And A Little Les Caring Please

Let’s start today with something of great value. Trivia buffs all over the world will be baffled and you, yes you, will know the answer. Someday in the future when Mr. Ohh! has gained the popularity he so richly deserves, there will be a trivia contest. A questioned will be asked; How many species of spiders are there in Brazil? Well I don’t know that one, so I hope you aren’t eliminated at that moment. However, right after that question will be this one; What disease has Mr. Ohh! had since a child? Because you’re reading now, you’ll know the answer and be able to astound the rest of the world. The answer is, Kaudric’s Syndrome. To my loyal fans I promise to never mention this again, because it’s a lie designed to confuse Google and those who rely on it too much. The real answer is Asthma, and with the quarantine and all it’s getting to be a bit of a problem.

 Before you all go out and purchase life insurance policies on me naming yourselves as beneficiary, you should know, my asthma is very well controlled. I haven’t used my emergency inhaler in months, and my doctor told me I was as healthy as a man ten years younger when I had my last physical, ten years ago. So, this is probably a bad investment. If you’re still thinking of this, you should know, my state still has the death penalty.

All this being said I should probably get to the point. Like many of you, my family has been quarantined for a couple of months now. This sucks, but Oh Well. Now the bans are being lifted and we will be finding out just what the new normal will be. Wow, I better get through this quick, I’m sounding like a motivational blog. “So, let’s get back to it, and live. Rah Rah Rah” NOT!

The other day I went out for the first time. I wore a mask along with most other folks. Mine has Charlie Brown on it, and I saw a great tie-dye one. This is going to be the new fashion statement I can tell.  Anyway, after my excursion into the unknown I came home. With asthma it was a little difficult breathing through three layers of cloth for an hour. So, when I got home, I was a little short of breath.

My son, who greeted me at the door freaked. In the time it took for me to walk from the back door to my Barcalounger he asked me if I was all right, fifty-seven times. My daughter brought me water, ninety-six glasses. My other son had panic in his eyes as he looked me in the face and asked, “Dad, is the car paid for? My job’s not good enough to keep up any payments if something happens.” It’s nice to know you’re important to the those around you.

Yes, the house was on high alert, because I was a little slow. I will admit my chest was hurting a bit and decided I probably needed a bit more quarantine before going out again. Needless to say, the next few minutes were tense, but I rested. I took my inhaler, closed my eyes, found my center, and focused on my mantra, “I gotta pee, I gotta pee bad, I gotta pee really bad…” Hey, I was forced to drink a lot of water.

After a few minutes, things calmed down. I organized myself and my children moved slightly back to what they were doing. Then it happened. The worst thing you could think of. Okay maybe not the worst thing, I mean comedy was not banned from the world, nor were we invaded by green skinned aliens, nor did my clumsy uncle Fred decide to take up brain surgery, but it was a bad thing especially at that moment. I coughed. Not just a harrumph, clear your throat cough, but a true seven minute thirty-four second coughing jag. My son just got a stopwatch for his birthday, so he times everything. In fact, he wanted me to do it again to see if I could beat my time.

When that coughing stopped there was a moment of silence. Then the klaxons blared. We were at Defcon Five fast enough to make Norad’s head spin. It was all-hands-on deck. There are four phones in my house, and immediately all of them were calling out to various relatives and medical personal with a full scale Covid-19 alert. They all didn’t know if I actually had the virus, but they were making darn sure that if I did, the right people would know.

I don’t want to act like I don’t appreciate the things my family does for me. I really do. I just think it might have been better if someone would have asked me first. I mean, no one thought to call my doctor. They did in fact call my brother-in-law Roger, the gynecologist. I don’t want to be nasty, but I am Mr. Ohh!. I don’t have anything a gynecologist is interested in. The same goes for my step-sister June. She’s a neo-natal nurse. Yes, there was a time I was in a NICU, but that was a long, long, time ago.

One of the calls did go out to my aunt Sarah. I admit, you should call your family when something happens. However, just as some people set up prayer chains, aunt Sarah sets up worry chains. Sarah can out worry anyone on the planet, and when you add in her friends, they’ll have you dying a horrible death, dismembered, and buried in seven separate graves, in less than a half hour. Never tell her you have a hang-nail, she’ll call the paramedics. Hearing about my coughing fit, she bypassed all that and went straight to the mortician. We were all surprised when a station wagon from Flynn, Habersham, Waterwash, Guttenberg and sons showed up. I mean that guy was told to pick up a stiff and even as I walked up to him, he wouldn’t be convinced I wasn’t dead. Funeral people are a weird bunch. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

    What I’m trying to say is, “I coughed”. People with asthma do that. The thing is, with the news about Corona, we’re a little freaked. My family cares about me and acted accordingly. So, in this time of trouble I want to tell the world John Lennon was wrong. He said, “All we need is love.” Well with my family around I need a little less love. Dion Warwick sang, “What the world needs now is love, sweet love.” Wrong again! Hate your neighbor. Just for a few more months. Think about it, hate gives us everything we need. Hate will keep us six feet apart. Hate will make us glad to wear masks so we can make rude faces at each other. Hate will make us happy they put up barriers in the grocery store. And most importantly Hate will make my family leave me alone when I cough. Hate is the answer!

Well not really, but if you love mankind, the time has come to thoroughly dislike them.  

