Digressions of a Dilettante

Digressions of a Dilettante
Vignettes of Inanity by Bud Hearn

Friday, September 27, 2013

Being Skinny in a Land of Giants


The stigma of being skinny follows the Thin Crowd like a ghastly shadow. Living in the land of behemoths, my 165 pounds clearly qualify me for minority status. Yet I’m not alone. Arise, O army of scarecrows…and unionize.

**********

I was born skinny. I was so thin at birth they mistook me for a skeleton. They wrapped me in a shroud. My mother lost weight during pregnancy. Nurses asked if I were nine months premature. I’ve remained virtually invisible ever since.

Americans are enormous specimens these days. Look around…they have forearms the size of tires, legs like logs and trunks like Corinthian columns. The earth shakes when America walks. Steroids work wonders. People pay attention.

Nobody notices skinny folks. We evaporate in crowds. Without noses and feet, we’d have no profile whatsoever. Our spindly arms dangle from the sleeves of Polo’s like strings of spaghetti. Our clothes detest us. Our suits look like they want to crawl off of our bodies. Our legs are vestigial reminders of another era.

The emaciated among us endure hard lives and much derision. Many are the perils of being skeletal. Scales mock us. We stare at them in horror while they register each precious ounce of ever-declining body mass. We’re fearful in their presence. Last week in the food store I popped a quarter in one. It laughed and gave me back change. Scales have no respect of persons!

Skinny people have colossal appetites. Our metabolism is a raging blast furnace. We eat relentlessly. We burn through our bank accounts supporting our habit. We consume vast quantities of carbs. Calories ooze from our pores. Our hunger is rapacious. It’s a ravenous beast that claws our bellies like shards of broken glass. It’s insatiable. Without us, the potato futures market would collapse.

We survive on snacks. We’re on a first-name basis at Dairy Queen. We have reserved seating in yogurt shops. We are singly responsible for the profits of all Dunkin’ Donuts. We are addicted to peach milkshakes at Chic-fil-A. Ben and Jerry’s consult us. We’re enslaved by ice cream.

Our compulsive cravings hold us hostage. We’re shunned from party guest lists, especially those that feature buffets. Our passion for protein has made us social pariahs. The last invitation I received contained a PS: “Eat at home or brown-bag it.” They obviously remembered the last time…the time when I slid out the side door with their fruit bowl. After devouring three apples I discovered the fruit was plastic. I’m still recovering.

We swarm the natural health food stores, stocking up on whey supplements and elixirs that promise to flesh out our shrunken frames. Look at our faces. Are we smiling? Do we look healthy? Hardly! We’re walking cadavers. Black hearses wait for us outside these stores like buzzards preparing for meals.

We Bone-bags love to jog. No one knows why. Normal people don’t have these compulsions. Have you ever seen a happy runner? NO! We are not happy people. We’re tormented. We run to escape our wretched condition. Ambulances follow us in the distance, certain of the inevitable.

We don’t do diets. We read Italian recipe books and cook. No food is off limits, unless it’s green. No lettuce, no veggies. Lots of red meat, bread and beer. Sugar is the staple, butter is the backup, cheese is the crown. Add eggs, white flour, a lot of Crisco. Now you’re talking. It’s a primordial curse.

Life is boring beyond belief. It’s like living in a desert, a desolate existence in a world where nothing ever changes…same waist size, same weight, same everything. Think about always hearing, “My, you look the same, are you ill?” Hopeless.

The worst thing about being skinny is esthetic…wrinkles. The skin on our faces and bodies sags, then collapses. There’s no escape. Avon comes calling daily with its lotion van. We grease up like Yankees sizzling in the Miami sun. Nothing works. So grotesque are we that even Wal Mart refuses us entry.

**********

Many are the lamentations and afflictions of skinny people. The Fates have dealt us a very strange hand indeed! What can be said?

We are the voices of many, crying in this wilderness of plenty, “More waffles, more waffles!” And we wouldn’t have it any other way!

