Cliché’s…Just Beat Me with a Stick

If there’s one thing I loathe more than fried liver, it’s the use of blown-out clichés! My family thrived on both. If there weren’t clichés, they would have remained as mute as Neanderthals. God only knows what would have happened if liver were removed from their diet.

Like the over-use of the word ‘got.’ Forget trying to refine your language skills. It’s useless. The better substitute for ‘got’ is the word ‘have.’ Unfortunately it doesn’t fit all situations. So, like it or not, ‘got’ is here to stay. Likewise, so is the prolific use of the vernacular.

But clichés? Why, that’s another matter. Those horrid but stealthy idioms crept unawares into my subconscious. They sublimated me into a culture more consistent with the Middle Paleolithic.

As for clichés, if you rummage through the landfill of linguistic leftovers you’ll find used-up lingo and cast-off verbal offal languishing like skeletons, waiting for the promise of resurrection. It’s an ugly sight.

The streets are full of people with limited language skills who spout such drivel. You know, the yada, yada, yada crowd. ‘Get a grip, people’ (oops, a slip!).

This is not about liver, but the analogies are similar to me. They’re both revolting. Now my mother, bless her heart, tried her best by trickery to force-feed me that vile organ. It might have been her singular failing in life before she ‘kicked the bucket’ (oops, sorry mom).

If you have a teenager, don’t feel stupid if you can’t communicate. They speak in tongues these days. No, they’re not part of the Pentecostal movement; they’re just speaking their own brand of Esperanto. Read Rap lyrics.

I keep getting back to the issue of liver. Sorry. Bear with me. I’m attempting to use your sofa to pour out these awful memories of childhood and relieve myself of the burden of toting them around for another 70 years or so.

My mother disguised liver to look like hamburger steak. She globbed it with ketchup, A-1 and Worcestershire. But the stench gave it away.

Cooked liver has the aroma of an admixture of rotten eggs and Agent Orange, supposedly a harmless crop defoliate that was certified safe by the Future Farmers of America. In those days their mantra was ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ FFA dropped that slogan like a ‘hot potato’ when the military appropriated it by trying to explain the now infamous cliché of ‘it takes one to know one.’

My grandmother was a reservoir of clichés. Her favorite was ‘better than sliced bread,’ a line she swore came directly from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. She was like a jack-in-a-box. Open the lid, out pops the cliché. I searched that ancient manuscript. The only memorable line I found was, ‘that dog won’t hunt.’ I think Omar was advising Genghis Kahn at the time.

We had lots of funerals in my little town. I blame liver and clichés for my distaste for them. At funerals, ‘misery loves company’ (can’t help it). They screwed up their faces, put on the thread-bare Sears suits and uttered such exhausted platitudes as, ‘Sorry for your loss,’ or ‘He’s in a better place.’ They sounded sincere, even if the lines were lifted from some old yellowed Hallmark card.

Like everyone else, I became proficient in the use of clichés. So good, in fact, that I considered a dual career: politics and preaching. Fortunately, my brother helped me ‘read between the lines’ (now, that’s a good one!). He revealed that ‘the love of money was the root of all evil’ (bank this one!). With those career choices I saw instantly I was destined for failure, or jail, or both. So I chose real estate. ‘The jury is still out.’

Satis verborum…enough words about nothing. Somewhere out there I hear a chorus chanting, ‘Get a life!’ Which is probably what you’re hoping I’ll do right now.

Bud Hearn
January 28, 2013

We Have a Problem

The phone rings. Its intrusion fractures the morning’s silence. He looks at his watch, 7:06. Who calls at this hour?

He checks the caller ID for a clue. No luck. ‘Unknown Number’ it reads. The ring continues. Should he answer? He can’t decide. He picks up the phone, and then puts it down. He curses. Why ruin my day? So he doesn’t answer.

He sits there, soaking in his dilemma. Is there a problem? It’s always something. Surely bad news. Just to what degree. Good news never calls early. He knows from experience. Good news waits. Bad news is urgent.

Confusion clouds his mind. He weighs the options. Which is better, answer and be bludgeoned by the news, or wait, hear it on the voice mail? But what if there isn’t a voice mail? He wishes he were fishing.

The solitude of the early morning returns. Briefly. The phone rings again. 7:11. He utters a loud expletive. Annoyance begins. Now the whole house will be awake. There goes my quiet coffee with the dogs. What fool is calling? Probably wrong number he concludes.

He lets it ring. It dies a silent death on the fifth ring. He checks for a message. Nothing. Two calls, no voice mail. What’s going on?

Questions arise. Anxiety festers. The ‘what if’s’ slide into his mind. His coffee gets cold. Why does bad news invade my Saturday morning sanctuary? His mind refutes the notion, counters with the suggestion that it might be good news. He rejects it.

Mentally he disputes the point. “Good news never happens in the morning,” he argues. His mind answers, “There’s a first for everything.” He quotes statistics on early morning heart failures. He wonders who’s had one. He gulps a Zantac just in case.

He walks outside, listens for the sound of sirens. Nothing. All is quiet on his street. Minutes tick by. Birds sing. The newspaper lies on the grass, limp and damp. To hell with it, only bad news anyway. Debt, drugs, bickering, bombs and social media. Who cares, things he can’t do anything about. He wonders why he pays for such printed drivel. He’s convinced the day will be bad.

Suddenly the phone rings again. Curiosity clutches him. He decides the morning’s shot. Just face the situation. He hesitates momentarily, rushes back inside, grabs the phone.

“Hello,” his sonorous voice shouts a menace. A dial tone answers back. Damn, missed it, he mutters. He waits. No voice mail. A creeping sense of paranoia seeps into his veins. He checks his watch. 7:14. He slumps into his chair, seethes in silence. For what? He doesn’t know.

