Good Night

I was happily chomping away on my ham and Swiss on whole wheat with a slice of raw onion and mayo, when all of a sudden, I realized I had the sandwich in my left hand. I am a very right handed guy. I have often been glad that I am a very right handed guy. I started courting my Lady Wonder Wench in the days and nights of mini-skirts. Sometimes when I was driving, and she was in the seat next to me her left leg sometimes rewarded my right hand very nicely. So nicely that once I almost went off the road. It wasn't my fault.

Wiping the "wow was that ever nice remembering that" smile off my face, I started thinking why is a right handed guy eating a sandwich with his left hand? When I eat from a plate, I always use my fork with my right hand. I can't use a fork with my left hand. I've tried. So how come my sandwich always lands up in my left hand? And why did that happen automatically. Who made that decision? Lots of things happen automatically to me. And I think to you too. You usually don't decide to take a breath, and you don't think left, right, left, right when you're walking.

And who's doing stuff in your head while you're talking? Most of the time you don't think about exactly what the next word is going to be. Unless you're trying to explain why your hand has gotten caught in some cookie jar, or on some lady's leg where it didn't belong. There's an idea kicking around between your ears, but the exact words you use are automatic. Who's doing that if you're not? I think it's your Who, that's who.

I'm sitting here in my big, comfortable, black leather pappa chair in my living room, in total shock. My Lady Wonder Wench just said the R word to me again. I think I'd better stand up for a moment, just to prove I still can. There. That's better. I knew I could do it. As I have told you before, I know that as a true Louie-Louie Generation gentleman, my years of having young lovelies whispering the word hunk behind my back...in lustful awe...may well be all the way back in my rear view mirror. Come to think about it, there are now young lovelies...and not so young ones... cruel ones...who might possibly say my rear view simply isn't really worth viewing at all anymore. Retire. In my book Staying Happy Healthy And Hot, Big Louie, the Chief Mustard Cutter of the Louie Louie Generation says, "You know you're ready to retire when work is less fun and fun is more work." I'm not there yet.

My Lady Wonder Wench and I were at the diner today, and as usual we were kidding around with our waitress...I refuse to say waitperson. There is no gender confusion going on here, Stacey is definitely a pretty young woman.

As I have explained in my book, Staying Happy Healthy And Hot, I like waitresses and I have a lot of respect for what they do. It's a tough job, and whenever we can, my Lady and I like to try to give Stacey and the other waitresses we know a little chuckle to take their minds off their aching feet.

Stacy likes to give as good as she gets. So as I was explaining to her that I like a little rice pudding under my pile of whipped cream, she gave me one of those looks that said, "From hunk to hulk in one whipped cream moment." So I quickly explained that I'm not really getting fat, I'm simply developing a protective covering for my rock hard abs.

Yesterday, my friend and next door neighbor Randy and I were discussing the fact that our kids are now driving cars, and we're riding our exercise bikes. Randy is a lot younger than I am, but we're both members of the Louie Louie Generation. So we started trying to figure out..."what is the subtle difference between growing older, and getting old"? So we checked out how Big Louie sees it in my book "Staying Happy Healthy And Hot." Getting old is when you sink your teeth into a steak, and they stay there. Your knees buckle, but your belt won't. You're sitting in your rocking chair, but you can't make it go. You get winded playing chess. That's getting old.

But getting older, can actually be a little fun. Big Louie says "Trickery and deceit usually defeats youth and skill. It's like the baseball pitcher who smiled as the batters ducked when he threw his 100 mile an hour fastball a little inside a few years ago. And now, even though the radar gun is showing only around 89, the smile is still there as he watches the batters screw themselves into the dirt swinging at his nice new slow slider."

I've been sitting here in my big, manly, black leather poppa chair in my living room, watching ESPN. They just showed a video of New York Mets pitcher Matt Harvey on one of the rare times he got shelled in the third inning, and Terry Collins, the manager came out, took the ball, and sent him to the showers. Matt's looking down, and walking sadly off the field.

Pitchers and other professional athletes do not like to be sent to the showers. I have always loved taking a shower. I was only an amateur athlete. I was a pretty successful competitive swimmer in school...I did the butterfly. That's a particularly painful kind of swimming stroke that requires you to pull your arms out of their sockets and up over your head over and over again for at least 100 yards. Although the whole competition was done in the water, I loved taking a shower after it.

