The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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I just came from a would-be shopping trip to my usual grocery store, the big box one in downtown Stanwoodopolis (name withheld by advise from my attorney).  With my cart only a quarter full I rounded the final corner in the last lap to the checkout stand, hoping for one that might have one or two carts, a short wait, but no, the three lanes were backed up into the aisles, the self-check back to the rear of the store, so with my usual penchant for patience I settled in and waited my turn behind a couple of carts crammed with enough groceries to weather a winter, plus two or three small carts with about the amount I had.  I figured five minutes, I’d be at the conveyor.

Five minutes nothing had moved.  It was like a Twilight Zone episode, the one where the shoppers never move an inch.  Fifteen minutes and everyone is looking around, wondering same as me, what the ?%$#.  Since I couldn’t see my checker, I assumed we had a new hire, some poor victim stressed beyond anything manageable and who had suffered either a stroke or had simply gone catatonic, frozen over the barcode scanner.  The guy in front of me gave me a quizzical look of frustration so I asked what day he’d gotten here.  Comedy, you might not need to be told, isn’t much appreciated when you’ve become trapped in long lines that do not move.  Down at the other checkouts some progress seemed to be made, not much, but some and by now it was too late to lane change.

Twenty minutes and a couple of pass-bys from the Manager, a mackerel faced administrative type unbothered by the fact that ten minutes ago he had tried not to make eye contact with me and yet here I was again, rooted to the same spot.  I asked if they would be bringing porta-potties soon for the folks with incontinent problems.  Again, humor is not what was needed here.  Maybe a couple more of those unopened self-check lines might be, but no, I guess not.

Twenty five minutes later I’m expecting Rod Serling to wander out of the produce section, maybe offer a short summation of this day’s episode.  ‘The townsfolk may have asked themselves if this was nothing more than an alien experiment to determine if grocery line gridlock might lead to civil unrest.  Some may still be there with their thawed pizzas and their melted ice cream.  But rest assured, they’ll always be checking out … in the Twilight Zone.’

Thirty minutes later and another pass-by from the unharried Manager, I noticed a cart peeking out from Aisle 6, queued up for the checkout stand half a dozen of us had been waiting for in Aisle 5.  It didn’t take Rod Serling to script the moment when the two lines converged, each confident that we were next.  My cart would be the one to meet Aisle 6’s cart  and obviously the lady who never quite figured out where the end of our line had been would think, well, you know damn well what she’d think and then ….

I gave up rather than lock carts with another frustrated customer and pushed my way through a forest of stalled grocery wagons to the self-check, figuring anything was better than another half hour even if I bullied my way in front of the lady in the wrong line.  Course when I reached the self-check at the other end of the store, that line stretched to the end of the aisle, possibly out the storage area and into the loading area.  A guy at the head of the conga line jabbed an angry thumb at me in case I tried to jump the line, pointing off into an infinity of basket carriers and shopping cart victims.

I don’t know how many shoppers succumbed to dehydration or heart failure.  I don’t know if the Red Cross set up shelters by the dairy department to tend to the fallen.  I do know I was the only one to abandon his cart and stumble to the front door.  When they count the fatalities, I hope my cart doesn’t send the authorities looking for its owner, some poor schmuck frozen back in the freezers when confusion sent him reeling, another casualty of the grocery industry prior to its proposed merger of the two national supermarkets.  The merger that should, little doubt in this former shopper’s mind, solve most of their checkout problems.

Right.

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I got plenty of friends who are looking for a love interest after pretty much giving up finding a compatible life partner down at the Stanwoodopolis Hotel or the Boxcar Tavern, don’t ask me why but apparently the pickings have been picked over.  They’ve tried joining a few groups, everything from pilate to art guilds, but the dating pool is small and most aren’t single anyway.  An affair isn’t really what they’re looking for.  Or at least that’s what they tell me.

