OLDnFEEBLE's Blog

A colleague stopped by my office today saying he'd decided to offer his girlfriend an engagement ring. This proposed marriage is not his first. One thing lead to another in our conversation and soon we were wondering what our ex's did with those symbols of mutual eternal love that didn't turn out to be so eternal after all....or maybe not even mutual.

Anyway, we didn't really know what happened to those rings that set us back a pretty penny. Did they hock them, have a nice pinky ring made or just toss them in the back of the dresser drawer?

So, I pose the question to all you ex's out there: Just what did you do with those rings? We're dying to know!

It’s lunchtime at the office and so there I am at the communal microwave heating up my chicken breast leftover from two days ago. Right by the microwave is a table with two women from some downstairs office eating their lunch.

They have been here before when I was warming up my lunch fare. The snippets of their conversation I’ve overheard revolve around the usual gab between the “I’ve-been-married-for-thirty-two-years” greyhead and the “I’ve-been-married-for-eighteen-months-ooooo-he’s-so-wo
nderful” blonde nitwit.

There’s the yammering about the way Uncle Fred beat up his wife, countered by the yarn about a second cousin on my mother’s side in TDC for attempted murder. (Gez, will this freakin’ chicken EVER get hot???) That’s followed by the HUGE sale Penny’s had this weekend and the encounter with the snotty clerk at the Antique Flatware and Dish Barn out on Highway 80.

Today’s BLEEP-for-tat swap took the “fish sticks”, if you will. First, they try to decide if the Mrs. Paul’s fish sticks come in the blue and white package or is it the “Gorton’s Fisherman”?

“Well, anyway, I like her’s better than his.”

GIVE ME A BREAK. Mrs. Paul is not a real person and neither is Gorton’s fisherman!!!

Bend over and kiss your fish sticks good-bye. There is no hope for the human race!

CAUTION: Repeating this true story outside a 200-mile radius of Dallas/Ft. Worth will result in blank stares.

In the early nineties I was "right-sized" and faced a career change in my late forties. One of the "keep body-and-soul-together" jobs I had during the transition was working for a local funeral home as a greeter, hearse driver, funeral service assistant and whatever. One bright, sunny Saturday afternoon I was working the front desk when the entrance door of the funeral home opened and an unaccompanied elderly woman stepped inside. Closing the door, she stood there for a moment, allowing her eyes to adjust to the sudden, sharp drop in light level.

I approached the woman, inquiring what assistance I might offer. She said she was there to pay her respects to an old acquaintance of hers who had passed away.

"Is the family here?" she inquired.

"No.", I responded. "They left a while ago and they didn't say when they'd be returning. Why don't I escort you into the visitation room, you can pay your respects, and when you're ready, come out here and sit with me and we'll see if the family returns."

In about five minutes, she returned to the front desk. I pulled up a chair for her right next to mine.

"Tell me, what did you do during your life?" I asked.

"Well," she responded, "I'm retired from the phone company. I've been retired for a number of years."

"What did you do for the phone company?"

"Oh, I started out as an operator right here in downtown Arlington before the war. (World War II) Of course, when I first started, being the newest operator, I was assigned the midnight shift. I remember getting to work at 11 PM, climbing the stairs to the room where the operators worked and then following the swing shift operators down the stairs and locking the door behind them as they left. Returning upstairs, I was the only operator on duty in Arlington, Texas until the next morning!"

"You must have some stories to tell", I responded.

"Oh, yes. One night - I'd been with the company just a few months - a call came in around two in the morning. The man on the other end of the line said, 'Connect me to the middle of the ocean.' Well, he was surely drunk, I thought. He was slurring his words and I didn't understand him."

"'I'm sorry, sir. Would you repeat that?', I said. 'Connect me to the middle of the ocean,' the man said, again, somewhat belligerently."

"Well, I was so flustered. I called my supervisor, an operator in Dallas. 'I've got a man on the phone who wants to be connected to the 'middle of the ocean.' He must be drunk.' I said, 'Patch him through to me and I'll see if I can help him.' the supervisor said."

"What happened?" I asked.

"Well, a few hours later, the supervisor called back. 'You remember that man who wanted you to connect him to the 'middle of the ocean'? she asked."

"'Yes', I responded."

"'He wanted you to connect him to MIDLOTHIAN!'"

Sam, my beloved retriever, keeps me honest with my daily walks. Once in the morning, usually before 6AM, and once in the evening, just as the sun is going down.

Now, Billy Boy (the little hell-hole mutt) doesn’t get to go on these walks. Anyway, opening the garage door sets Sam's tail to wagging as he looks around to see who might be out. Sometimes, the girlie dog down the street has escaped her backyard confines and sometimes, there's that gray, quick-footed coyote who lives in the woods behind Sam's house.

Soon, we're entering the retirement village. Now, there's a black and white kitty-cat lurking in the parking lot. (God, this is fun!) Very often, there's an old man who's got his spastic Scottie outside. If the old man sees us coming before his spastic Scottie - he quickly gathers up his newspaper and ushers the spastic Scottie inside. But (and here's the good part), if the spastic Scottie sees Sam first, the overweight (fed well and obviously never exercised) brat begins barking his tiny-head-attached-to-a-big-fat body off. Suddenly, the old man's wife begins screaming at the old man to gather up his newspaper and get the big, fat Scottie inside so as not to bring on a canine coronary.

We get to the end of the road and begin the journey back beside the woods. (Sam, ya gotta watch out for the broken beer bottles the human idiots toss out of their speeding cars along this stretch.) Sam keeps my pace, pausing here and there (always exactly the same places) to mark his superiority on this trail.

Soon, we're back to the garage. Billy Boy asks where we were. and the day begins, or the day soon ends. Whatever...Sam's day is complete. Bedtime, doggies!

There's only one thing Sam loves more than taking his daily walks - chasing his "bull". (For the uninitiated with Sam-speak, a "bull" is known in English as "ball".) Sam can easily stuff three tennis bulls in his mouth and occasionally even four. But, more about this later.