DIDN'T EXPECT THAT

At 10 p.m. last night I had an unexpected visitor. A big, black cricket on steroids was hopping across my living room rug. Planning to trap it, I spent the next 10 minutes trying to catch that sucker with a drinking glass and a piece of cardboard to slip underneath, but every time I got close, that cricket jumped away from me, and finally disappeared behind a bookcase. At that, I gave up and figured that if I went into the bedroom and closed the door, the Olympic Sprinter would stay in the living room, and I could catch him in the morning.

However, when I entered the bedroom—SURPRISE! That cricket chirped Ha! Ha! as it hopped around my bed. No more Mr. Nice Guy! I grabbed a wad of toilet paper, grabbed the critter and threw it into the toilet—flushing twice just in case he was the Mark Spitz of crickets.

Blame it on climate change, because here in Tucson, Arizona we have an unexpected season of flooding Monsoon rains which have also been a boon for insects.  The Mesquite Moths, ready to lay their larva, have found their way onto our balconies and into our hallways. It just so happens that there is a display of home knitted sweaters in one hall which I suspect will become a moth smorgasbord soon.

The thing is that everyday all of us live with the unexpected. I think it’s called the curve ball of life. Sometimes it’s very good and sometimes not so good and most times you don’t see it coming such as when I was a teenager hosting a slumber party at my home.

The girls arrived before my parents returned from a meeting. Since I didn’t have enough places for all of my friends to sleep, we decided to remove the mattress from my parents’ bed. I thought they’d never really notice since there was an innerspring mattress underneath. I re-made the bed, and we all got snacks from the kitchen and returned to my room. Later that night, we heard a loud bang from my parents’ bedroom when they hit the innerspring. They handled it well. They didn’t kill me. You cannot plan for the unexpected, but it says a lot about you as to how you handle it.

When I was a journalist, I was assigned a downtown interview in Atlanta, Georgia. When going downtown I always wore sneakers on the  commuter train, and once I arrived at the building, where my interview was to take place, I’d always go to the Lady’s Room and change from sneakers to the more acceptable high heeled shoes.

As it so happened this was an attractive glass building with a very fancy Lady’s Loo. I was amazed at the elegant furniture that had been tastefully placed within. I sat in a comfortable leather chair and bent down to change my shoes when I heard one of the stall doors open, and water running in the sink. Then I heard a clink in the crystal dish on the table next to me. I looked up as a woman left the room and saw a used linen towel on the table. She had left me a 25 cent tip. I was offended. She didn’t even say “Thank You!”

I have learned a few things about the unexpected such as all of a sudden I am old. When did that happen? Where did the little girl go? Well, I am the same person—only the facade has changed—A LOT! All I can do is to hope that my next unexpected will be a good one—-and if not—- to meet it as best I can.  But at least next time with a fly swatter!

Esther Blumenfeld

WISH I'D SAID THAT

“At a 25th anniversary of a Fortune 500 company, a division President went to the microphone and said,’On this special occasion, I feel it’s time to be honest with the Chairman of the Board. When I applied for this job 20 years ago, he asked me how much money I was making, and I told him $125 a week.  I guess now it won’t hurt to admit that at the time I was really only making $100 a week. After the laughter subsided, the Chairman of the Board responded, ‘I appreciate your confession, but actually I was prepared to offer you $150.”’ (Humor at Work, c.Blumenfeld and Alpern 1994)

Last week, I asked Mr. Google to pull up some rejoinders and come-backs on my computer. Most of them were sarcastic and hurtful. I guess that sometimes a person has to be put in his place, but generally when I feel the need to knock someone down, I prefer to offer him or her a humorous cushion. Albert Einstein did it well when he said, “There is a major difference between intelligence and stupidity. Intelligence has its limits.”

Years ago, my husband Warren was asked to fill out paperwork at the dentist’s office. The receptionist noticed that he had left one question blank, so she said, “What is your church preference?” Whereupon he replied, “Gothic.” Wish I had said that!

