Dear Sir or Madam

In an ideal world, we each might choose to make our life an adventure, or a romance, or a comedy, and in some instances, a tragedy or a farce or perhaps even a graphic novel. We choose our own lives and how to live them.

Each day is a fresh start, a blank page if you will, but remember:

Hardbound or paperback.
-bill kenny 

Respite

I'm thinking this morning about a couple of lines from an old James Taylor song I love so much, they're all the words I ever learned of it, "whenever I see your smiling face, I have to smile myself, Because I love you." 

As someone whose personality led me to social-distancing decades before it was life-sustaining or required and whose looks were vastly improved by donning a face mask, and who was encouraged by numerous a fitted brown paper bag for my entire head (eyeholes optional, apparently), I'm still delighted that we are a big step closer to what I recall of our lives pre-COVID-19, even if my memory of before is all I'll ever have again. 

I don't have to stand at the Marina where the Yantic and Shetucket Rivers meet to form Norwich Harbor and the Thames River to be reminded that no one steps into the same river twice because both they and the river have changed. Change is neither good nor bad; it just is. What we make of change and how we react to it is what gives it a positive or negative value.  

Remember where we were on April 20, 2020, when by executive order, Governor Ned Lamont directed the covering of mouths and noses (face masking) and distancing when we shared public spaces? Last week, responding to new guidance and recommendations from the Center for Disease Control, CDC, Lamot announced that, as of midnight today, he was ending those restrictions for fully vaccinated residents.   

In light of all those pandemic pounds I've added over the last thirteen or so months, I'm hoping he's not considering reinstating a requirement for trousers rather than sweatpants while out and about because I'm not sure anyone else is ready to see what that looks like in my case.

I think we who have reached this point should allow ourselves a long collective sigh of relief as we continue to make progress on the promise we made to one another to build ourselves, city, state, and nation back better than it was. We don't have to be great to start but we have to start to be great and today's as good a day to do that as we've had.

You don't need me to remind you we should not celebrate today as the conquest of COVID. There's too much disease and death still in our country and across the world to not continue to be steadfast and vigilant (and careful and protective) of ourselves and one another. 

So many of us are exhausted from the effort and exertion (emotional, intellectual, physical, financial, spiritual) it has taken to stay on the path we are own as we struggled to keep our own tiny boat of loved ones, friends, and family from being swamped by the crushing rush of COVID-19 and associated circumstances. 

Now is the moment for all of us to remember the mantra from the pandemic's earliest days, #AloneTogether, and realize while we were very much in our own boat, we also shared an ocean. Many of us know or are themselves, someone, who lost a person in this plague. Those of us who didn't need to keep you in our thoughts as you hold those departed in your hearts. 

Today, we should remember we can face anything and as of today, we can share our whole faces with one another. So if you see someone without a smile, give them one of yours.
Don't worry; they'll pass it on.
-bill kenny 

 

Double Jeopardy: I Take Beef for Three Hundred Please

Do you remember those Wendy's commercials with the old lady yelling?  

Fast forward about forty years. 

Obviously, I love this story but the why may be less obvious to you so I'll share. It's because of the specificity of the reporting: "The incident occurred Tuesday in the potato chip aisle of a Walmart in South Euclid, about 15 miles east of Cleveland." Flawless.

All I'm wondering is how do you want that blunt object, well done or medium-rare?
-bill kenny

The HOV Lane at the Express Checkout

We'll all seen people with sweatshirts or tee-shirts that say 'ask me about my grandchildren.' At some point in the past unknown to me, I have been fitted with one that says 'tell me about anything; I ABSOLUTELY don't mind.'

I was in the local grocery yesterday afternoon and boy howdy did we all start going back to the store after what we keep hoping is the all-clear on CoVID 19 or what? No reason to not mask or not practice social distancing. Just sayin'. 

Anyway, I wasn't in the self-check-out line. I only had one item so I thought the express cashier was a good idea. Little did I realize how wrong at so many levels I could be. I wound up (at a safe distance) behind a fellow carrying a lot of stuff in his bare hands, without the benefit of a shopping cart or a basket. 

I, too, have had that happen, where I get ambushed in the baked goods by freshly made oatmeal and raisin cookies while I have my hands already full (A reach exceeds grasp kind of moment). Have there been times I've parked the item I originally came into the store to get and instead bought the other found along the way stuff, then taken that all out to the car, and then returned to purchase the original item? Yes, guilty as charged. Would I benefit from groceries having a corral of carts somewhere in the middle of the store for when I finally realize I can't possibly carry everything I want to buy? Yes, please. 

