"You Don't Have To Be A Solomon"

Or a genius.

Or a pessimist.

Or, as I was once ungenerously called, “Captain Bring-Down.”  (Note:  This may get personal.  But that does not mean that it’s wrong.)

Today’s Mantra: “You see what you see, and say what you know.” 

And then prepare for the “backlash.”

The condescending dismissal what you know, because it is not what is popularly wanting to be heard.  (If that last part is grammatically viable, which I am not certain it is.)

Three illuminating examples, one political, one about baseball, and one culled from a sitcom I worked on called Taxi, for those uninterested in politics or baseball, because 

“Who doesn’t like Taxi?”

In the recently completed “Midterm Elections”, there was the possibility of the majority in the U.S. Senate swinging to the Democrats.

Except there wasn’t.          

In the Senatorial Election of 2018, an overwhelming number of Democratically-held seats were up for election, as compared to the number of Republican-held seats up for election, many of those contested seats residing in states that, in the presidential election, were won handily by Trump.  (Tangentially – but I am putting it in because I like it – it occurs to me that our current political “malaise” feels like our country has eaten a bad piece of fish.  Feel free to disseminate that, if you wish.  Feeling also free to include attributing credit.)

I did not watch a second’s coverage of the Midterm Elections, because I knew precisely what would occur.  (Mentioned by pundits in passing, before quickly returning to the “horse race.”)  Which is exactly what did happen.  The Democrats did not take the Senate, and – predictably – lost seats in North Dakota, Indiana and Missouri – all 2016 Trump strongholds.

My successful prediction makes me neither brilliant, clairvoyant, nor a “Know-it-all.”  (A descriptive, by the way, never delivered as a compliment.) 

The determining evidence was out there.  After that, it’s a matter of “You see what you see, and you say what you know.”  (Or, I guess you say nothing.  But no one around here can do that.)  

Okay.  Baseball.

I am a Dodgers fan.  (When the Blue Jays aren’t involved, which, since 1993, they haven’t been.)  I watched the first two games of the recent Dodgers-Red Sox World Series.  And after that, virtually nothing.

Why?

Because I knew precisely what would occur.

The Red Soxwere clearly the superior team, the Series outcome, therefore, never seriously in doubt.  (The Red Sox, in fact, decimated the Dodgersin five games.)  I figured why stick around to witness the carnage?

I saw what I saw, and I said what I knew.  The Democrats were not taking the Senate, and the Dodgers were not winning the World Series.  It was not in me to pretend otherwise.

Don’t get me wrong. If there’s a “fighting chance” in these things – I’m in.  I’m even on-board for “highly unlikely.”  But when it’s “No way, Jose”… 

I know.  Occasionally, the ’88 “No stars” Dodgers beat “The Bash Brothers” A’s, and Truman tops “undefeatable” Dewey.  It’s true.  “Underdogs” occasionally prevail.  But the operative word there is “occasionally.”  If “Underdogs” won more often than they lost, or half the time, or just frequently even, there would be no validity to the word “Underdog.”

Okay.  Now, Taxi. 

In the episode, “One Punch Banta” (parenthetically – literallyin this case – written by me), “Journeyman” boxer Tony Banta, earning a few bucks sparring with his weight-level’s reigning champion prior to an upcoming “Big Fight”, stunningly knocks “The Champ” down, leading to a sudden appreciation of the obscure Banta, which earns him a bout with an actual “contender.”

What nobody knew was that the upcoming “Big Fight” was generating little excitement, because “The Champ’s” scheduled opponent was no competitive threat.  The surprise sparring-session “knockdown” had actually been rigged, to make “The Champ” appear“vulnerable to defeat.”  Collateral Damage?  Tony Banta was going to get creamed, facing the “contender.”

If you saw what you saw and you said what you knew, you’d say,

“Something’s curiously amiss about “nobody” Tony Banta, ‘flooring’ “The Champ.”

But they didn’t.

Because they wanted to believe it was possible.  (The “Funny Part” being that Banta learns about the “set-up” just before entering the ring.)

What do I think is going on here?  (Once again, seeing what I see and saying what I know?)

Someone’s “playing” with the proclivities of optimists.

And I think I know who.

To be continued… 

(If you can stand the excitement, and are willing to see optimism, taking a hit.)

