Category: Funny Business

This might come as a bit of a shock, but I was never what you’d call an “Adonis.” Short, bespectacled and built like a chimpanzee with truncated arms, I had to rely on my sense of humor and extensive knowledge of Batman mythology to get dates.

Still, I always tried to look my best.

For a time, I attempted to wear contact lenses, but even the soft ones irritated my eyes. I had trouble focusing and blinked like Joel Osteen watching the collection plates being passed around.

Then I settled on cool eyeglasses. Not Elton John cool, but specs that tended to highlight my big brown eyes and chipmunk cheeks and distract from my ape-like physique. I looked a bit like the dude who fronted the Buggles.

And of course, my hairstyles have been all over the map.

There was the Keith Partridge look, the butt-cut – even a modified mullet at one point in the 1980s. I didn’t adopt a short style until I went through a two decades-long Clark Kent phase.

But now that I’ve reached the age where the only dates I’m interested in getting are the ones high in fiber, vanity shouldn’t be that big a deal.

But it still kind of is.

For example, I went years without paying much attention to my eyebrows, and then one morning I woke up and looked like Mr. McBeevee. If you don’t know who Mr. McBeevee is, he was a character played by Karl Swenson on an episode of “The Andy Griffith Show.” Dude had some wild-ass brows that seemed to take off in several different directions. They were like tiny Medusa snakes.

Anyway, I now find myself having to trim my brows at least twice a week because if not, it looks like a pair of caterpillars are taking naps above my eyes.

And as for hair, I prefer wearing it kinda long but it’s thinning on my crown. I’m afraid if I don’t so something soon, I’ll look like the monks of old – or even the Monks of the 1960s (their song Monk Time is way ahead of it’s time, by the way).

A quick fix would be to shave my noggin, but that’s not a real option for me. A lot of people look really good bald, but you have to have the right head shape.

I do not have the right head shape.

If I opted to shear off my locks I’d look like Lex Luthor. Well, maybe not so much Lex Luthor as his less attractive brother, Lenny Luthor, who runs a small booth at the outlet mall where he sells cubic zirconia Kryptonite.

So, I’ve decided to try a topical hair growth treatment. It’s actually working because one of the early signs of regrowth is what appears to be peach fuzz, and it’s popping up on and around the crown.

If leaves appear I’ll probably discontinue use of the product, but I might see how they look first.

Finally, staying in shape is a chore when you get older.

I’m happy that my weight is basically where it’s supposed to be compared to my height, but under no circumstance would I go shirtless – even at the beach.

I never was one to show off my pecs (or even my bushels), but unless you have personal trainers and really good genes, time has a way of making your chest and torso look weird. I give myself the once-over in a mirror and just seem formless and uncooked.

And in my case, there’s that whole ape shape I have to deal with.

If I was running shirtless in a park, the first kid who saw me would shout, “Mama … look at the pink monkey. Can I feed it?”

Fortunately, my darling person loves me the way I am, which is a good thing because I can only do so much about the way I look. So even if I have bushy eyebrows, a bare crown and a chest and stomach that looks like it has just been poured out of a can, it really wouldn’t matter.

Besides, I think she truly enjoys watching me peel bananas and pick things off her head.

A while back we were doing some purging and downsizing, so it seemed like a good time to donate items to a local thrift store. This particular organization was in need of everything from clothes to working appliances to household furnishings, and among other things we had shirts, dresses and a decent toaster to pass along.

The big-ticket items, though, were a couple of area rugs we decided to part with.

Both were in good shape – although we’d had them for a few years – but in our current domicile they simply didn’t fit. So, we rolled them up and left them out for pickup along with the more traditional donations.

Well, the clothes and toaster were picked up immediately, but the rugs were left behind.

Not only that, there was a note attached to them: “We are unable to use these as there are signs of animal activity.”

I found this message rather cryptic. I mean, what kind of activities do they think my animals have been engaging in?

Are these activities specific to the rugs?

Should I be concerned?

As you might know we have two dogs (Charlie and Steve) and two cats (Bane and Thor), and more often than not they’re in the same room with us. But when we sleep, we don’t know with any degree of certainty what they might be doing, so this is probably when they were engaging in activities on the rug.

What were they doing, I wondered?

They enjoy playing 5 Card Stud, but that’s usually done at the dining room table. I can’t count the times I’ve had to get up in the middle of the night and tell Steve to put his cigar out.

Maybe they were using the Ouija Board. Both Bane and Thor have a fascination with the occult – it’s a cat thing – and there have been several times they’ve roped Charlie into playing with them.

Ever since they held a séance and scared him, though, he’s pretty much stayed away from the dark arts.

