The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Sometimes, when you think you might be the only person who can save the world, you have to commit acts that you know are wrong. The surf instructor who murdered his two kids with a spear gun and left them in a ditch told police that he knew killing them was wrong, but … the fate of the world was in his hands. The kids, he had learned through visions and dreams, were going to grow into monsters that would threaten life on this planet because they had serpent DNA.

I don’t know. Maybe they did. The Lizard People, as you must have heard, are among us. Alien beings infesting our gene pool. I suppose our surf instructor might have tried one of those DNA testing sites, see if maybe the serpent DNA was really mostly Balkan or Southern Mediterranean. A buddy of mine has 1% Neanderthal. If they can detect Neanderthal DNA, for sure they could find lizard DNA. Course, the surf dude was pretty certain his kids had serpent DNA without any damn test, which, at least for me, raises the question, where did they get it? Mom sleeping with alien invaders? Or … and this is the most troubling, did they get it from him??? (Cue the creepy soundtrack.)

Qanon believers are multiplying faster than lizard genes in the Land of the No Longer Free and it might be time we thought about banning spear guns before mass spear gun killings become commonplace. These are weird times, definitely, what with Covid, bat viruses unleashed on the world, climate change, self-driving vehicles and rockets buzzing overhead with billionaire passengers. The idea that Democrats are keeping children for their sexual and culinary appetites isn’t so far-fetched in these times. Lizard People living among us? Sure, why not. They’re probably the monsters who want to vaccinate an acquiescent population, pump their DNA into the veins of the unsuspecting, then take control of the earth. Spear guns don’t kill, Lizard People kill.
Don’t wear a mask, don’t get inoculated, don’t worry, be happy. The surfers of the world may unite and save us despite ourselves. And whatever you do, do not, I repeat, do not get one of those DNA tests. Just gonna ruin your day.

Don’t, whatever you do, put down on their death certificate as the cause of death, Covid. It’s just too damn embarrassing. They never believed the lies of the mainstream media, not one bit, that coronavirus was worse than the flu. Don’t put Flu down either as a cause of death. Too close to home. No, put Underlying Causes. That’s it. Underlying Causes. Their relatives will be relieved and that, after all, is what matters, no point rubbing salt into their collective wounds.

I run into folks all the time who deny the claim that over 600,000 of us red white and blue Americans died of Covid. Not true, they say. Bullshit, they say. I say what do you mean and they reply most of these victims died of, wait for it now … Underlying Causes. The Covid was just the little shove over the edge apparently, but what killed more than half a million of us was … Something Else. At this point in the conversation I usually head for the door.

Nevertheless, it’s revealing that there are places in this country where the coroner will list other causes of death rather than Covid. I suppose he could put down Stupid, but that’s nearly as embarrassing as Covid. The sad point is that after a year and a half of this pandemic, with a vaccine that would save their lives, they refuse to get an inoculation. And sadder yet is that this decision is pretty much correlated to political party affiliation. Cause of Death: Republicanism?

Thanks a lot, Fox News, for spreading the doubt among your viewers, all you commentators who got vaccinated. Cause of Death: Tucker Carlson? Or the hundreds of social media sites spreading misinformation. Cause of Death: Facebook?

I guess Underlying Causes pretty much covers all of the above. But … I would prefer to list something a little more specific, even if we avoid calling it Covid: Darwinism. Course, most of the deceased don’t believe in that either. Rest in Peace, y’all.

Down at the Diner normality is slowly returning. Well, the New Normality, I guess. After being shut down briefly for non-compliance with plague masking, the café began to adhere to the governor’s edict that masks must be worn by customer and staff alike. As soon as some of the quarantines lifted, the Diner was first in line to rip those N-95’s off their ears and breathe free once again. Eager to recoup the winter’s lost revenues, they built a makeshift beer garden out by the parking lot next to the building, fenced it off and offered tourists and residents adult beverages near the gas pumps. Even brought in music, small groups and a night of open mic.

Course, they had forgotten about checking with the Liquor Board for permits for a beer garden, or if they had checked, went ahead without them. So for a time the music by the pumps and the open mics went on hiatus until the snafu was corrected. Damn government regulations! Last week I drove up to hear what the open mic folks might have to offer, maybe catch a beer and sit in the sun. And while it’s not Margaritaville or a sunset rich view of the Puget Sound, it’s pleasant enough. Unless you happen to be sitting next to the air return for the café’s HVAC system, 95 degree breezes fluttering your hat, although, to be fair, there are a few more seats further from the desert breeze.

I lasted one cold beer, at least until the guy with the saxophone stepped up to the microphone and butchered Duke Ellington. I was in 5th grade band classes with kids who could play like this, but I’m not in 5th grade anymore and I honestly believe before you perform in public, you ought to learn to halfway play your instrument. Just saying….