"Too Long For a Follow-Up Postscript So I Am Making It A Post Of Its Own And Then Adding A Few Bits So I Won't Appear To Be Shirking"

(An “Official Finalist” for “Elegant Title”, in the designated category: “One of the Least.”)

Organizing the scattered, scribbled detritus atop my congenitally messy stand-up desk, I –  shamefully belatedly, I confess – discovered the annotated list (more rhythmically “transcribed list” but I like “annotated” better), indicating which of the compiled “English Pub Names” were real and which, in conspicuous “Silly Mode”, were made up.  (By yours truly.)

The following are, believe it or not, English pub names that actually exist.  Deepest apologies if you (sensibly) did not retain your distinguishing list.

Okay.

Actual English Pub Names

The Bull and Spectacles

The Cat and Custard Pot

The Goat and Tricycle

The Ape and Apple

The Queen’s Head Artichoke

The Slug and Lettuce

The Hairy Lemon

The Hung Drawn and Quartered

List of Marginally Less Outlandish English Pub Names Concocted by the Writer

The Hound and Pencil

The Crown and Penguin

The Fish and Bumbershoot

The Hat and Horseman

The Pig and Raspberry

The King and Cuttlefish

The Grape and Highwayman

The Plough and Overshoes

Okay.  How, if you can recall, do you remember you did?

Well, “Well done!”  Or “Better luck next time”, whichever appropriately applies.  (With the “less-than-even-odds” possibility of a “Next Time.”)

Once again, my apologies for the months-long delay, delivering the results.  I must clean up my terminally cluttered desktop more often. Who knows what “precious nuggets” I might startlingly unearth?

This questionably popular contest calls to mind the Hampstead imbibatory “local” I frequented back in 1967 on a nightly basis.  (Wow, did I really drink alcohol every night?  I believe I did.  Why? Because everyone elsedid.  Although I was unable to participate in “Buying Rounds”, as I lose the power of speech, ambulation and reason after drinking more than one half of one pint of English room-temperature beer.) 

My neighborhood “local”, The Horse and Groom, situated on Hampstead’s “Main Drag” Heath Street, was a less than ten-minute walk – or “weave”, depending on my night’s accumulated “intake” – from my comfortable bedsitting room on nearby 10 Church Row.  (To which, on my recent magical trip to London, I finally gained access, experiencing a generously provided “Guided Tour”, after fifty years of wanting to go in, but being wimpily unable to pull the necessary, door-knocking trigger.)

Here then are some random remembrances of The Horse and Groom:

Learning to roll a cigarette (though I did not smoke), packing the tobacco so loosely, that when I subsequently lit the far end of it, the flame shot straight through the tobacco, painfully singeing my tongue.

Rejecting an offer to accompany a group of companionable co-drinkers to the Epsom Derby– pronounced “Darby” – having to work the next day (as an Elementary School teacher), and having my pubmates pick me up the following morning, explaining that they had called my school pretending to be me and lyingly reported that I was sick.

Having a concerned pub pal locate an incredibly cheap apartment for me after I was (unjustly) booted from the my cushy Hampstead apartment, and me, (reluctantly) taking it, despite the fact that the low-rent building’s facilities included no shower and no bathtub, largely because my kindly “mate” had made the considerable effort effort to find it.

Emboldeningly “under the influence”, I… on second thought, I’m gonna leave that particular one out, to be disclosed after I’m dead… if I remember to do so.

Being secretly invited to remain “After Hours” as one of the gracious publican Eddy’s “selected” few guests to watch the televised FA Cup (a national soccer extravaganza), enjoying heaping platefuls of party snacks and a your-money’s-no-good-here “Open Bar.”

Living now too far away to regularly frequent the pub, receiving an official, embossed “Half-Pint” mug, as a parting “Complimentary Souvenir.”

A random sampling of memories… though there are certainly numerous more.

Now…

A few “Visits-to-London” ago, I excitedly took my “Year-Abroad-Studying” daughter Anna to see my old, inebriational “Stomping Ground”, only to discover that the Horse and Groomhad shockingly evolved into a local Chinese restaurant.  The news from my most recentvisit, however, is considerably more hopeful.  

The Chinese restaurant has, sadly, bitten the dust, the soaped-up windows revealing the place is currently nothing.