For one thing it kept the pool's chlorine from eating me alive. And for another thing, I just loved taking a shower. I take a shower every night. I love taking showers. In fact I am hoping to take my favorite kind of shower tonight. I'll tell you about that later. I always had to take a bath when I was a little kid. I wasn't allowed to take a shower till I was around 7. It was kind of a rite of pre-puberty passage. I guess that's why taking a shower...even now makes me feel like a grown up. I realize that's an immature reaction, but I am an immature grown up, so it's ok.

Big Louie has an important warning about growing up in my book Staying Happy Healthy And Hot. He says, "You can't help growing up, but you do NOT have to mature, so don't. Maturity is a trap." If you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you realize that I have carefully followed Louie's warning all my life.

Where the heck did the summer go? The lazy, crazy, hazy days of Summer...and the under the boardwalk nights, watching the fireworks...and making some of our own...and the most beautiful girls in the world in their summer dresses...and walking in the sand. There's still some time left, but as Big Louie, his own bad self, the Chief Mustard Cutter of the Louie-Louie Generation always says: "Life is like a giant roll of toilet paper. The closer it gets to the end the faster it goes." Time to grab a share of the Summer love you've got coming to you...it's going by pretty fast.

Summer is a woman. Hot, sexy, wild, hazy, soft, flashy, and dangerous when wet. She can be full of stings and bites...but she's also endlessly beautiful, satin smooth, fragrant, sweaty, and instantly changeable. But what a time to be alive. Summer has stars in her eyes, her song is thunder, and crickets and surf. She wears flowers and newly cut grass for her perfume. And her nights sweat with flexing, moonlit naked passion. Summer is such a time to be alive. Summer is a woman...warm and wet in a gentle September rain.

I love sitting here in this big, comfortable, manly, black leather poppa chair. It's in my living room. In my house. Which is on a road where the town guys just put a new sign. It is a sign that has struck terror into the hearts of everybody in the neighborhood. Especially people who have to get to work, and people who tend to have weak bladders. The sign says, "Detour".

Getting where you want to go is tough enough these days. As it says in my book, Staying Happy Healthy And Hot: "Out on the road, you've got to compete with people driving at speeds ranging from sonic boom to car wash—and all you want to do is get to work. You've got to be cunning to survive.

Of course, Big Louie, his own bad self, has some advice for surviving in today's traffic. For example, Louie says, "Never pass a driver who's on a cell phone. Neither that driver nor you have any control in that situation. Wait till he creams the truck ahead of him, then pass briskly on whichever side has less debris."

A funny thing happened to me on the way to this podcast. Actually a bunch of funny things happened this week. Not big belly laugh things, just funny stuff. My Lady Wonder Wench and I were at our favorite diner yesterday, and we both had club sandwiches. One of the things we like about that diner is that you never go away hungry. These two sandwiches came out...and they had to be about four or five inches thick. I have a pretty big mouth, so it wasn't a huge problem for me, but My Lady Wonder Wench has a more...lady like mouth. She also has manners. Especially table manners.

So I was watching to see what she was going to do with this four course meal between some slices of bread. What she did...and I'll bet lots of ladies do this...is...she tilted the sandwich up, and bit off the lower part of the sandwich first. And then, just as she was about to bite the top part of the sandwich, the voices in my head all said..."Hey...she's eating the part that she just stuck up in her nose." One of those voices must have said that so loud that she heard it. She had a typical Wonder Wenchy reply. She said "You must have been a gifted child, because your mother certainly wouldn't have paid for you."

I was sitting here in my big, manly, comfortable, black leather poppa chair in the living room trying to think of what happened in my life this week that you might find interesting, and some of the voices in my head said, "Nothing happened this week." Then I remembered hearing an old Coca Cola jingle on the radio that said, "Nothing beats the taste of Coke," and all the voices in my head said, "Wow..."nothing" must be powerful stuff. They're telling me it even beats the taste of Coke."

Think about it. Sometimes when I've done something really dumb, and my Lady Wonder Wench gets very quiet...for a long time...I ask her, "What's the matter" she says, "Nothing." And all the voices in my head get together in four part harmony and sing a line from the Star Spangled Banner. The one about "The rockets red glare, and the bombs bursting in air." That "Nothing" stuff is pretty powerful.