Cantankerously Yours
“You’re Messing up my Hair!” and other amusing priorities.
By Wendell Abern
Dear Readers,
If I’ve learned nothing else over the past 82 years, it’s that everyone has his or her own idea of what matters, what really matters, what is critical, and what is a genuine, Number One priority.
I often find the latter quite humorous.
1 – Hair.
This incident actually happened to the mother of one of my bridge opponents.
“My dad took my mom to Las Vegas for their 25th Anniversary,” she told my partner and me before we started playing. “They weren’t big gamblers, but they loved to play the slot machines.
“My mom was at one machine, my dad at one right next to her when my mom hit a jackpot. A really big jackpot … $650,000! They were whooping and hollering and others were joining in and bells were ringing and sirens were howling when my dad reached over to give my mom a big hug and she said, ‘Stop! You’re messing up my hair!’”
If it had been my wife, she would have let me dye her hair green.
2 – Bagels.
When I lived in Chicago, I played tennis every Sunday morning with a bunch of old friends. We played at a big indoor tennis club about 20 minutes from home.
One of my pals, Jerry, had just bought a new Cadillac.
(Jerry lived in the northern suburbs of Chicago and his combination wholesale-retail operation in the southern suburbs represented a 120-mile round trip drive … which he made every day, six days a week, for more than 50 years. “When you spend two to three hours a day in your car,” he used to say, “You don’t drive a pick-up truck.”)
Anyway, we all spent about five minutes admiring Jerry’s new Caddy before going in to play tennis. When we came out an hour later, his car was gone. The empty space next to my car stunned us.
“Jer,” I said, “it’s gone! Someone stole your new car!”
“Damn!” he said. “And I had just bought two dozen fresh bagels at Max and Bennie’s!”
A new Coupe de Ville, and bagels he worries about yet.
The happy ending: the police found his car about ten miles away. Some kids had stolen it, apparently just for the joyriding kicks of it. And for the bagels, which they had devoured.
3 – Bedrooms, living rooms and lawn mowers.
My brother and I spent the entire summer of 1948 with our grandmother in Los Angeles. A great treat for us. We’d never been in California.
While there, we went to meet our Aunt Bertha (our father’s sister) for the first time. A widow, Aunt Bertha’s sons, our cousins Larry and Norman, were about our age, juniors and seniors in high school.
“C’mon,” Norman said, “we’ll show you our bedroom.”
They took us to the garage.
“Your bedroom’s in the garage?” my brother asked, staring at the two cots spread where a car should be.
“Yeah,” Larry said, “ma thinks we’re too messy. She was always yelling at us. So we suggested moving out here. Now everyone’s happy.”
Then they took us to see the rest of the house. When we came to the entrance to the living room, Larry and Norman stopped. I peered in: immaculate; pristine carpeting; furniture covered in plastic. I started to walk in when Larry grabbed my arm.
“We don’t go in the living room,” he said.
“I’ve only been in there twice,” Norman said. “Ma likes to keep it really clean in case somebody drops by.”
A few weeks later, my brother had one of his migraines, so I went to visit Larry and Norman. They were out running errands, but Aunt Bertha assured me they’d be back shortly. I spied the lawn mower in the middle of the front yard. She said they’d been in the middle of cutting her lawn when she sent them out to the store. I volunteered to take over until they came back. Aunt Bertha thought that was just the most beautiful, Midwestern-ish gesture she’d ever heard and rewarded me with a very wet kiss.
I was dutifully mowing when, ten minutes later, Aunt Bertha came running out of the house yelling, “Help! Help, quick! There’s a fire in the kitchen!”
I dropped the lawn mower and tore up the front stairs when Aunt Bertha yelled, “No, not through the living room!”
I braked and raced around to the back of the house. One of the window curtains had caught fire, and I beat it out with a dish towel.
Since then, I have often wondered what would have happened if I had trampled through that living room. One never knows. Everyone has priorities. I wonder if Aunt Bertha would have called the police.
4 – Obscenities.
I have had to clean up this anecdote, and I’m sorry to say it loses some of its punch without foul words. However, this really happened to a young friend of mine, and I have decided the sanitized version will still garner some chuckles.
I worked in advertising agencies for more than 50 years; many years ago, Michael, one of my best writers, walked into work looking like his young kids had kept him up all night. He said he’d been up for hours; he’d gotten an obscene phone call at four in the morning and hadn’t gone back to sleep.
I said, “You mean your wife got an obscene phone call.”
“No, I did! I pick up the phone and hear this heavy breathing. Then I hear this deep voice saying, ‘Uh-h, uh-h, can I come and up and see you?’ And I said, ‘No, it’s may I? May I come up and see you. And no, you may not.’ Then I hung up.”
Pretty fast thinking, I thought. But that’s what happens when your priority for proper grammar pre-empts your sleeping needs.
Cantankerously yours,
Wendell Abern
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Wendell Abern can be reached at [email protected].