So with options shrinking faster than glaciers in Africa they’ve turned to the 21^st equivalent of matchmaking, joining an online dating site, posting their photos and interests, editing their lives down to a paragraph that hopefully will make them attractive to potential buyers.  Meaning, they probably lie about their age, their weight, photoshop their pictures, exaggerate their interests, mention that they love walks on the beach and cuddling on the couch, adore cute puppies, never smoke or drink or do drugs … or at least only in moderation.

Now most of my loveless pals are no longer youngsters, oddly enough.  In fact, we’re, if we’re honest with ourselves (something unsuitable for Tinder or other dating sites), actually Geezers.  An age bracket that you might think would be notable for its honest acceptance of who we are in this latter stage of life.  Dater, know thyself!  But of course this is the internet … where truth goes to die.  And in this new Darwinian universe of mate selection, advertisement is everything.  Consequently, those first dates make fine grist for late night commiserations over a few adult beverages when they regale me with love gone wrong stories.

One of my pals puts on his resume that he would rather drink horse piss than date a MAGA maiden … or something to that effect, maybe more subtle, but his message is clear.  You voted for the Trumpster, don’t answer this ad.  Better to sleep alone, apparently.  And yet.  And yet!!  Invariably he gets to that first luncheon date with a potential Miss Right only to discover fairly soon that Miss Right is really Miss Rightwing, she just didn’t think it would be all that important when it came to lifelong spousal choices.

And so it goes, love on the digital highway.  After a few bad connections, dates that were easier back in high school and long lulls in conversation, I can see why a lot of my cronies eventually give up, realizing that a few decades of living alone have ossified into an inability to compromise much at, oh, 65 or older.  Explains, I guess partly, why they’ve finally decided they’re happily unmarried.  If nothing else, us geezers have accrued no little wisdom in our advanced years.  It just takes a few times in the dating rodeo to figure that out.

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Lately I’ve been reading about a new phenomenon out there in the world of media sociology: the lack of men working manly jobs.  If I’m to believe the statistics, a lot of Help Wanted postings are going unfilled.  And the reason, these analysts speculate, is that us men are unwilling to do MANual labor.  Ya think?

Down here in the canary-filled mines of the South End, any manjack of us could have told these sociologists the trend is real.  But we could also have informed them that the danger is not as dire as they seem to be suggesting.  We’ve been work averse for most of our lives without undue harm to the island’s economic well-being, only to our own.  Putting economics aside, the psychological and spiritual benefits of, okay let’s call it male malaise, have been substantial. Sure, divorce rates might have spiked but that only means that the women were freed to take on the work us lazy good-for-nothings left open.  A small loss for marital happiness.  But a big win for women’s liberation.

Plenty of women in the ‘hood here chop their own wood, haul their own water, build their own sheds, keep the hearth fires burning … and still manage to raise the kids and work a 40 hour week.  You think they’re unhappy?  Ask any of them and they’ll tell you what liberation is all about:  not having some deadbeat husband under foot telling them what they ought to do but not do one damn thing himself.  You think they’re looking for a replacement, think again.

What I worry about and the media sociologists ought to too is the next generation, the kids who think work is anything but physical labor.  They’ve grown up with video games, smartphones, apps, laptops, computers, digital toys, just about anything that glues them to their chairs.  Work?  It certainly doesn’t entail sweat or brawn.  Those days are history, my friend, relegated to the Cro-Magnon period, the one prior to Artificial Intelligence and the Rise of the Android Work Force.  Male malaise?  Why do you think we need immigrants?

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Did I tell you the coming election cycle would be nothing, if not fun?  Well, at least comical.  I’m going to take a pass on the Herschel Walker Variety Show down there in the Peachy State.  Making fun of the poor guy at this point would be tantamount to sadistic cruelty.  Making fun of the Crackers who would vote for him might be fair game, but now that the Donald is back on the campaign trail, the oxygen in that room is long ago depleted.

One thing you have to give credit to the Trumpster for – or maybe Roy Cohn – is the ability, the tenacity, the mule-headedness to stick to his story.  Dammit, the election was stolen from him.  You remember the election, don’t you?, the last one, oh, must be a couple years ago now, a millennium in the digital age.  Well, HE remembers it and he wants to remind you again and again it was STOLEN!  Go ahead and show him the statistics, the lawsuits thrown out, the recounts … it doesn’t matter, don’t you GET IT, the election was, say it after me, STOLEN!  And because it was STOLEN! anything to right that wrong, to correct that error, to overturn the results is permissible if not mandatory.