Bud Hearn
September 27, 2013



Friday, September 20, 2013

Do I Know You?


How do I know you? Let me count the ways. Calling you by name and name-calling are mutually exclusive. I use both.

**********

I live on a tiny island on the Georgia coast. In a sense we’re all neighbors here. Being friendly is essential, at least outwardly. But not too friendly. Hypocrisy is alive and well in South Georgia.

Knowing neighbors is one thing, but figuring them out is another. Besides, who wants to know too much about their neighbors? They might be weirdoes and invite you to dinner. You’d have to reciprocate. What would people think of you then? Identification by association is risky. Life gets complicated.

Here, as in other small towns, people are known in ways other than by their given names. For example, by their vehicles, their dogs, their voices and their swagger.

Facial recognition is the quickest means of identity. Except when people pop up out of context. Like the time you were shopping with your wife in Winn Dixie. Then, out of nowhere, a beautiful woman shows up. She smiles, you cringe. It’s not the gender that frightens you, it’s the age. Younger than your daughter. A classic example of wrong place, wrong time. Life is like this…unpredictable.

You prepare for an introduction, knowing an interrogation will follow. Suddenly your brain suffers a complete memory meltdown. To depend on instant recall synapses is to lean on a weak reed.

What’s her name? You’re terrified. You avoid eye contact, fiddle with the can of sardines, pray she’ll walk on by. No such luck. She closes in for the encounter.

“Hi,” she says with a voice that melts steel. You flash a lame smile, mutter something and pretend to vanish. She gets the message. So does your wife.

It’s important to have a plan for such contingencies. Your wife asks, “Who’s That?”

Your response is a weak stutter. “Beats me. Looks familiar, can’t place her. Clearly a case of mistaken identity.”

You are not convincing. A more intensive inquisition is gestating; you can feel it by the sudden chill in the air. Men have a keen sense of impending marital doom. But let’s leave such an unfortunate scenario.

We often know people by the pew they sit in on Sunday. Be careful where you sit in Baptist churches. Know this: they fill up from the back forward. You’re only safe on the front row.

Once I visited my mother in the small town of my youth. On Sunday I went to church alone after a long hiatus. I sat on the second row left. After the service, two ancient ladies approached, “We saw you come in and finally remembered your name. You were in the wrong place.”

Huh? A ‘wrong’ place in church? “Where is my place?” I ask, wondering if God were revealing a lingering grievance against me. I often have these thoughts in church.

Last row back right, not second row left front.” Women never forget! Do you suppose heaven has a seating chart? I shudder to imagine where my ‘place’ might be!

I know some people by their sobriquets, often concoctions of my own choosing. I ascribe names, often not complimentary, based on physical size and shape as much as swagger. Voice recognition is often easier to recall than names, especially the loud-mouth bluster in the locker room.

Word here is people peg me as an obsessive type. The cognomen ‘Screwy’ comes to mind. I think it’s because of my fetish with shirts. I have never met a shirt I didn’t like. My closet is full of them, 520 as of last March.

But a strange thing is happening…they’re slowly disappearing. Last Tuesday my stash was down to 262. Today only 194 are hanging around. What gives?

I suspect my wife. I raise the issue with her. I get that shrug-of-the-shoulders response. I know that reply…it says nothing, but then it says everything. I march her to the window.

Outside the lawn maintenance crew is wearing new uniforms, resort casual. Their flowered Tommy Bahamas bear a remarkable resemblance to my missing ones. Is there a connection?

I demand a reply. “God loves a cheerful giver,” she says, then laughs and leaves. What will the neighbors think now?

Who knows. But I know what I think…. After 47 years of marriage, I still have no clue who she is!

Bud Hearn
September 20, 2013

Friday, September 13, 2013

Hiding the Evidence


Countries worldwide are concealing their contraband WMD. Citizens in America are dodging the IRS. I take note and hide the incriminating evidence of my own indiscretions.