He debates with himself, questions without answers. “Why do I avoid things?” His coffee, now cold and congealed, mocks him. He knows why. It’s because he’s fatalistic. Happened in youth. He worried incessantly…about things like moles, zits and warts. Nothing good comes from chapped lips, dandruff and girls who avoided him.

He remembers parties. Nobody talks about the good fortune of others, only themselves. No, they thrive on the bad news about people, gloat on their own good news. Somebody’s always clinging to the bottom rung of the ladder. What do they say about him?

He looks at his watch and fidgets. 7:19. Will the phone ring again? Probably not, he concludes. Just forget it, he tells himself. But he can’t.

Suspense consumes him like a canker. Images of train wrecks, market crashes, plagues and famines cloud his judgment. Seconds crawl by like hours. He paces, helpless in his syndrome of avoidance.

He becomes restless. Anguish torments him. He hears voices. He has to know. Not knowing is unacceptable. But fate fiddles with him, teases him with the riddle.

His wife shambles sleepily into the kitchen. “Who called?” she asks. “Don’t know. Didn’t answer,” he says. “Again? Why?” she asks. “Because,” he says. She knows why, shakes her head. He avoids her sneer, takes the dogs outside.

The phone rings again. He checks his watch, 7:28. He bolts inside. Too late. She answers. “Really? What good news. Yes, I’ll tell him. ‘Bye,” she says.

“Who? What?” His voice trembles. “Fix my coffee please,” she says with a smirk. “I’ll tell you later…maybe.”

So much for the paranoia of avoidance. Who’s calling you today? You’ll know if you answer!

Bud Hearn
January 15, 2013

Slap Me Silly, Baby, I Think I’m Crackin’ Up

“Paranoia strikes deep, into your life it will creep, it starts when you’re always afraid, you step out of line, the man come and take you away…” Buffalo Springfield lyrics

Smack! She slapped him. Hard. The windows rattled. His face vibrated.

The tension had been building, we saw it gaining steam. It exploded, at breakfast.

It was one of those things that happens; something so out of character it’s almost surreal. It ended as quickly as it started. If it had been a gun, his wife would have been blowing smoke from the barrel before we swallowed the first mouthful of grits.

Victor sat stunned, arrested in mid-bite of a buttery biscuit. Her timing was perfect. We were all virtual and collective recipients of the spontaneous outburst. All ten of us, sitting around the table, being lashed like slaves by Victor’s extrapolations on the tribulations of marriage and morality of today’s youth. After all, he was a minister, and was to conduct the afternoon wedding ceremony. Shouldn’t he know these things?

She didn’t stop there. She unleashed a barrage of vicious words. They lacerated Victor’s skull and shook him back from the edge of insanity. Frost formed on my scrambled eggs. My link sausage shuddered in response.

She concluded, “Victor, shut up! Your neuroses are showing.” And some other choice, unprintable utterances. He did, but shrank measurably in the process.

We clammed up, too. Conversation morphed into anxious stares. What’s next, we wondered. But that was it. The ending was boringly anticlimactic. She resumed her waffle breakfast, like slapping him around was an everyday discipline to break up his mental windmill farms.We shrugged it off. Breakfast resumed.

Preachers take certain prerogatives, like sermonizing all matters moral, and much that is not. Victor was especially adroit in dogmatizing the perils of sin. His vivid constructs led one to wonder if his knowledge was carnal-based or surrogate. Neuroses do that to a man. Which prompted his wife to pop him, to jerk him back to earth.

Neurosis is an insidious affliction. Weddings breed them. Who ever got married without wondering, “I know what I’m giving, but what am I getting?” The very thought is the conception of neurosis. At least burkas are not overly popular in America, yet. Arranged marriages are the likely cause of all Arab unrest…veiled, wrapped packages, like Motel 6 mattresses, can hide hideous surprises. Neuroses hatch there.

It didn’t help that Victor and Sue spent six hours together in a car the day before. Neuroses fester in confined environments. Too much spousal togetherness is the petri dish for neurosis. Which is why Steve Jobs invented the iPad…bridge and shopping-on-the-go.

Neuroses are everywhere. Even in Congress. Weirdoes and malcontents have infiltrated the slimy legislative halls. Nothing is predictable. Governing is a crap shoot. My neurotic apprehensions grow by the minute, anticipating an outbreak of pandemonium in the streets and a run on assault rifles.

We all have our share of neuroses and paranoia. I first noticed mine when my mother took me on an escalator. Psychosis gripped me. I trembled when stepping on the moving stair. She said a small boy was eaten alive and shredded like confetti when his foot got caught in the stair’s teeth. Now I take no chances. I jump into the middle of the moving shredder and jump off at the end. I have been often photographed and occasionally interviewed concerning this neurosis.

Paranoia lurks under my bed at night. I fear a clawed hand will reach out for my foot. Same holds true for swimming in murky lakes or rivers. I refuse to touch the bottom out of obsessive fear that something is waiting for my foot.

I recently stumbled over a neurosis in Winn Dixie. It was hiding among the blueberries. ‘Organic,’ the sign said. I questioned the produce manager’s veracity. He insulted my mother. I told him where to put his berries.

Elevators bring out my worst neuroses. What if you’re trapped inside a high-rise, free-falling cubicle in the midst of a mosh pit of accountants? Is this how you want to spend your final seconds, possibly even soiling yourself in public for neglecting the restroom before getting on?

Victor’s neurosis started this. But he concluded it with the cunning artifice of a Master Nattering Neurotic. After reading the “for better or worse, richer or poorer” section, he warned the newly-weds to hedge their bets by only vowing “Maybe I Do.” With neuroses, the ink is never dry!

So many neuroses, so little oversight. Slap us silly, baby, before we all crack up!

Bud Hearn
January 5, 2013