Who knows?  Maybe it will re-open as a revitalized Horse and Groom.  (The establishment’s large, gold-leaf lettering is still prominently affixed to the building’s street-facing facade.)  

Yeah, probably not.

Time inexorably matzoson.

The Horse and Groom, a name, too credible to grace my contest’s semi-fictional list, was once a bustling, socializing concern.

And now it isn’t.

The embossed writing is somewhere in the middle.  Try a magnifying glass and tell me if you find it.

"Just A Little Change..."

Against my will…

Pay attention to that phrase, as the first words out of the box are often tellingly resonant down the line...

The building where my Wednesday mornings at 8 pilates training sessions took place has been sold, forcing my pilates teacher to find an alternate venue to offer her mysterious but ultimately strength and posture-enhancing line of endeavor.

I was informed that she found a new location, farther from my house, and with an available appointment for me, noton Wednesdays at 8, but instead on Saturdays at 9.  

Bottom Line:  If I want to continue my pilates training with this exquisite and masterly pilates teacher I have to replace my habitual – for more than three years – “Pilates – Wednesdays at 8” appointment with the farther-from-my-house “Pilates – Saturdays at 9.”

“Not that serious”, you are thinking?  Yes and no. (Depending on who has to change their appointment.)  In practical terms, here’s what this jostling schedule-change involves.

Moving pilates from Wednesdays to Saturdays means I would have to bump my habitual – for even longerthan three years – Saturday morning “Walk at the Beach.”

But to where, I am now forced to ponder.  To the vacated opening, Wednesday mornings at 8?

I could do that.  But it means substantially shortening my “Walk at the Beach” because Wednesday’s a weekday and I have to get home to start working on my blog, not a problem on Saturdays because I don’t write on Saturdays, but I do during the week, so it is.

Okay, so, a “duration dropped” walk at the beach.  Consequences? First, a measurable decrease in “Exercise Time.”  Plusa reduced stay at the beach, where, as recently mentioned, many interesting blog post ideas come to me.  Not that I expect them to – because then, I am pretty certain they won’t – they just do.  Less time at the beach narrows the available “window” for them to – voluntarily, I cannot over-emphasize – fly into my head.  

So.  A depletion in “Calorie Burning”, shorter inspirational interludes at the beach.  (And potentially less blog post ideas.  And I meanthat “potentially.”)

Not to mention a longer drive to pilates Saturday mornings at 9 than to the previous, more proximate venue Wednesday mornings at 8.

And, as if that weren’t enough…

I used to practice the piano Saturday mornings at 9 – the time of my now Saturday mornings at 9 scheduled pilates appointment.  So I have to change thatas well.  

With this altered itinerary, including the extended two-way commute – I cannot begin my  hour-long practicing the piano until Saturdays at 10:30, effectively killing Saturday mornings, previously spent enjoying the company of family and friends.  That time is now gone.

Summing Up:  Pilates – moved from Wednesday to Saturday. “Walk at the Beach” – moved from Saturday to, possibly, Wednesday.  Practicing the piano – still Saturday, but inconveniently later in the day.

All because the building where I went to my Wednesday at 8 pilates sessions was sold.

Okay, fine.  

He said, in a tone of grievance-filled annoyance.

Willing to “adjust”, however, I try my first Wednesday morning “Walk at the Beach.”

And you know what I noticed?

My energy, compared to my Saturday morning “Walks at the Beach” was demonstrably depleted.  (In fact, I did not make all the way to the beach, settling for a seriously curtailed “Walk near the Beach.”  Plus, I felt a palpable tightness in my throat, attributable, I believe, to a suppressed reaction to an unbidden change in my scheduled walk. 

That’s what change does.

It makes you weaker and angrier.

(And don’t tell me that ballplayers forced out of their comfortable routines don’t feel it as well. What am I, freakishly atypical?  A minor change in myhabitual routine left me physically weak and unable to swallow. And you’re saying that doesn’t happen to ballplayers?  Oh, please!)

Two closing considerations:

Today, I took my secondWednesday morning “Walk at the Beach” – I made it all the way to the sand this time – and I was beginning to feel better. I even noticed an improvementover my Saturday morning “Walks at the Beach” – no hordes of runners training for the marathon, loping snootily past, going, “‘Walker’ on the right!”  Leaving me thinking that maybe it’s the interim transitionwhere you feel grumpily discombobulated but you eventually get over it.