Elbert Hubbard said,”When life give you lemons make lemonade.” When someone says that to me, I usually respond, “That’s a good idea if you can find some sugar.” In the same vein, I can never understand that when one of your body parts is hurting, some fool will remind you that you are better off than the guy who lost his foot. It’s always the poor guy who lost his foot. That rejoinder will never make you feel better…Guilty, Yes!  Better, No!”

When viewing a painting by Toulouse-Lautrec a woman said to him, “Sir, (except in French) your painting is obscene!” And Toulouse-Lautrec responded, “Madame! The obscenity is in your mind, not on my canvas.”

So many times, all of us are confronted by someone who says something that calls for a come back, but we can’t think of it until much later when it’s no longer usable. However, as a playwright, I was offered the opportunity to use a rejoinder through the voice of a character in one of my plays.

A month after my husband died, a friend invited me to join her, on a hike in the mountains along with a woman I did not  know. Naturally, my feelings were still very raw. My friend mentioned to this woman that my husband had recently died, and this stranger said to me, “What did he die of?”—an arrow through my heart.  Five years later this very same exchange appeared in my play, “Here and There” (Detroit Repertory Theatre 2003). When the actor said, “What did he die of?” The reply was, “I shot him!”

Then there was my experience with the “over-under” guy. He was engaged to give a speech to a captive audience of unwilling listeners—including me. I tuned out what he was saying until he said, “You can tell a lot about people by how they put their toilet paper on their toilet paper dispensers. He  continued, “Forward hanging conveys a welcoming attitude. It’s an inviting gesture. Backward rolling shows an unfriendly posture.”

He then asked people to raise their hands if they rolled their toilet paper under.  I raised my hand.  Then he asked people to raise their hand if they were over rollers. Again, I raised my hand. He looked at me accusingly, and said, “You raised your hand twice!” “Yes, I did,” I replied.  “Well!” he said, “Why did you do that?” “Easy!” I replied.  “ I have two bathrooms.”

He found my reasoning uncanny.

Esther Blumenfeld

MISSED THE BOAT

On August 1, 2021 my son, Josh, daughter-in-law, Barbara and I were supposed to start sailing from Reykjavik to Reykjavik on a weeklong circumnavigation of Iceland. However, in March of 2021, the Windstar Cruise Line cancelled the 200+ passenger voyage due to Covid-19. So, instead of enjoying the “action packed” most northerly capital city in the world—on August 1, 2021 I mopped water off my kitchen floor, because I hadn’t closed the freezer drawer in my refrigerator, and now I had to deal with melted ice cubes. That’s as close to ice as I’ll get this year.

In the meantime, Josh and Barbara are taking an action packed vacation themselves. They have packed up every item in their master bedroom, master bathroom and master closet and have traveled into the guest room in their house. Instead of visiting the island of Heimaey,  “the Pompeii of the North,”covered in ash by a devastating 1973 eruption, they will be experiencing their own sis, boom, bah (I’m guessing more sis-boom than bah.) for six weeks.

The weather in Iceland is highly changeable, kind of like a mask-on—mask off—mask on experience in the United States. Granted, I can’t see puffins from my apartment balcony, but I did see one old guy doing some impressive huffing and puffing while hiking up a mountain path near my home.

Also, in 1963 there was another eruption in Iceland, and Surtsey Island became the youngest place on earth. If we are able to sail in 2022, I just may be the oldest seafarer sailing past that kid. However, I’m not sure I want to take a polar flight to Grimsey Island just to stand half in and half out of the Arctic Circle. At 86 I plan to stand all in wherever I go. And, NO! I do not plan to ride an Icelandic horse anywhere even if he was brought to Iceland by the Vikings. That’s an old horse!

The last time I got on a horse was in Argentina.The thick saddle was made of sheep's’ wool, and the cinch was loose. The the leader of our ride slapped my horse’s butt. That filly took off, and I hung on for dear life—slipping from side to side on my saddle. I was lucky that I didn’t end up upside down looking up at her belly.

