The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Merry Christmas, everybody! Or, if that seems politically incorrect, happy holidays! Sure don’t want more war on Christmas in these hyper-partisan times, right? Well, it’s been a long year what with the Covid Plague still with us and the tariff inflation but as usual us Daddles have adapted! For the most part this has been a fine year for the Daddle family and as always we like to share our good news with everyone. Wife Linda’s depression has pretty much been manageable with the help of prescription pharmaceuticals. Thank god for the drug companies, eh? She spends a lot of time on the internet, but then, don’t we all? Sometimes I think she’s looking at the same thing for hours on end but I’m just happy she’s found something to do instead of stay in her room crying.

Daughter Brenda is enrolled in the local community college for studies in Business Accounting. She realized her degree in English Renaissance History wasn’t going to pay the rent, even though England seems to be hurtling back to those merry olde times, ha ha. That year flipping burgers at Burger King convinced her to get a trade with something that might pay more than minimum wage. Kids, they never listen to you when you give advice, do they?

Son #1 Jeremiah has slipped a few times following his Narcotics Anonymous program last year but he’s back once more in the basement where we set up an apartment and keep a surveillance camera so we can help him maintain his sobriety. With the Covid Lockdown Linda and I figure this is for his own good in more ways than one. Lately Jerry never leaves the room and no one visits. He doesn’t have much to say at meals with us, but then, he never really did before.

Son # 2 left that religious commune he joined down in Santa Cruz. Brian refused to talk to me after my little meltdown with the ‘guru’ in charge that time we drove down there to see him and the blankety blank geek wouldn’t let us past the guard gate. Apparently, judging by his blogsite, Brian’s a Qanon believer now. I guess you have to believe in something. Nobody said raising kids would be easy, but good god almighty, these boys could try a saint’s patience. Linda says it’s just a phase but that’s what she said about the All Seeing Commune of the Holy Waters too. That worked out swell, didn’t it? Oh, I know, I should be glad Brian found conspiracy theories and not drugs, right?

Me, I’m doing okay. We didn’t travel much this year on account of Covid still a threat and the inflationary costs so it looks like we won’t again this year. Linda is afraid of contaminated hotel rooms and nothing I can say will convince her otherwise. Maybe if she agreed to get her vaccinations, she’d feel more at ease. She says she doesn’t want to infect Jeremiah bringing back the virus from some Motel 6. I say whoa, what about me? But she knows I’m only kidding. I took that horse dewormer so I’m pretty much protected. Jerry, well, the last thing we want Jerry to see is another syringe.

So … hope all you out there are doing as well as us Daddles! Merry Ho Ho!
Love, Linda, Jerry and Skeeter

You readers of the Crab Cracker, our local advertising and literary journal, must surely have felt my discomfort last week when the Cracker issued its apology for offending you readers with a humor column by fellow satirist Tim Jones’s View from the Bleachers. Surely I would be hauled in next and forced to confess my sarcastic crimes. Tim had upset some of you with his reference to the starving kids in Africa who he had planned to help with his Powerball winnings — well, after he’d bought a few Picassos and a jet and some other items most of us would purchase without one iota of thought for the poor or the struggling or the … Okay, better not get me going.

Let me say straight up. Tim is a very funny guy. You meet him, you’ll realize he’s a nice guy too. He didn’t win the Powerball lottery, but you know what, he’d already sponsored a couple of kids in Africa for seven years through World Vision. You or me sponsor any? No? Didn’t think so. I’ve read and re-read his article to see if maybe there was a hint of something dark and sinister lurking under the real point, which is that we lottery fantasists are narcissistic materialists. Maybe, just maybe, this is the rub with the folks who missed Tim’s sarcasm. (Only kidding!)

We live in a world these days that’s mostly lost its sense of humor. Any perceived offense, fire away on Facebook, write a letter to the editor, shoot out a bad review. I’m not completely against political correctness, but for the luvva Bob Hope, not every grievance is punishable by banishment. If it were, we’d put an end to these embarrassing GOP debates. (Only kidding, of course.) I don’t know who’s amputating funny bones in the dead of night, but they’ve gone missing. I checked with my insurance company and discovered to my horror they do not cover funny bone repair or replacement. So blame Obamacare!! (Only kidding, of course.)

But before I end up giving a lame lecture about what makes comedy funny, let me just apologize ahead of time for some of my up-coming so-called humor sketches in case I step on any toes. (Only kidding, trust me….) For those with sensitive elbows maybe just stick to the ‘word of the day’ column a few doors down. Won’t make you laugh, but I’m betting that hasn’t happened in a very long time. (Oh stop, I’m only pulling your leg….)

I got a pile of friends who claim to be envious of my so-called Lifestyle. Get up when I want, work for myself, do what I feel like doing, live off the calendar and my wits and off the beaten path. Who wouldn’t like that? Unless we factor in the poverty, the hand-to-mouth, the lack of pensions or retirement. There’s a reason hippies became extinct and it has nothing to do with an asteroid slamming Earth.