Not sure what happened with this guy. He was pushing a bag of charcoal briquettes in front of him but did not seem to have any meat you would normally associate with grilling in his hands (and I don't care to imagine where else he might have put it). I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I've never been hailed and enticed by briquettes when I'm Lost in the Supermarket, so I didn't have the highest regard for this fellow traveler on the Big Blue Marble.

He seemed to be talking to one of the magazines in that rack above the gum and candy, the one with what looked like Mel Gibson (I think) and (maybe) his girlfriend as a thumbnail-sized photo on the cover. But he wasn't. As he stacked his stuff (and '12 Items or less' became a suggestion, exactly when? I missed that memo) as high as he could on the smallest possible amount of space on the conveyor belt, he turned around to face me and much to my surprise continued talking. 

There was a reasonable amount of frantic head nodding and eye-blinking, not a lot of eye contact (ALL on my part), which was of no help at all in understanding a single word of whatever he was, or wasn't, saying through his mask.

All the while the cashier was scanning his stuff, he had his back to her, continuing to address me. When she announced the total, I had to point him, using the traditional rapid head bob technique (and NO sudden movements) in her general direction so that he realized the ride was just about done. 

Of course, he wasn't prepared to pay and went through his pockets looking for cash, paper, and coins, before defaulting to a credit card, shuffling off with enough plastic bags (at ten cents a pop) to choke a landfill all the while jabbering away to anyone (else) who made eye contact with him.

When I handed the cashier my sole item, she remarked that she hadn't seen me 'in here with that guy before' as if I made it a practice to collect strangers in the night. I thought about telling her just that and then decided silence, in my case, was golden. Besides, if I dawdled, I'd be late for the cookout, and that would never do.
-bill kenny 

If It Takes Two to Tango

Did you ever hear the expression 'three on a match,' or 'two's company, three's a crowd, but four on the sidewalk is never allowed,' or was that just me? I'm just making conversation, pay me no mind.

Speaking of making conversation, how about variations of  'I wouldn't date you if you were the last person on earth' (I used to hear that one a lot in high school and college)? Yeah, that one stings a little. But here's a conversation stopper, "What's the minimum number of people needed to survive an apocalypse?"  

Be cool. There's no such thing as a wrong answer but remember, too, to show your work.
-bill kenny 

So Thick You'll Want to Use a Fork

Mission creep is what group dynamics folks describe what the rest of us might well call L.O.S.T, or Line Of Sight Tasking (I'm still not sure what we call group dynamics without making our moms cry). At some point in a project one of the very bright people who came up with the original idea realizes there's yet another function s/he forgot within the transaction and announces 'someone needs to do/be .....' The first person who makes eye contact inherits this new responsibility with absolutely no authority or means to accomplish it. Don't look up! Oops, thanks for playing.

It's part of our lives as individuals, as well, fretting in the various roles we each play in the drama. I had a plateful (and more) when it was just me, myself and I. Falling in love and getting married moved me, or us, to egoisme a deux and then we added our children to the mix. Solo, spouse, parent, while also being a child, sibling and wearing a half dozen other hats. You can't tell the players without a scorecard, especially when we each are covering numerous positions.

Is there a limit to all this multi-tasking, if that's what this actually is (I like to think that term is better applied to linked tasks vice totally different ones-like a product being both a floor polish and a dessert topping) and when do we reach a limit, how do we know? 

I remember the 'how to cook a frog in boiling water' urban legend (don't judge; I run with a colorful crowd, sehr bunte leute) that makes me suspect there's no 'top end.' If you place a frog in a pot of boiling water, the legend goes, it will simply hop back out; but, if you place the frog in the pot of water and then slowly and carefully raise the heat of the flame under the pot, the frog will never move until it has been cooked. I've often wondered if this is why so many of us have pruny fingers?
-bill kenny

Where's Weird Al?

I cannot carry a tune in a bucket and lack the ability and the discipline to ever have learned to play a musical instrument of any kind. I'm really good at turning up the volume on the radio in the car and singing at the top of my lungs, undeterred even when the singers get the words to their own songs wrong. 

I admire people who do play an instrument, though snob that I am, I tend to hold in somewhat lesser regard those whose instrument is the accordion. 

Thanks, Wolfgang Kreh!

It's very unfair of me (and Tom Waits as well, so I'm in good company) to be so persnickety about an instrument as complex and complicated as the accordion. After all, it produces music and as is well-known, music soothes the savage beast. And sometimes the not so savage.
-bill kenny