**********

I spend more time at home these days. Unfortunately, some of my old habits are re-surfacing. My wife is taking notice.

We play a silly game, an adult version of hide and seek. I hide things, she finds them. Concealed contraband goes undercover.

What’s this?” she asks, finding chocolate bars hidden in an old coffee can, or pop tarts under a bag of dog food. The inquisition begins. Household bliss packs its bags, heads for the door. Turmoil lurks outside, waiting for its opportunity to slip inside. Men are advised not to spend too much time around the house.

In the old days, work and children covered up a multitude of my indiscretions. What seemed then to be demonic afflictions---deadlines, carpools, soccer games--- were actually blessings. But when these wretched hardships ceased, I found myself being more covert in shrouding secrets.

I have a shirt fetish. I’ve never met a shirt I didn’t like. Last week I bought fourteen. Shirt lust is a hard habit to quit. I have enough shirts to last until the Second Coming. I have to hide the new ones.

Why? To avoid chastisement. My wife runs the house Laundromat ever since I washed her lingerie with blue jeans. Nothing is hidden from her scrutiny.

Hey, new shirt,” she says. “What will you wear THAT with?” I’m deficit in color coordination…pink flamingos on a black background go with everything, right? Hiding the evidence is essential. But where? Well, for starters, where no woman would ever touch…a man’s gym bag.

She found my favorite Elvis coffee cup cringing behind the Wild Turkey bottle. It later showed up in the trashcan, beaten to bits with a hammer. She blamed the dishwasher. She’s happier now that I have morning coffee in a thimble-sized china demitasse.

I have a Mason jar with a handle. It holds 72 ounces of sweet tea. It’s outlawed in New York, but worshipped in Ludowici. It’s a favorite among truck drivers. I hide it outside under the grill cover.

Why are you always checking out the grill?” she asks. I pretend not to hear…deaf is a good defense for men of all ages.

You’re going deaf,” she says. “Huh? Say what?” I play along. “Never mind,” she says. See? Try it yourself.

My wife has a PhD in hiding evidence…the iPad. This device leads to a lot of damage. Clearly, it was conceived by a woman. She pretends to play cards, do crossword puzzles, or read. I sometimes peek. Instantly the fleeting image of a Neiman Marcus ad disappears into the ether.

What was that?” I inquire humbly. “Nothing,” she answers. Women are adept at disguising ‘nothings’ that sooner or later become significant ‘somethings.’ American Express statements don’t lie!

It’s important to have separate credit cards. My wife piles up points by the thousands. How? Guess! As for me, I don’t have enough points for one night at Eulonia Motel Six, which, unfortunately, did show up once on my Visa. It elicited quite a bit of explanatory dialogue.

I change hiding places frequently. I once hid a new pistol in an old suitcase. I forgot where it was until my wife took the bag through airport security. The events that followed don’t bear repeating.

I try to help around the house. I often make up the bed. I wad up my pajamas and hide them behind a pillow. Folding is woman’s work. Men have questionable motives with their beneficent acts in domestic affairs.

I hide my serious reading material in a box in the attic. Things like comic books and certain photographic magazines of questionable intellectual and moral value. “Why do you always go up there?” she asks. “Reviewing some old photographs,” I say truthfully. She can’t see my grin!

A friend once had an off-premises storage unit, complete with a sofa. It was the man-cave for his licentious library. As it happened he got trapped when the door jammed. He disappeared for a week. He now reads literature without pictures at home.

Creative hiding places abound. Yesterday I stashed the latest Cracker Barrel purchase inside of the heating vent.

It’s gonna be a bad day when the heat comes on…or when she discovers my box of Moon Pies.

Bud Hearn
September 13, 2013

Friday, September 6, 2013

The Mute Button


We have a TV remote with a magic yellow button…the mute button. We use it often.