Two:

Maybe “change” itself isn’t the problem.  The underlying concern – which I now repeat for convenience so you won’t have to scroll back to the beginning – may actually be

“Against my will…”

It’s not the change. It’s the “Nobody asked me.”

Still, despite this glimmering insight, it won’t be easy altering my behavior.

I’ve enjoyed controlling my destiny longer than Wednesday pilates at 8.

"Steambath"

A play written by Bruce Jay Friedman (my all-time favorite short story writer), originally produced off-Broadway in 1970and reprised at L.A.’s Odyssey Theater, where we saw it last weekend.

And did not care for it.

In my youth, I read the script of Steambath and I laughed my pachachskys off.  A Steambath production on PBSin 1973, I found to be “Okay-Plus.”  Then there’s this latest production, which for reasons I cannot precisely identify failed to successfully deliver the goods.

Maybe it was the actors who, with rare exceptions, were unable to “connect “with the material.  Maybe it was the director, whose idea of “playing comedy” is to instruct the actors to speak faster.  Maybe it was a third thing I will mention later if I remember to… you know, I better mention it now, before it abruptly disappears, like the third CD from a “Book-on-Tape” I was listening to that accidentally dropped from its case and I never saw it again.  A Scottish “murder mystery”, ruined forever by the disappearance of “Disc 3.”  (Although, truth be told, I was having serious difficulty with the accent.) 

Let me begin with “A Note From the Director”, written in the recently attended Steambath program:

“Steambath was written in 1970 and was immediately both enormously successful and shockingly controversial.”

That could be the decisive problem with Steambath,right there – a play, “shockingly controversial” in 1970, which, through the cultural “passage of time”, has lost its latent ability to shock.

How exactly does that work? Okay.  Say you need two blended ingredients to propel a rocket – boy, am I out of my depth with this one, though I shall forge ahead regardless.  If you only have oneof those two necessary ingredients, your doomed rocket will not successfully attain “Lift-off.”

That’s Steambath today – one element short of a “Lift-off.” It’s got the comedy but lost the igniting “Nitro” to explosively “spark” its propulsion. 

It’s amazing when you have both.  I saw Bruce Jay Friedman’s similarly bold first play Scuba Dooba in 1967, whose risky comedy – about a distraught man whose wife has run off with an African-American scuba diver – was “dangerously funny” for its time.  You could sense the subversive electricity, sitting in the audience.  We felt “this close” to getting arrested. Makiing us laugh rebelliously harder at all the play’s jokes.

By contrast, in the 2018 production of Steambath, the contemporary actors are aware they are shooting, if not blanks, then harmless “cotton ball” bullets that, reaching their targets, fall ineffectually down to the ground.  Leaving the uncertain performers rushing their dialogue, “pushing” the emotion, ad-libbing contemporary references and rewriting the script, rewriting being “ad-libbing with a pen.”

And, as a result those unhelpful strategies, dashing any chance of a successful production, the untrusted “laugh lines” garnering tepid reactions, or, as I noticed after intermission, a proactive “Let’s go home now.”

I didhear oneperson heartily enjoying the experience.

That person was me.

Am I a fan of “Throwback Theater”, stripped of its incendiary sting?

No.  And what kind of a question is that?

Sorry.

You should be.

The reason I was laughing despite the play’s faded combustibility is that I am in awe of how Bruce Jay Friedman’s comedic mind works.  It’s not the jokes, per se. It is the delicious, selected specificity within the jokes.  I hear them, and I want to search out the author and give him a hug.

Stripped of its “illicit” credentials, the play must now proceed without the angry outcries of “Blasphemy!” concerning a plot in which a steambath serves as a Purgatorial “way station” and a Puerto Rican steambath attendant is God   As well as the incensed shouts of “Disgusting!” when, after the lead character calls “God” a “prick” and then quickly apologies to the one female in the room, she casually responds, “You can say prick.  Pecker is the one I don’t care for.”

Nudity, racial and sexual stereotypes, a Deity, demonstrating his “Divinity” through ordinary cards tricks and picking a lock with his teeth.  For today’s audience, it’s all a shrugging “Post Morality” yawwwwwwn.

Despite that unarguable drawback… I mean, 

“I don’t need no stinkin’ temporal context.”

