More Fun with Twins!

Way back in the twentieth century we had these twins at our school. One flunked fourth grade, so they got separated by a grade. Too bad, but it was a gutsy move by the teacher and principal I guess. The kids weren’t identical. If they had been identical, I wonder if they would have flunked the kid…

On a lighter note, do you want to have some fun with twins? When you see a twin you know with another person, someone obviously not his or her twin, say this: “You two used to look so much alike. Can’t say I see that so much anymore.” This will bring laughter every time, I guarantee it… 

I used to know these twin sisters who did everything together. They were obnoxiously inseparable. They even worked together. And they were obviously twins. Identical. My friend introduced himself to them once at a party. His line was something like, “Hey, are you two cousins or something?” Brilliant! I think he may have ended up on a double date of some sort…

I bet twins hate it when a double play in baseball is referred to as a “twin killing”. C’mon, we all say it…

If you go to a double feature at a Twinplex do you get to see four movies?

  

Do you think twins go to buffets wearing identical clothing, and one hides in the bathroom while the other eats and vice versa? I’ve never seen it but I bet it happens all the time. If they get caught, which one serves time? Can they rotate that too?

Large Print Uncle Tommy

The doctor always says you gotta show up like 20 minutes before your appointment. I always kind of thought that was so you could read an article or two out of the Guidepost Magazine in the waiting room and thereby get yourself in the right frame of mind in case the doctor found out you had lupus or something. That magazine was always there – you could count on it. But now all of a sudden it’s not there anymore. Like prayer from the public schools, it’s gone. How do we get it back? Should I blame Obamacare?

I did find Guidepost Magazine recently at a coffee shop but it was the large print version. The magazine had the same size cover as the regular print version and it didn’t appear to be any thicker. So, if there’s way less words per page due to the large print, how do they squeeze in all the words? Are they leaving out the end of the stories? Using shorter words? And the pictures didn’t seem to be any bigger. What’s up with that? If the words are bigger, shouldn’t the pictures be bigger?

We’re working on a large print version of Uncle Tommy’s Select Thoughts. And you may see it in your doctor’s waiting room next time you’re there for a checkup. After all, people need to be in the right frame of mind.

Sing Shift

It’s really difficult for me going to those restaurants where the crew comes out and sings Happy Birthday to you. I know it’s hard to find good help, but, these people tend to be pretty bad singers. And, as a musically inclined person, that is a difficult listen for me. These people obviously are not asked to sing during their job interview, and yet I, the paying customer, am supposed to listen to them sing (poorly). Meanwhile, nobody else in the restaurant is getting served, ‘cause I’ve got the whole crew around my table singing to me. So, why limit this concept to bad singing? Let’s expand it to bad dancing or maybe add some bad dinner theater. Bring in a guy who can’t do magic tricks too. Yeah. The only people winning in this scenario are people who enjoy bad singing (“Oh, they’re good kids”). 

I have taken the necessary step of asking about the quality of the singing of the crew when I make a reservation. (“How many of your wait staff are out of work actors?”) Even if we don’t have a birthday in our group, I tend to ask because I’m likely to hear them sing to some other table. And let’s face it, bad singing can ruin a meal. Maybe the answer here is to segregate the restaurants like we used to do with smoking thereby creating a designated bad singing area. Sounds like a start.

 

Seasoned Greetings

When I grew up, times were simpler. There were only like seven men’s names. Today it’s a lot more complicated trying to remember names. Have you ever seen someone approaching you in a store who you kind of know and as they draw closer they greet you by name but then you can’t think of his or her name? That’s tough. You lose confidence in your ability to think, and it does not help you socially. Sometimes I can remember his or her name in the nick of time (especially if his name is Nick) but it doesn’t always happen. When you find yourself not remembering, you need to take action. First, continue to try to think of his or her name while he or she talks. Of course, you won’t be listening to anything he or she says at that point. When you do remember the name, try to use it in the conversation, but do not save it until the end. An ending of, “See you at the club, Lance” is not going to cut it, because that person will realize you didn’t know their name at the beginning of the conversation and you’ll leave them with that parting thought. Your best bet under this scenario is to try to wedge it in the middle somewhere. Studies show that there is still an 80% chance that she or he knows that you did not know his or her name, because people just don’t talk to people by name like that in the middle of a conversation.

The other option (and the one I like) is, as they draw closer to you, to do the fake telephone call answer. Taking this “call” while giving a cute wave will allow you the extra time to come up with their name (perhaps using a “lifeline” call!), thereby eliminating the awkward, no-name greeting. Then, you can catch them in the dairy aisle and greet them by name.      

Open Carry

I was downtown yesterday with my family. We stopped for a fro-yo (that’s frozen yogurt to those of you not so hip) and while we were in the shop, an “open carry” protest march went by on the sidewalk. A couple of mothers in the shop sheltered their young children from seeing the parade. I was confused, ‘cause I thought “open carry” meant walking around with open alcohol containers.  But these folks in the march were walking with open guns. Not all of the folks in the parade had guns though. I couldn’t tell if the people without guns were guys who maybe just wanted to support the guys with guns, or maybe they thought it was a walk to support the open carry of alcohol. Maybe there was a typo on their leaflet and it read “open gin” instead of “open gun”. Well, I was always taught that mixing alcohol and guns was a bad combination but this all seemed pretty harmless.

But for those of you thinking of going to one of these with your families for a nice activity, I will fill you in: in this parade there were no marching bands, no batons; no twirling of the guns, no politicians, no grand marshal and nobody threw candy to us. And the only floats were the ones there in the yogurt shop. How do these people expect me to join their cause if they don’t throw candy?

Cold Call

Remember those pay phones you could drive up to? Those cold, filthy, disgusting, disease-riddled phones out in the dark corner of the carry-out parking lot? You could barely get close enough with your car to reach the phone, and if you were able to park close enough, the metal cord would swoop down and scratch the side of your car. Yeah, those days were fun.  And you’d drop your quarter ‘cause you couldn’t quite reach the coin slot on the phone, but then you couldn’t get out of your car to get it ‘cause you parked so close to the phone. And it was your last quarter. And in the winter those phones were cold and the push buttons froze up. That phone was really cold. I often wondered if the cold phone would stick to my ear like my tongue sticks to stuff outside in the winter. 

When cell phones first came out in the 80’s, I had this co-worker who would call people and say he was calling from his car to try to impress them, but he was really calling from a pay phone that he parked really close to and the phone reached to his car. So he was sort of telling the truth. Funny guy.