Dr. Metablog

My New Career

Ever since I retired a few years ago, friends and relations have been asking what I intend to do with the rest of my life.  It's time to start on a new career, and after much deliberation, I've decided to fulfill a lifelong dream.  I've always had the soul of a power forward;  now I'm going to make it happen. With this blague entry, I declare my eligibility for the NBA draft.

Let me confess:  I don't expect to be a lottery pick.  There's too much college talent and too many 7-foot Lithuanian teenagers.  High second round is what I aspire too.  I might even have to play a year or two in a European league to sharpen my game -- no problem. 

I figure that to play in the NBA, a guy needs three things:  the game, which I have;  the attitude, which I certainly have; and the body, which I am working on. 

Let me point out that at 5' 10 1/4"  (formerly 5' 10 3/4") I am a full five inches taller than Earl Boykins.  Plus I can get into the air higher than Yao Ming;  I'm a better three point-shooter than Shaquille O'Neal;  and I'm a more consistent at the charity stripe than Ben Wallace.  Those are some big names there.  Not only that, I'm a better interview than anyone in the league past or present--even better than Sir Charles himself.  I'm a team player.  I don't need to play 48 minutes;  I don't need to take the game-winning shot.  On defense, there's not a player in the league whose flopping will be more authentic. 

Because I've lived a more-or-less bookish life, my body is still in tiptop shape.  No gimpy knees or repaired Achilles tendons or fused vertebrae.  True, the A-fib could be a problem down the road, but I don't imagine that the apical hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, of which I have the merest tad, will hold me back in the slightest. 

To the club owners and general managers who are reading this blague entry -- let me point out that I appeal to an entirely different demographic than players now in the league.  Until now, there was no one to be a "spokesman" for Beltone hearing aids or Avodart or AARP.  Untold, untapped commercial opportunities waiting to be seized!!

I've been running this idea by my friends and family for the last few weeks, and I'm sorry to say that there's a lot of ageism and size-ism and negativity out there.  Let's leave that skepticism behind us! I'm ready to roll!  I just have to decide on the appropriate tats.   

(For an update on this subject, read more here.)   

An Overheard Anecdote

We were flying Frontier from DC back to Colorado.  Two old guys (old, but younger than I) were swapping stories.  Here's one.  "Rosie and I were at a hotel in Vegas, in bed.  About one in the morning, we hear a hooker knock on the door acrosss the hall.  'Anyone want a little action.'  No answer.  Then, sure enough, she knocks on our door.  'Want some action?'  Rosie says, 'Move on, honey, I'm working this room.'" 

Good dialogue. 

I assume that Rosie is the wife.  But the story, at least to my tired old ears, has a slightly different valance if she's a date, a business associate, or a mistress.

Quintessence of Motherhood

A friend, a retired nurse, was keeping watch when her ninety-plus-year-old mother was about to breath her last.  The mother, who had not been coherent for some days, was either unconscious or sleeping deeply when she suddenly roused herself, looked closely at the daughter, uttered the words "you need rouge," and died.  This story is self-explanatory but nevertheless I feel compelled to embark on a course of no doubt supererogatory explications.  The mother expresses a variety of emotions:  some positive, some not so good.  Primarily she is affectionate and protective.  She wants her daughter to take care of herself and be her best, so she proposes a practical cosmetic enhancement.  But at the same time, she is intrusively judgmental, because the statement "you need rouge" clearly finds the daughter deficient.  The mother is also impolite -- but only in the way that people who know each other intimately can sometimes be unmannerly.  This particular mother wouldn't speak nearly so frankly to anyone in the world but her own daughter.  In addition, she's competitive.  "You need rouge" means not only "you're pallid, you need help," but also hints at "I never needed rouge."  It's a humorous anecdote, because it's about the eternal continuity of mothering.  Even at the moment of death, the mother remains entirely and unequivocally maternal.  The phrase "you need rouge" also makes us smile because it displaces other last words  -- words of wisdom or serenity or love -- that we might anticipate or for which we might hope.

And what about the daughter?  Was she, or should she be, pleased, resigned, offended, amused?   

An Overheard Conversation

I was at Peet's Coffee in Alameda, California this morning, drinking hot chocolate and reading Lord of the Flies.  There were three retired guys a couple of tables away, chatting.  I overheard the following story:

"He was a lawyer for an intellectual property firm--a big-time litigator.  He met this woman and fell in love with her.  She wasn't at all interested.  She owned a window-washing company.  He quit his job and went to work as a window washer so that he could be close to her."

That's as much as I heard, but I would have liked to know what happened next. It's possible that the lawyer's perserverance was rewarded.  The window-washer lady came to understand that he loved her so much that he was willing to give up his career to follow her.  Eventually, she relented, married him, and together they developed the biggest window-washing company in San Francisco.  But then again, perhaps she realized that he wasn't really in love -- in fact, he was one of those obsessive stalkers that regularly appear in horror movies.  So she was forced to escape by selling her company, taking a new name, and moving to Idaho. He continued to wash windows, and started to specialize in eighty-story buildings.  One day, he failed to hook his belt properly and fell.  No one ever knew if it was an accident or suicide.   Meanwhile she was happy in Boise, where she married a mild-mannered lawyer.  Or --another thought -- he forgot all about her but found that he liked washing windows more than corporate law.  But one day, he was hooked outside a skyscraper window, and looked inside and there she was at a meeting.  And he fell in love all over again.  February 13:  I now think it most likely that he forgot all about the lady, moved to rural Connecticut, changed his name to Seymour Glass, and became a recluse who lived a house with very clean windows.