When I hear a stream of off-kilter, “Where-did-that-come-from?” beauties like,

“I taught Art Appreciation at the Police Academy.”

Or

“I just got involved in a charity.  Helping brain-damaged welders.”

Or, from a nostalgic denizen-of-the-40’s character,

“Malteds are the marijuana of my generation.”

Or, perhaps, my crowning favorite,  

(CONCERNING THE LEAD CHARACTER’S “DIFFICULT” MOTHER):  “I never liked the work she was doing.  She ran a chain of dancing schools in Appalachia.  She’d talk these starving families into taking mambo lessons…”

Are you laughing? “Mambo lessons.”  Are you kidding me?

Ahhhh, forget it.

I see Steambath on stage, I feel sadly disappointed.

I read it privately at home and I am cackling like chicken.

“Brain-damaged welders.”

I worship the mind that uniquely came out of.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Election Follow-Up (about the California propositions mentioned in this blog):

The dialysis clinics will remain unregulated.

The ambulance drivers will remain "On Call" during their breaks.

The municipalities did not receive rent control authority.

The egg-laying hens got more cage room.

"Vote Early, But Smarter"

I did it backwards.

First, I voted.

Then I studied the issue.

That’s like driving into the garage and then opening the garage door.

Unless you are seriously into “garage-door repair”, plus I imagine, some automobile “bodywork” as well, that is a really bad idea.

And so, I retroactively admit, was this.

(Note:  I had no idea I would get three posts out of the “California Initiative System.” You just never know where the ideas will be coming from.  Now, here I am, with a possibly-legendary-though-it-is-too-soon-to-tell “‘Cal-Prop.’ Trilogy.”)

Today, it is “Proposition 8.”

Oyoyoyoyoyoyoy!

(Additional Note:  This post toowas written {this time, the day} before the election results came in.  If I remember, I will inform you how it turned out. Although I have a strong feeling I already know.)

This is “Proposition 8” (carefully worded by its proponents so that it sounds no-brainerly like, “Why not?”):

“Regulates Amounts Outpatient Kidney Dialysis Clinics Charge for Dialysis Treatments”

Thatfeels like a “Yes”, doesn’t it?  You don’t want clinics gouging their dialysis patients. Unfortunately, or otherwise, depending on your position, that was not my introduction to “Proposition 8.” 

My introduction to “Proposition 8” was, instead, a commercial opposing “Proposition 8”, featuring a forlorn-looking man, staring directly into the camera, claiming that if “Proposition 8” passes,

“I’ll die!”

Thatalters the equation, doesn’t it?  Who in their right and compassionate mind votes against

“I’ll die!”?

I mean, if a mere vote will keep this guy alive, then absolutely – 

“No on 8!”

And I am done thinking about it.  I mean, thisone’s a breeze, easier even than voting for increased “elbow room” for egg-laying hens.  

I righteously fill in the circle denoting “No on 8”, and its off to the more contentious initiatives, like “Proposition 11”:  

“Allow ambulance providers to remain on call during paid breaks.”

Okay, let’s think about that.

On the “No on 11” side, if you are still “On Call” during them, can you really call that  a “break”?  On the other hand, if they are paid “breaks”, shouldn’t you remain “On Call”, in case somebody needing an ambulance can’t wait till you finish your coffee?

There are two reasonable sides to this argument, unlike the “Slam-dunking”,

“I’ll die!”

To which the callous alternative seems to be,

“Fine.”

The question, “Why would anyone want dialysis patients to die?” never entering my mind because the “No on 8” guy in the ad appears genuinely upset.

Such thoughts only come to me later, along with the equivalent of “Buyer’s Remorse” about a precipitous “Rush to Judgment”, voting an unequivocal “No” on this “undebatable initiative.”

I hear about an intense “Turf War” between “Union” (“Yes on 8”) and “Non-Union” (“No on 8“) factions in the dialysis clinic industry.  I hear about the high profits, earned by currently unregulated dialysis corporations (especially one called DaVita.)  And I hear about the “No on 8” side spending more than six times as much as the opposition – $110 million to defeat “Proposition 8.” (Which is why I saw more “I’ll die!” TV ads than “No, you won’t; you’ll pay less for dialysis” ads.)