Even, it turns out according to the man the election was STOLEN! from, even if it means abandoning the Constitution of the United States.  What good is that ancient testament if it allows the election of the President to be, yup, STOLEN!  Write a new one, or better yet, let the rightful winner of that STOLEN! election make his own Constitution, a fairer one, an honest one, a revised and improved one.  One that enshrines what a little less than half the national population believes is true.  Magical thinking, yeah, but correct and proper magical thinking.  The man is not only a genius with a very big brain, he’s a conduit for Truth, THE conduit for Truth as a matter of fact.   Why do you think he calls his social media platform Truth Social?  The Wizard is In!  24/7.

Me, I believe the man.  I think he really does think the election was STOLEN!  He can no more imagine being a Loser than he can imagine Melania leaving him for Herschel Walker.  You don’t get to fire Donald J Trump, he does the firing.  Didn’t you see his TV show?  Bam, big successful businessman points his nubby little finger and sayonara, buddy, you’re gone, out the door, head down, beaten, deflated, a loser.  Him, not Donald. Him.  Every episode.  Every time.  Lose?  No way!!  NO WAY, amigo!!

Give the guy another chance, all I’m saying.  No, not to be Prez again even if it was STOLEN!  But give him another TV show.  Call it FIRED!!  Haul out a dusty Declaration of Independence and give it the old heave-ho.  Bill of Rights?  Time to put a match to those.  You want to wake up the woke, what better way than slice and dice the Constitution and a few other old moldy antiquated documents from slave owning times.  Freedom of Speech Amendment, here’s the Door!  Right to bear arms?  Why not legs!?  Cue the trumpets, we got another exit for the entertainment of our viewing audience.

Let him host it.  He’s not going away, obviously.  He’s never going away.  If you think that, you’re the one guilty of magical thinking….

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A rose is a rose, so it’s said, and smells just as sweet by any other name.  Perusing our newspaper of record, the Crab Cracker now that the Stanwoodopolis Gazette has abdicated its role of reporting local news, I came across a notice that a new group had formed in the area for those coping with the loss of a loved one.  Death Café.  I know, I should be more sympathetic, possibly even supportive, might even be in need myself someday … but golly, Miss Molly, couldn’t they have come up with a better name?

Death Café.  I don’t know, it just … well, it just … it has a certain morbid and cadaverous quality to it.  I mean, you get to wondering what’s on the menu.  Eggs 6 feet under, easy over.  Soup de jour, eye of newt in a tomato bisque.  BLT’s, blood lettuce and tomato.  You can hardly stop yourself from imagining the worst sorts of breakfasts, lunches and dinners.  Zombieburgers, cooked rare.

But these are the times we live in.  Touchy-feely in a modern and alienated world.  Probably better than a bunch of tweets from people you barely know on Twitter, I suppose, but c’mon, Death Café for the luvva…. ?  Why not, oh, I don’t know, Heaven’s Gate Diner, or Streets of Gold Chop House (okay,  maybe not), Pearly Gates Beanery, Adios Amigo Pizza Parlor, Ashes to Ashes Tavern —anything but Death Café, even Death Anonymous.

The trouble, of course, is a lot of us secular humanists, having renounced the old school religions of our parents (who are now gone too late for the Death Café), don’t know how to deal with our grief for the dearly departed since there’s no, let’s call it ‘closure’.  Imagine there’s no heaven, Lennon sang.  No hell below us, above us only sky.  You think that’s going to make folks feel better when their loved one bites the bullet, think again.  John says you may think that I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.  Swell, John, just swell.  He says he hopes one day we’ll join him and the world will live as one. One what?

If John were around today, he’d be the fry cook at the Death Café, no doubt about it.  Actually, he’d be head chef at the Imagine Bar and Grill.  Happy Hour all day long….

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