Frank sat in his recliner, his right leg up, his big toe attacked by gout. He was far from happy. He was miserable, hungry, and in pain. Edna was in the refrigerator – that is, her head and upper body – looking for Thursday night dinner.
“The toe’s terrible,” complaint Frank. “It’s as bad as the time we were at Niagara Falls.”
“It was at the Grand Canyon you had the gout, Frank.”
“The Grand Canyon? I knew it was someplace big.”
He was subject to gouty arthritis and other conditions for which medications occasionally worked. Then, there were side effects. Frank had trouble following the nightly news on the flat screen. Edna had trouble at the back of the refrigerator. What would happen if she could not find the mac & cheese?
“I’m a little sick to my stomach,” said Frank.
“Is it a side effect, Frank? Or is it something else?”
“The pills that Dr. Fruman prescribed don’t seem to be working. I’m really queasy.”
“Can you eat? You’ve got to eat.”
“I feel as bad as I did the week we stayed with your sister.”
For a large part of that week, Frank recalled being in the bathroom, unable to eat his sister-in-law’s brisket and goulash. For some reason, she served brisket followed by goulash.
“I think you’ve got it wrong, Frank. It was when we were with your brother and the second wife who divorced him.”
“Is it mac and cheese again?” he asked.
“I can give you mac and cheese or something that’s very green at the back of the refrigerator here,” offered Edna.
Frank coughed. “Remember when I had bad laryngitis?”
“That was at Niagara Falls, Frank.”
Niagara Falls – he thought about the cascading water and what he had missed.
Edna put a dish of what appeared to be mac and cheese into the microwave.
Laryngitis – when the larynx doesn’t work right. A week without talk at Niagara Falls. Edna set the timer. Pain, stomach upset, mac and cheese, and laryngitis. She realized that’s how things are – the bad, followed by the good…
David Sydney is a physician. He has pieces in Little Old Lady Comedy, 101 Words, and 50 Give or Take.
At the bus stop last night I spoke to the youth. He was wearing all black and I wondered if he worked at a business in the area. I had been craning my eye down the street looking for a bus; three minutes, he said.
Frank sat in his recliner, his right leg up, his big toe attacked by gout. He was far from happy. He was miserable, hungry, and in pain. Edna was in the refrigerator – that is, her head and upper body – looking for Thursday night dinner.
It’s a warm and humid summer afternoon and they have the field to themselves. The mother is short and trending toward curves and folds, but still close enough to her softball prime to have a strong arm, and she does a little O-yah, arm-pumping victory shuffle around the mound when she slips a good one past her swing-away daughter. The daughter, tall and lanky, all straight lines and right angles, returns the favor when she drills one of her mother’s pitches up the crease into deep right-center, or lofts a big, floating, full-moon of a shot over the left field fence.
In a departure from our regular offerings from esteemed writers, this post has been co-written by Jay Harrison and ChatGPT. Jay is located in Santa Fe and you would have to ask ChatGPT where in the world it is resident, but suffice it to say it’s somewhere in the Cloud.
Well, it’s happened again. Yesterday I ran into someone that everyone thinks is dead. Why it always happens to me is a mystery. In any case, who should I spot leaving a yoga studio, with a catcher’s mitt no less? Why it’s Yogi Berra!