Saturday night the mizzus and me went to hear a very good fiddler play old time music, solo and then with friends. It was indoors after the only rain of the summer soaked the beer garden, all very convivial for a small super spreader event, the beer was good, the place was packed. After a dozen songs or so a 30 something woman parked next to me who started yelling in my right ear GET CLOSER TO THE MICROPHONE!! or YOU NEED TO TURN UP THE AMP!! or SING LOUDER!! until finally I got up and moved away from her. She immediately charged over to ask AM I ANNOYING YOU??

Now, a bigger man, a more mature man, a man mellowed by the South End laid back lifestyle might have said, no, ma’am, I just had my right ass cheek going dead so I thought I would move to a different seating position, nothing at all to do with the new tinnitus in my right ear … but, of course, that would be a different man than myself. When she took umbrage to my telling her hell yes you’re annoying me, you’re screaming in my ear louder than the damn band, she seemed suddenly enraged for some reason. To which she spluttered and told me YOU NEED A NEW HAT!!

I didn’t have the heart to tell her it was a new hat, figuring it probably wouldn’t lower the volume. I started to tell her she needed a …. stopped myself, then said, aw, let’s quit here, why don’t we? When the song ended, I grabbed The mizzus from across the room and left. Good times at the diner, obviously, are back.

Let me say right off the Get-Go, I’m no spring chicken, although my behavior might lead folks to think I’m in late-stage adolescence. I never went through a mid-life crisis, never left the mizzus for a college intern, didn’t buy a sports car and never thought I should’ve gotten a career … or even a job. In other words, I feel young.

Or at least did until these past few months, and no, it wasn’t Covid that made my bones feel brittle and my mind sort of squishy, it was all the folks around me who have cancers and aneurisms and busted appendixes and chronic back pains and diabetes and bi-polar disorders. For the first time in my 71 years on this planet, folks I know are dying, some younger than me, most through no fault of their own, just bad luck, crummy genes, who knows? Something in the water, toxins in the house, crap in the air, don’t ask me, I’m not a doctor and you couldn’t pay me to play one on TV.

But … mortality sits perched on my shoulder these past few months, a black crow or a shadow of one, a dark daily companion right out of Poe, hard to shake, impossible to ignore.

I just put my 98 year old father into an assisted living complex. Hard to feel bad for a guy who’s about to hit the century mark … unless you’re one of those who want to live forever. All I can say is be careful what you wish for. Quality of life diminishes a bit for the Methuselahs of this world. Volunteer at one of these places and see if you still want extended longevity when you piss 200 times a day and you eat more meds than food. Me, I’ll pack it in when the check-out time arrives and the maid needs to change the bedding for the next guest.

Not to sound morose, mind you, just that we all have a Best By date and I’m okay with that. But dammit, these early birds leaving lately, well, it’s a phase of life, apparently, that’s here to stay. Maybe I should consider that sports car after all….

I got a message a few days ago from a friend’s wife that my buddy was in the hospital and not doing very well, maybe I ought to hustle down there before it was too late. So I dropped what I was doing, jumped in the jalopy and headed south to the hospital where I worked graveyard shift weekends for ten long years back in the 80’s. If you want to hop a time machine, this is one way to do it. That Pain Motel was small back when I started, had an ER with maybe 4 or 5 rooms that burned up in a fire about 1982, then had one with about 10 but now sports 70 or so. Big city hospital.

I parked in the multi-story garage, got my temperature checked at the front door, followed signage to one of the two 8 story towers that now engulf my old haunts, took an elevator up to what they euphemistically called the End of Life Wing, got my buddy’s room number at the nurses’ station and went to the end of the hall to see him. His son was coming out of his room and we introduced ourselves. He said he had to step out a few minutes, that Dad was in a coma, had been for the past two days, but go on in, he might wake up any moment. Disappointed that I got there too late to find my pal conscious, I went in and sat down. After a few long minutes where I never saw a muscle twitch or a nostril hair ruffle, I finally put my hand on his forehead to check for temperature.

Now, I’m no doctor and I don’t play one on TV, but I did work in that hospital for 10 years so when I tell you he was dead, you can be pretty sure he was. There were no monitors attached to see if it had gone flatline, but this was, after all, the End of Life Wing. I stayed awhile longer, said my piece just in case and headed out. His son was exiting the elevator as I was entering. ‘You leaving already?’ he asked. ‘Yeah, kind of a poor conversation,’ I said. ‘Stick around, he might wake up any minute.’

I’m not entirely immune to the idea of a miracle. Like I said, I worked there ten years and saw plenty of death and dying and okay, once in a blue moon someone come back to life in one of our Code Red drills in the ER. You get inured to pain, blood, horror, suffering and death working there. You see people who should have died but didn’t and you see folks who died when they shouldn’t have. My friend’s dying was no surprise, just a bit early and unannounced. I didn’t say to his kid his dad was gone and he ain’t coming back. Hope isn’t a fool’s errand, but then again, there always came a time when we stopped CPR and quit putting the paddles to the patient. The doc sometimes would ask us assembled in the room if anyone had any ideas. We never did. And no one ever said, let’s stick around, the patient might wake up any minute. Then again, the patient was never our father.