All this, besides the “Yes on 8” accusations of “unsanitary conditions” at the unregulated facilities, including the discovery of cockroaches – which I immediately see as the “Yes on 8” response to “I’ll die!”, but with vermin – 

All the new information gets me thinking,

Maybe this “Prop. 8” is less clear-cut than I originally imagined.

I mean, a side spending a hundred-and-ten-million bucks to avoid regulation?

It looks like they are really against regulation.

On the other hand, there’s, 

“I’ll die!”

The problem is, all this newly received information gets me thinking these things… 

Too late.

Because I have already voted.

Who knows?  After assiduously studying the issue, I may still have decided “No on 8.”

Or not.

What stays withme from this experience, however, is not the issue.

It is the “No on 8’s” shameless appeal to manipulative emotion.

Which made me vote “No on 8” without giving it much thought.  Or, more honestly, any.

I do not like myself for doing that.  But who I am really annoyed at are the people who made me.

“Nobody can make you…”

Yes, they can!”

Shameless appeals to manipulative emotion?

They work, damn it!

Although, I warn you, political ad makers,

I would not try that again.

………………………………….

Who am I kidding?

I am a pushover for “I’ll die!” 

"Gimme Room!"

Consider “Proposition 12”, offered as a “Direct Vote” California initiative in the recent national election:

“Establishes New Standards for Confinement of Specified Farm Animals.”

A GOAT:  “Are we one of them?”

A GOAT WHO CAN READ:  “No.”

A GOAT:  “No fair!”

And we’re off to the races.

Let me forthwith acknowledge that this post was written before “Election Day”, so I do not have the official “Final Tally” concerning “Prop. 12”, though I have little doubt as to its outcome.  I mean, what are you going to say?  “The farm animals have enough room”?  You just haveto vote “Yes.”  For whatever reason.

SELF-INTERESTED CONSUMER:  “I heard they taste better when they can turn around.”

Including that (disgusting) one.

The thing is, even if you are trying to improve the conditions of (listed in the initiative) “Breeding pigs, veal calves and egg-laying hens”…

“But not goats.”

But not goats…

“Or non-laying hens.”

Them too…

“Or post-menopausalpigs.”

… and otherexcluded farm animals, the supporters of “Prop. 12” would still undoubtedly argue,

“It’s a step.”

And so it is.

Of course, there are critics of “Prop. 12” who are notanthropomorphic farm animals excluded from the “Excessive Confinement” list who passionately opposethis measure.  Including farmers who bear the financial brunt of revamping these “confinements”, for whom their agri-experience in this area tells them,  

“The ‘egg-layers’ are just fine!”  (With a frustrated hint of exasperation.)

The most aggressive opponents of “Proposition 12” are the “Animal Rights” advocates, who, despite the initiative’s acknowledgment of the problem and its proposed effort to improve things, adamantly insist,

“It does not go far enough.” 

“Animals should have bus passes and be able to travel wherever they want to”, is the “overstated-for-comedic-effect” expression of their argument.  

Although the “rational alternative” suggests equally mirth-inducing possibilities.

 “A foot-and-a-half ‘confinement.’  That’s a fifty percent increase for each ‘egg-layer’.”

“The cruel ‘confinements’ must be bigger!”

“How much bigger?”

“Eleven feet per chicken.”

“Two-and-a-quarter.”

“Nine.”

“Three feet, but that’s my limit.”

“We say, ‘Seven-and-a-half’, or no deal.”

Let’s stop there, shall we?... because none of that happened.  How could it?

Realistically, there is no mutually acceptable “Confinement Size.”

COLONIAL NEGOTIATORS:  “Why not?  We worked out the ‘Three-Fifths-Of-A-Person’ Rule.” 

Well done.  Here’s the thing in this “Animal Rights ‘Proxy War’” that, at least in this point in history, can only go one way.  Are you ready?  Because this is the emmis. (The undeniable truth.)  Okay, here goes.

No matter how well we accommodate the animals,

We are still going to eat them.

Everything else, by comparison, is just “small potatoes.”

WARDEN:  “From now on, there will be the Internet on ‘Death Row’.”

“DEATH ROW” INMATES:  “Hooray!”

Passing laws, limiting suffering?  Sure. The animals’ lives are improved, and it feels good doing the right thing.  But when you come down to it, who winds up with a better feeling about this? The animals, who have an inevitable date with the dinner table – 

Or us?