Of course, in the scheme of things, a delayed trip is not the worst event in one’s life, and hopefully we will be able to sail in August, 2022. In the meantime, I’ll pretend I’m on a cruise when I eat in the Morrow Dining Room in my senior residence. It’s an unusual experience, because I have never eaten in a room with carpeting that offers an optical illusion of moving waves. That’s why one glass of wine will suffice—especially if  a person is prone to sea sickness.

Unfortunately, there is no travel insurance covering navigation out of that dining room.  


 Esther Blumenfeld

BITS AND PIECES

My mother-in law’s cooking motto was, “If you’re out of it—improvise!” I had always assumed that she meant a minor ingredient, until I became the mother of an infant son, who vocally encouraged family get-togethers at two o’clock every morning. Then “out of it” described every cabinet in my kitchen. So, when my husband, Warren called from the office and said, “My former professor is  coming for dinner. Don’t worry, I’ll pick up a meal on the way home.” I was okay with that. Then, he added, “ All you have to do is to make martinis. He is a martini connoisseur, and likes them straight up.”  

I had never made a martini in my life, but I remembered there was a bottle of gin somewhere in the hall closet. I also remembered that we had no vermouth or olives.  I unwrapped the one fancy martini glass we had received as a wedding gift and chilled it. Then I poured the bottle of gin into a pitcher filled with ice, and greeted our guest at the door with a cold, naked gin “martini.” After his third one, he proclaimed, “These are are the best martinis I have ever tasted.” After that, every time we saw him he’d say, “This woman really knows how to make martinis. To improvise means to produce or create something from whatever is available.

When my son, Josh joined a Comedy Improv group in college, he explained, “Improvisation is like building a house without the blue prints. You have to have walls, floors  and a roof, but sometimes you can’t get all of the pieces.”  I guess it’s like cooking without a recipe. In life, all of us improvise one time or another.

One of my favorite true stories involved a speech writer. One of his clients was the CEO of a large corporation. After writing speeches  for this man for a year, the speech writer asked for a salary raise.The CEO’s response was,”I’m not giving you a raise.  All you do is write my speeches. I could do that myself if I had the time.” A few weeks later, the CEO stood on a stage in a big auditorium prepared to address his employees. The speech was in a leather binder on the lectern. He opened the binder and saw a sheet of paper whereupon was written, “I quit! You are on your own.”

Jason Isbell, of the 400 Unit Band said it best, “It comes down to the difference between what you were planning to do and what life throws at you, and you have to end up doing. The one who knows how to improvise is the one who comes out ahead.”

Maybe trying counts a bit.  When Josh was 4-years-old, we took a trip to Florida to visit my in-laws. Their house was near a water-filled moat. Josh wanted to go fishing, but Grandpa Chuck didn’t own a fishing pole, so he improvised. with a string tied to a broom handle. Also, there weren’t any worms available, so Grandpa stuck a piece of salami on a safety pin and hung it from the line. Little Josh stood by the moat with his line dangling in the water.  He caught no fish. However, two ducks really enjoyed that salami.

Several famous  lines in movies were improvised by the actors themselves. One of my favorites came from Dustin Hoffman in a scene from MIDNIGHT COWBOY, that was being filmed on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He yelled at a car that tried to cut him off in the middle of a scene, “I’m walking here!”  The line stayed in the movie and became a classic.

George Gershwin had it right when he said,”Life is a lot like jazz. It’s best when you improvise.”

Esther Blumenfeld

A BOW, A WOW AND A MEOW

When I was a little girl, during  pre-Amazon days, bottles of milk would be delivered to the front door of our house, and the “Egg Lady” would bring fresh eggs. I never did know her name. All I knew was that she had a birthmark on her face, and lived on a farm with lots of chickens.  She was a jolly lady, and I looked forward to her deliveries. Whenever I saw her, I’d shout, “The ‘Egg Lady’ is here.”’  One morning when she arrived, she said, “ I have five brand new puppies at my house. Would you like to have one?” Luckily, Mama wasn’t home!

