am fascinated with CoQ10. Seriously, now. Had you ever heard of CoQ10 before it began starring in every other commercial on MSNBC?

CoQ10 — I’ve been researching this, no easy task — is an enzyme. More specifically it is “Coenzyme Q, also known as ubiquinone . . .” Most healthy people have plenty of it, but maybe — maybe — scarfing a little more might help with one’s blood pressure or metabolism or headache. Apparently, nobody much knows. Just reading about it gives me a headache.

In the small print of the CoQ10 packages are warnings about diarrhea, nausea and heartburn, little things like that. As to whether taking this happy little supplement can actually do any good, phrases like “the evidence is conflicting,” or “it’s uncertain that adding CoQ10 will have any effect” proliferate.

Maybe we should go back to kale and blueberries.

America Collection/General interest
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Last Minute Midterm Week Survival Plans

by Fran Johns

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Next Tuesday is election day. On Wednesday I have a root canal.

Clearly, something’s wrong with my planning mechanism. For all I know, I scheduled a colonoscopy for Thursday and just forgot to write it on the calendar. There is a limit to the amount of pain one can endure; I’m hopeful about the midterms but not unrealistic. Next week should at least have included a spa day, if I had only hired a scheduler.

In the olden days there were Secretaries.

CEOs, district managers, sales representatives, all those guys — they were all guys — had secretaries. (Who were all girls. The olden days were before girls became women. You could’ve been 75 years old, but if you were a secretary, you were still one of the girls.) Secretaries kept their bosses from missing meetings or dinners, knew where everything was, found stuff. After a root canal, any good secretary would’ve scheduled a spa day.

I was never a secretary, and certainly never had one. Reporters had editors who seldom created order and usually complicated daily life. I did, of course, immediately after picking up a BA in Art, go to night school to brush up my shorthand. I can still cover a mean story with the help of my efficient speedwriting, but the rest of what they taught at secretarial school passed me by.

And today I just need a secretary. Secretaries were displaced some time in the 1980s by electronic organizers: digital diaries that straightened out address books and calendars and dental appointments. These were eventually displaced by computer systems way too complicated for anyone who can remember what a secretary was. Computer organizers were eventually displaced by old-fashioned humans who discovered a whole new career choice: the professional organizer.

I actually have a professional organizer. For a very large fee she occasionally breezes around my apartment collecting stuff, say to take to the tax accountant so I don’t lose my mind or go to jail. Worth every penny of that fee, she replaced the organizer/financial secretary I did have, who was called a Husband — the very top of the household line. (He, however, may he rest in well-earned peace, operated with amazing efficiency out of seeming chaos, probably because he used to have a secretary.)

If I live long enough to master the switch from my beloved PC to this MacBook Air that threatens my sanity and blood pressure, the theory is that I will then have a brightly lit computer calendar synchronized with my iPhone and life will suddenly be ordered and peaceful.

This, however, will not happen before the midterms. Prayer may be my only hope.

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