Twister? Yeah, a rug is probably a good place to put down the Twister mat, especially since it would probably slide around on the hardwood floors.

But we don’t have a Twister game in the house and the only animal that could’ve bought one is Steve. However, once we found out he’d subscribed to a pair of Chihuahua swinger sites, we took his credit card away. (He’s six now and old enough to make his own decisions, but not with our money).

Frankly, we were at a loss until we studied the note a bit closer. It did say there were “signs” of animal activity.

Did the signs come in the form of a vision?

Had they been foretold in quatrains written by Nostradamus … or in this case, Nostradogus?

A canine eats new food

Yet his stomach hits a snag

An ingredient causes stress

Now his itchy butt will drag

Perhaps one or more of our critters had left a coded message that the thrift shop workers could see but we could not. I suppose they might have one of those ultraviolet light instruments that are used during crime scene investigations. Although invisible to the naked eye, they shine it on the rug and reveal such phrases as, “This is where Bane peed,” “This is where Charlie pooped,” “This is where Thor barfed,” and “This is where Steve spilled his high gravity beer.”

Truth is, we might never really know what kind of activity was so egregious that our used (yet still quite functional) rugs were passed over.

However, there is a bright side.

I have since moved the rugs to the large storage area attached to our garage, where they now have new life decorating the floor. And considering our animals have never been to that area of our property, then the area rugs should be free from their activity going forward.

Unless, of course, Steve learns the code to the garage door opener.

Then all bets are off.

When I was a kid, summer was absolutely glorious.

Once the dismissal bell rang on the last day of school, it was as though the sun had personally invited me to a three-month party – a party that included lots of swimming, a little bat-and-ball action, and creek adventures that started right after breakfast and ended just before dusk.

If I lean back now and close my eyes, I can almost smell the freshly cut grass. I can also smell the tanning lotion covering the beautiful neighbor while she lounged by the pool. And before you think I was a little creep, no, I didn’t stare at her while hiding behind a bush next to the chain-link fence that separated our property.

And even if I did, you can’t prove it.

But those sometimes crazy and oftentimes lazy days of childhood summers are long past, and have since been replaced by the oppressive, unbearable heat and humidity of this dreadful time of year.

Mary has much more tolerance for the heat than I do, and when I complain about it she’ll say, “It’s Alabama in June. What do you expect?”

She’s right. While climate change has certainly made things much worse, it’s not like it wasn’t hot during the summers of my youth. It was … I guess I was just too distracted by fun and frivolity to care.

In the era before video games, kids like me spent most of our days outside if it wasn’t raining. That’s where all the entertainment was found.

You’d play ball, swim, then just run around doing generic kid things until it was time for lunch. After you ate, you’d rinse and repeat until dinner. After dinner, well, the drill was the same.

I’m sure I got hot and I’m sure I sweated, but I don’t recall ever complaining about it.

But boy, do I complain about it now.

Even when I start a 5 a.m. walk, the heat slaps me in the face the minute I open the door. Most mornings the air is completely still, and after I’ve gone a mile, I’m already drenched in sweat.

And if there is a breeze it not only doesn’t help, it often makes things worse. It feels like how I imagine it would feel if a fire-breathing dragon burped on me.

I mean, summer breezes might have made Jim Seals and Dash Crofts feel fine, but that’s probably because they both had low metabolic rates.

By the time my daily summertime walking is complete, I’m utterly exhausted, ornery, smelly and look like I just emerged from a swamp. And when the sun rises and goes into full bake mode (thus triggering all dumpsters within a five-mile radius to activate their repulsive odors), I dread having to venture back out in it.

With two dogs that require multiple outdoor business trips I can’t avoid it, but I try to take them someplace where there’s shade for them and me. And to encourage a quick evacuation process, I’ll often sing soft, soothing tunes that are proven to promote regularity. (I’ve found that Escape: The Piña Colada Song triggers copious poopage).

The only positive to the hellish heat is walking back inside, where I’m treated to central air conditioning, whirring ceiling fans and even a box fan when I feel like running up the score.

“But, Scott,” you ask. “Surely you like going to the beach … enjoying the sand, surf and ocean breeze?”

Yeah, about that …

There was a time in my late teens and early 20s when beach trips were at the top of my list, mainly because of the nightlife. But again, those days are over.

I like looking at the ocean, but I like doing it from the comfort of the hotel balcony.

I don’t enjoy being on the beach because sand gets in my crevices, and I don’t like getting in the ocean because of sharks, jellyfish and things that want to hurt and/or eat me.

Looking at things positively, though, every day of summer that passes means we’re a day closer to fall. And even though Deep South falls now have muted colors and last only 30 minutes or so, they’re still a great relief from being trapped in Mother Nature’s oven.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but summer can kiss my ass.