People People

Do you ever meet people who claim they don’t like people?  I’ve known a guy for years who describes himself that way. To each his own, I guess. So last week, I met another guy who described himself as “not liking people”.  I naturally told this guy something like, “You need to meet this guy I know, ‘cause he doesn’t like people either”. Well, as soon as I said that, I felt pretty dumb, ‘cause, well, if they really don’t like people, they’re not going to like each other, even though they may have a lot in common. 

I walked away feeling pretty foolish. I don’t think the guy likes me.

$3.00 Car Wash

My car’s been kind of grimy, so when I saw a sign yesterday for a $3.00 car wash I turned in. That seemed too good to be true. I had never seen a car wash that cheap, so yeah, I had some questions:

•          Was this going to be a sponge bath?
•          Would they use soap?
•          If they used soap would I get a rinse?
•          Would I get a cream rinse?
•          Would I get stuck in the tube? (I always feared that as a child.)
•          Is there a track thing or do you just drive slowly through it?

Well, I went through it. For $3.00 you get a basic wash – they put you on this Henry Ford era assembly line of a track thing and basically it’s the soap, rinse and dry thing, and it actually happened in that order. Not bad for $3.00. They don’t do the interior, but the guy said you can go through the tube with your windows open if you want. For that option, you’ll want to wear your poncho he said.

As a bonus, your poncho will get cleaned as well.  

Foggy Notion

We’ve had more days of rain here and we’ve had some foggy mornings. Not as foggy as that old mosquito truck used to make it, but pretty foggy nonetheless. Have you ever heard weathermen who refer to fog as “Pea Soup” as in, “It’s pea soup out there!”? Have any of these weather people ever had pea soup? I doubt it too.

I think it’s time we come with some new soup phrases to describe fog. How about these for starters:

•          Bouillon Fog for a modest fog
•          Gazpacho Fog if it’s cold outside
•          Lipton Soup Fog if the fog happens in an instant
•          Chicken Soup for the Soul Fog if the fog is near a church

I forecast higher ratings for local news if you meteorologists can get creative on this.

Card Carrying Moms

Moms get a raw deal when it comes to baseball card collections. We often hear men say something like this: “Yeah, I had a great baseball card collection. I had Mickey Mantle. I had Willie Mays. I had Maris. But my mom got rid of them.”  If I had nickel for every time I heard a guy say that I’d, well, I’d probably go out and buy some baseball cards. Yeah, moms get blamed for the destruction of thousands of dollars of cards. Generations of moms have taken a lot of heat over this issue. Dads never get blamed.

Last week a woman at work explained why it’s always the moms who get blamed for this tragedy. She said it’s simple: moms are the ones who clean the house. So yeah, you guys traded Mickey Mantle for a clean bedroom. That’s worth two Mickey Mantles!

Caller ID

A romantic relationship has a number of stages including dating, going steady, and engagement. Somewhere in these stages, the person ends up in your phone contacts, and eventually that person is identified in your contacts by first name only. When you get to the first name only phase you know it’s serious folks. Well, I was with a friend of mine recently when he got a call from his wife, and his caller ID showed her first and last name. Now these folks have been married thirty plus years. And yet, her first and last names came up on his caller ID. Since I know this guy pretty well I questioned him on this. He said he’s got a sister with the same first name as his wife and it confuses him. Wait. What? I told him the spouse gets first name only and yes, he’s changing his phone.

I’m not sure what you do if you know two First Name Only People (FNOPs) with the same name. Do any of these FNOPs “Cher” their names?

Mosquito Truck

We’ve had a ton of rain here this year. It makes me think that we may have a surplus of mosquitoes this summer. I talked to a friend of mine today who moved this year outside the city limits and he’s got lots of water standing on his property. I told him that it was too bad, that he would not have the benefit of the city’s mosquito truck this year to hold down his bug population. We both laughed. ‘Cause when I was a kid the mosquito truck was a big deal. When you heard that dude coming, you ran into your house and closed the windows. The whole neighborhood would be fogged. Like a London Fog. Nowadays the mosquito dude drives his truck around after dark and makes this humming sound and creates next to no fog. Kids stay out front and laugh at him. (I think even the bugs laugh at him.) I think he may be fake – just some guy pretending to be a mosquito truck. Trying to be popular...

I know a guy who purchased some discount bug repellent. This stuff was so cheap you actually had to catch the bugs and then dip them in the repellent. Hey, you get what you pay for…