As the mizzus will gladly attest, I took this road — this choice? — because I don’t play well with others. And certainly not managers, supervisors or most any other bosses. I didn’t like the city. I didn’t like most jobs. Okay, all jobs, any jobs. And since poverty never scared me, the Path of Least Resistance led to here, a place remote and cheap, and not surprisingly, a backwash without much opportunity for employment.

Perfect! All I had to do was learn a few skills. Carpentry, plumbing, electrical, truck repair, subsistence living. Education — it never really ends. Something they neglect to teach most of us in school. The School of Hard Knocks doesn’t need a post-graduate program. Tuition’s not exactly free, but it’s reasonable.

Folks who claim to be envious of my lifestyle really aren’t. They didn’t have the appropriate skill sets. If they did, retirement would be easy for them, a hippie vibe with a fat income guaranteed. Who could ask for more? But … like I always say, it takes more than a little while to learn bohemianism. And if you’ve spent most of your life paying for insurance policies to protect yourself from the vagaries of existence, chances are it’s too late to become a latter day beatnik. Don’t feel bad, you’re probably the Lucky Ones.

The county just got the results in for their survey locating the homeless on Camano. Turns out they didn’t find any. None. Zero. Zilch. I guess they went from gate to gate in the gated communities, maybe looked behind the forsythia, then moved on. Nobody came down to the South End, that’s for sure.

Turns out Island County sent teams into the hinterlands to search out the homeless. Well, except not Camano Island. The housing resource coordinator was quoted in the Gazette, “We just didn’t have the time. But next year we hope to get more of a head start.” They did manage to send out some fliers on the transit buses asking the homeless, if they were indeed out there, if they would respond. No responses were forthcoming. The coordinator speculated that maybe the homeless just didn’t want to be identified as the homeless. You know, IF there were any homeless.

I suppose this could be a new paradigm for social services in America if Washington DC gets wind of this. Poverty? Post some placards on telephones asking the poor if they’re poor. Call us, we want to help. You a veteran not getting medical assistance? We put some fliers on the buses in your town. You maybe didn’t see them? You out of work, chronically unemployed? We posted a notice on Facebook. Maybe you need to buy a computer, get some DSL service, reach out to us. We want to help….

I ran a poll myself this week. Posted a notice on my blogsite asking anyone in county government if they were intelligent enough to be holding office. If so, please call in to southendbrainresearch.com and answer the brief questionnaire. Take about half a minute, just want to do a head count of the bright ones…. Surprisingly, nobody responded. All I can say, if I can use the county’s own methodology, there’s no intelligence over there in Whidbey Island government. Course, maybe they’re embarrassed to identify themselves as smart. Or they’re just being modest.

Next year we’ll maybe have some time to organize IQ search parties. This year we were just a little too busy. In the meantime hopefully all the homeless over here will find decent housing. You know, the folks who don’t exist here in paradise.

Hank ‘the Tank’ Amundsen is standing up next to his barstool taking a swing for the outfield wall. “My gawd,’ he was gushing, “my gawd, it was something to see. That kid of mine is going to the majors, you guyz heard it first.” Pete, two stools down, sipped affably at his pint of IPA and said quietly, “I think you told us this last week, Tank.” Jerry nodded from a table full of empty pints he and the Flatheads had killed during the first hour of happy hour, ready for the second. “I believe Pete’s correct, Tank, but he forgot to mention the week before and last month and I think, check me on this Pete, I think you told us Jimmy was going Pro last year.”

“Aw, guys, I’m just a proud papa, is all. You can’t blame me, the kid is great. You can see it in his swing he’s got plenty of homers coming up. Practically got a contract signed. The scouts probably already got eyes trained on him.”

Little Jimmy, if he declared eligibility at this point, would never graduate Middle School. Tank has been sending him to camps, buying gear, tossing balls, all the stuff a Tiger Woods training dad would do since the kid was two and a half. If Jimmy had hoped for a normal childhood of bikes and X-box, it wasn’t going to happen. If Tank wasn’t hauling him and his bats, gloves and balls to tournaments and camps, he was out back of his shack where he’d set up a batting cage, firing curve balls to the poor kid, yelling at him when he whiffed, hollering in joy when he blasted one into the nettles past the swingset that Jimmy never got to use. His sister, pretty much ignored by Tank, got the swing pretty much to herself.

I don’t know what happens to all the Jimmys whose alpha dads drove them to be the best soccer player, baseball star, football hero or basketball idol, whose only dream was to go pro, make the majors, play ten years or less, then retire wealthy as Michael Jordan. I suspect they become sad, depressed, broken adults. Maybe they put their kids through the same nightmare gauntlet.

I had a buddy in high school who won state champ in swimming. When I saw him after we’d trudged off to different colleges, I asked him if he was still training for the Olympics. “I quit,” he said. When I asked why, he answered, “I spent half my life in a chlorine pool, before school, after school. All so I could compete in the Olympics, probably never make it, then wonder all my damn life why I didn’t do something else. I’m going to do something else.”

I suspect there are mostly losers out there. If we taught em to love the game, if we taught em to enjoy their teammates, if we taught em that sports were fun more than a path to riches, maybe we’d have a lot more winners. Jimmy, I suspect, isn’t going to be a winner. And his dad is going to take it a lot harder than Jimmy.