**********

I’ve become a TV scriptwriter. Last night I was watching Longmire, the one when a severed finger arrives inside of a box. I ease to the edge of my seat, anxious for the next scene.

Suddenly a man comes on. His face fills the entire 48-inch screen. He appears to be a WWF wrestler…angry, bearded, bald and sweaty. He shakes his fist and screams, foams at the mouth, demanding I purchase a Chevy pickup…Now! Or else.

I seize the remote. It becomes a club in my hand. I swing it viciously like a feral savage. “Take that,” I shout. Instantly the poor creature is reduced to babbling in silence. His now-mute mouth continues to move in rapid motion. His wild gesticulations send him into a frenzied convulsion. I hear nothing.

It’s like a silent movie, all action, no sound. I watch him squirm in his state of seizure. I pretend he’s complaining about his third divorce settlement instead pimping pickups. I imagine he’s trying to justify why she got the house and the money. His lips synch, “My lawyer shafted me.” Suddenly he disappears.

I curse silently. Just as I was getting into his ‘story,’ he’s jerked off the air. Then, as if by magic, a middle-aged couple appears. They’re sitting on a dock overlooking a placid lake. His arm is around her. She smiles seductively. He gets the message: “When the time is right.”

I leave the mute on anyway and fabricate another story. Maybe she thinks he’s rich. Why else would she be smiling? She moves her lips, “Where’s your wife?” she seems to say.

Cleaning the mobile home,” his silent lips reply.

Does she suspect?’’ her soundless lips implore. He blushes and gives her a John Belushi roll of the eyes look. His voiceless smile virtually says, “Do I look that dumb?” He pats her on the shoulder for comfort. They look into the distant sunset. It casts a fiery red glow upon the water. The scene is a contrived theatrical metaphor for where this dalliance will ultimately end up.

Several dumb commercials segue past. Poor material for parody. I switch channels. Ah, the weather man, dressed like a Rodney Dangerfield redux. He’s good for a laugh. I mute him.

He gestures at the weather map, a colored, refracted-light image on a wall. It’s shaped like a brain out of control. His lips move without sound as he points to the hideous morphing shapes…a growing green blob, mixed with a yellow mass and a red serpentine worm crawling in concentric circles. The image seems to be alive.

The map colors pulsate in violent motion like an amoeba squirming under a microscope, attempting without success to exit its confines. I choose words for him. His muted lips lament, “This is a grave situation.” A plot evolves.

Then he stops, faces the camera. His expression is grim. His lips move slowly, silently. I read them in fragments. They seem to say, “Fellow Americans…tonight…regret…report…by his side…situation…grave...brain scan…red lines consume the brain…Obama…after meeting… Putin…Syria… unresolved…mobs…riots…expelled from Russia…Biden in charge.” I wince at the frightening possibilities of my own script.

Enough amateur programming for me. I kill the mute, laugh at my creativity and resume Longmire. Then I remember Arnold’s story of how he was muted. It’s worth repeating.

Arnold’s an old friend, an alcoholic, albeit a dry one. He once talked incessantly. He identifies himself as ‘a dumb drunk.’ Harsh, yes, but the truth often is. He’s sober by day eight of detox in the dry-out institution. But he’s angry. He marches to the director’s office with a gripe.

He tells it this way: “Listen, this place has problems. Here’s my list. Now what I want is….” The director interrupts him in mid-sentence.

“Arnold, you’re a self-made man, right? Lots of friends, successful, own your business, a home, drive a Cadillac?” Arnold nods “Yes.”

The director continues. “But Arnold, you’re a drunk, and a dumb one at that. I’ll give you some advice…if you’ll keep your mouth shut you’ll be the only one who knows it.” Arnold says these words changed his life.

*********

I had a little fun with the mute button last night. But today, I may take heed and remember, “…but you’re dumb, and if you keep your mouth shut you’ll be the only one who knows it.”

I think about these words a lot…..

Bud Hearn
September 6, 2013


Illustration courtesy of Leslie Hearn