"Shoe Story"

There is one – and only one – redeeming advantage to bad posture:

You see things lying on the ground people with admirable posture are not even aware are down there.

Habitually stoop over, and you see everything.  (Except, perhaps, where you are going.)

Anyway, that’s how I noticed the shoe.

I apologize for no accompanying picture of it to append to this story.  (Like people go around all the time, carrying their cellphones. Sure, forewarned someone will call me, I take my cellphone along with me. Otherwise, it stays home “charging”, where it belongs.  I mean, do you carry around a steam iron, in case your clothes unexpectedly “wrinkle”? That’s ridiculous!  (Though less ridiculous than justifying not carrying your cellphone.)

I am left with only a “recorded memory” of the shoe I saw lying next to the sidewalk as I headed for Groundwork one “Thursday Walk” morning for coffee. (Where, though no longer treated like a king, I am charged differently depending on whether Alice prepares my Venice Blend “pour-over” ($3.25) or Megan, charging me $4.25 for the same service, though both are equally friendly.  

(Relevant Side-Note: Though trying to reduce my intake of coffee, I continue my weekly pilgrimages to Groundwork, so I won’t let down Alice and Megan.  The increased caffeine-induced trips to the bathroom are a small price to pay for a bonding connection with strangers.)

Anyway, back to the shoe.

A man’s “Left” lace-up, business-like “Dress Shoe.”  Brown – lighter than “Dark brown”, though nowhere near “Tan.”  Its size?  Bigger than myshoe size, less than Lebron’s,  a “10”, maybe an “11” – what am I, a professional shoe salesman?  Wider than “narrow”, although, again, I am no recognized expert in the “pedal-covering” arena.

None of which is ultimately the salient point.

You see a single shoe, sitting abandoned by the sidewalk and your instinctive reaction – if you are at all concerned with abandoned footwear – is

“What the heck is it doing there?”

Was it left there on purpose?  (Rather than someone accidentally stepped out of it and kept going?)

And, if so, why?

IRATE SHOE WEARER:  “I warned you.  You ‘pinch’ me one more time and that’s it!”

And, being no “Idle Threatener”,

It was!

True to their word, they doffed the constricting “Lefty” and off they went, planning to eventually return after “teaching it a lesson” and later forgetting to do so.

Leaving a penalized shoe, languishing on Rose Avenue.

This is hardly an unlikely scenario.  Maybe “hardly” is “too strong”; let’s say “Not impossible.”  Not talking “freakish disparity”, but my left foot is detectably larger than my right.  So, in fact, one shoe could fit more comfortably than the other.  

But “leave it behind and hop home because of the difference”?  What person would do that? Though suffering “unequal tightness”, stepping out of the snugger shoe and limping unevenly down the street – that, friends, is a behavioral “stretch.”  (Which, coincidentally, I have the shoemaker do with my “Left” shoes.)

So, the remaining unanswered question:

“What happened?”

Was there some nearby shoe store promoting, “Buy Two, Get One Free”, the purchaser first relishing the bargain, then rethinking, “Why do I need three shoes?”, dropping the acquired “Extra” casually by the roadside?

Maybe, though I know it’s a “long-shot” – as if the first option wasn’t – someone, for whatever reason, left behind both shoes.  Then, somebody else, whose “Right” one was pinching, took away only the shoe that they needed, leaving the remaining “Left” one to fearfully fend for itself.

Or, sadly – so I am leaving it for last – someone – the original owner or some subsequent shoeless “passer-by” – lost their left leg and now needed “Just one.”  

Sorry.  I was trying to deplete all the possible explanations, of which there are probably more.  I just bummed myself out, imagining that last one.

As I am not blessed with an incisive “Practical Mind”, I am personally unable to explain why I saw one shoe taking a walk – not the shoe, me– I am a comedy writer; I can’t help myself – and… 

Wait!  That just reminded me of something.

What if the single "Left" shoe, craving morning excitement, asked its fraternal "Right" shoe if it wanted to go for a walk, the "Right" shoe replied, “You go”, the "Left" shoes said, “Fine” and it did, but, being inanimate “leather with laces”, it forgot where it lived and could not remember its way home? 

I know that’s a “reach.”

But can you think of anything better?