I ran to my Father’s study, and said, “Papa, the ‘Egg Lady’ wants to give me one of her puppies. Can I say, ‘Yes?’’’ As luck would have it, Papa happened to be reading, Spinosa’s, Emendation Treatise on THE EMENDATION OF THE INTELLECT. So, his answer was something like “ummm.” The next week the “Egg Lady” brought me my puppy. When Mama came home from the market, she was surprised to see a little whimpering puppy in a big box. All she said was, “No one asked me!” The next morning when I woke up, my puppy was gone. Mama said, “It wasn’t nice to take him from his mother who would miss him.”

The guilt trip lasted for a few days, but my affection for dogs never waned over the years, and now, for the first time in my life, I have the pleasure of playing with five precious dogs that belong to my neighbors. I always have the great joy of petting them while at the same time not having to walk them in the heat or the rain—or pick up their generous droppings. Let me introduce you:

Sometimes, I forget that Abbi the pedigree Standard Poodle is really a dog, because she is extremely intuitive, gentle and kind—definitely a thoroughbred lady! Also, she has recently graduated from school, and is now a, “Certified Trained Therapy Dog.” I was told that at the graduation ceremony she wore a mortar board, and didn’t eat the tassel. Florence Nightingale and Sigmund Freud would have been proud of her, because they both pioneered the idea of animal assisted therapy. Florence noticed “patients’ relief of anxiety,” and Sigmund felt that some patients were more comfortable talking to a dog than to him. Makes sense to me!

The other neighborhood heartbreaker is little Bella, a beautiful, white, pure bred Westie (West Highland Terrier). She is all wiggle and pee when she sees me. That is the most enthusiastic greeting I have received from anyone. I did always enjoy audience applause for my plays, but it was nothing like Bella’s enthusiasm (although in intermission some people did run to the comfort station).

Tiny, five pound, Pepe is probably the most unique pup I have ever seen, because he looks like a miniature sheep. I am a sucker for his, “Choose Me!” eyes. He pitter-patters along the sidewalk— minding his own business—in more ways than one.  One day, while on my balcony, I watched as wee Pepe, on leash, was briskly trotting behind his Mistress. Suddenly, he tried to stop. (I guess it was sniffing time) but she didn’t notice and kept walking. So, Pepe dug in his miniature heels and kind of skate boarded behind her until she stopped. Not only does Pepe fit well on a friendly lap, he is also easily tucked into a shoulder bag.

Then there’s Tilly, a fawn colored what’s it? with enough Pug and big brown eyes that even Queen Victoria, the lover of Pugs, couldn’t resist when Tilly begs for treats. Tilly likes to be petted, but is deeply disappointed when she’s not rewarded for the privilege. She is so well trained that her Master allows  her to walk in front of him while she drags her leash with her own plastic pooper bag attached. She justifiably fits the Latin phrase, “multum in parvo,” (a lot of dog in a small space.)

Without a doubt, Sparky, a mixed breed Cockapoo is one of the most popular dogs in the neighborhood. This Cocker Spaniel, Poodle mixture loves everyone—dogs as well as humans—and probably any other living thing that moves. Cockapoos are a dog of the 1960’s, and for sure this clown of a dog has the personality of a flower child. Being greeted by Sparky is worth an early, early morning walk.

Of course, I can’t end this story without mentioning Radar my son and daughter-in-law’s thirteen-pound, Norwegian Forest Cat, who thinks he is a dog. Radar’s ancestors sailed on Viking Ships, and in the 1950’s King Olav V declared them the, “Official Cat of Norway.” Radar is very curious and sticks his nose wherever it doesn’t belong—especially into my suitcase when I visit. He is rather aloof which is okay with me, because we share a mutual respect, and he is never destructive. Radar waits for my son to come home from work, follows him up the stairs and rolls over for a belly rub (just like a dog). I like him because he minds his own business, and except for an occasional hairball, doesn’t cause a fuss—other than the day he trotted across the coffee table and set his tail on fire. It was a Viking thing!  His breed is one of the few domestic cats capable of descending a tree head first. Since he’s an indoor cat, the refrigerator seems to suffice as long as you keep the door shut.

Just like people, dogs and cats have their own personalities.  I did not mention the two ankle biters in my neighborhood. Their dogs aren’t so well trained either.

Esther Blumenfel