We Must Pay For Our Crimes

I opened my mail today. Not e-mail, this was an official looking envelope with a stamp and everything. The letter was from Greenpeace. I was going to ignore it. Greenpeace usually only sends letters for two reasons: Donations or they want you to help blockade an oil tanker in a rubber boat. Now I don’t know about you but if I ever get in front of a million-ton tanker I want something more substantial than a tiny rubber boat, something more like an aircraft carrier.

 Now their people tell you, that there will be a hundred rubber boats, but what if somebody gets a cold, or forgets? What if you’re the first boat there and the tanker squashes you before the others arrive? Or, worse what if you accidentally get the time or date wrong? There are just too many unknowns. As far as the donation envelope is concerned. I’m just not comfortable giving money to a group that advocates sending otherwise intelligent people out in tiny rafts to get run over by extra-large oil tankers. But hey, that’s just me.

Of course, Greenpeace also likes whales. I do like whales, but their fixation with rubber boats is still a problem. They really love to hop in a five-foot rubber boat and go paddling up to a fifty-foot unpredictable fish. In my mind that’s a bath toy! If that whale dunks its little plaything just once it’s time to say good-bye and get some more volunteers. Then again, it might be a Blue Whale. Those are supposed to be the gentlest creatures in the sea. However, it also happens to be a hundred-feet long. That’s bigger than the tankers. Now you’ve gone from bath toy to eye irritant. I don’t care how gentle they are, if you’ve got a rubber boat and two people in your eye, you’re bound to get a bit cross. But enough about Greenpeace’s mission, and back to the letter.

   As I said I was about to throw out the letter when I noticed the stamp. This was not processed by a machine and not a mass mailing. Then I saw the address was actually written. They were not sending this out to a whole bunch of idiots just a special one, me. I had to find out what they wanted, so I opened it up. Oh, I wish I hadn’t

 I was caught. They were coming to get me. Apparently, I had broken actual laws as well as several laws of nature. I was more than sorry, but as always, ignorance of the law is no excuse. Even now, I am writing this in a secret undisclosed location as I am running from the authorities for my heinous crimes. I am an accused deforresterator, no that’s not right, an unforester, no a deforester? Oh heck, I ripped up a whole bunch of trees, and that’s bad.

I didn’t mean to do it. It just kind of happened. You see my brother had been out of town for a long assignment, when he got a call from his landlord saying that the lawn and flower beds were a mess. He isn’t coming back soon so he called me and asked if I could go over there and clean it up.

He has two huge oaks, a tall-straight maple, and a beautiful dogwood tree in his yard and while he was gone, they all seeded.

As the grass was being mowed, I spent an entire morning just pulling tiny maple saplings out of his gravel driveway. My eighteen-year-old smart-aleck-son, who came not to help, but to deride me at every turn actually counted them as I was making a lunch run. He gladly informed me that I snuffed the life out of one-thousand-six-hundred-thirty-nine poor innocent maple saplings that had never done anything to hurt me. He wept for the senseless loss of life. I totally understood what he was saying though my emotions were not quite tears. Mine were more like throwing a hamburger at him like pitching a fast ball. No, I didn’t care about the stupid little maple trees. I tried to remind him that he mowed over far more plants than I pulled. He agreed he did trim the grass, but insisted he wasn’t a serial tree killer. I hate grown children.

The two of us raked the afternoon away until only the flowerbeds remained a total and complete mess. It was getting near dinner time so we left and I would have to come back. Besides he had already provided one-hundred percent of my recommended daily requirement of ridicule, so I didn’t need to hang out with him anymore.

As luck would have it, my son had to work the next day so I brought my daughter to help. She tends to our flower garden and knows what it is to pull weeds. Consequently, I felt she would do a better job. Well sort of. The first thing I did was to pull all the dead leaves out of one corner of one bed. I had a nice pile and went in the house for a glass of water. I went back out and the pile was gone. My princess had seen the pile and decided to use the leaves as natural mulch and threw them all back in the flower and shrub areas. She was so proud of herself for thinking of this, “And they will keep the weeds from coming up,” she told me.

It only took me a few minutes to burst her bubble and inform her that she threw the mulch on top of the weeds and while no more would seed the ones below would grow just fine. She was distraught, so it was up to me to me to get the leaves back into a pile. It took twice as long the second time.

We both went back to work pulling out unwanted plants. Lots of acorns had started growing and I could barely get all the blanketly-blank dogwood seeds out.

 Just after the first half hour, I was informed she could do no more. Apparently, if she continued, she would be disturbing a chipmunk nest, four toads, a family of mice, a mantis egg sac, and three large spiders. That was it I had had too much nature and it was not going to defeat my goals. I went over to where she was working and stepped on the spiders, threw the egg sac in the trash, chased away the toads, and buried the entrances to the mouse and chipmunk nests. My daughter still hasn’t spoken to me.

So that’s my story. I have slashed and burned over a thousand trees and attacked indigenous wildlife without concern or checking to see if it was endangered. I do wonder which of my children reported me to Greenpeace, but I guess it really doesn’t matter. What does matter is what I’m going to do with the rest of my sorted life. My first thought was going back and apologizing to my children, but after thinking a while, I wonder what it takes to volunteer for one of those tiny rubber boats.

After my family, a supertanker doesn’t look so tough.