WHAT? ANOTHER QUESTION ?

Here I go again.  Another question.  I probably ask more of them than I should, but then again, I guess I can't help myself.  It's my age I guess.  
The other day, I think it was yesterday, I received news about the death of a classmate of mine.  This has been happening a lot to me lately.  I suppose it will continue from now on.  Then one day I will be the news.  Until then, I'm here getting the news.  Sometimes it brings me back to the times in my youth when I would hear the elderly speaking about something that was very mysterious to me.  This is one of those times.  My classmate died from complications that set in after a rather hard fall.  Because he was from Madagascar, a particularly poor country, I could imagine him falling front some wobbly, bamboo staircase leading to the interior of a house built on stilts.  Then I got further news from a friend in France that he was the superior and pastor of a very comfortable residence and parish in Grenoble, France.  That's when I winged it back to my youth and the question, "why do I hear of so many old people falling, and dying subsequent to the fall?"  This is still very mysterious to me.  I cannot imagine my death certificate with the coroner's note saying, "Death was caused when subject fell at home."  I'm sorry, I just cannot bring myself to believe that this still happens...if indeed it ever did.  If that happened to me, I'd lay there in my $2,000 box blushing every single minute the cover was open.  I'm a few weeks away from 75, but I'll let you put my head in a bucket of Hot Ralston if I die from falling at home.  [Quick, tell me which early evening action radio program had Ralston for a sponsor?  Anybody remember who used to say, "Stick my head in a bucket of Hot Ralston?"]  
But then, let me confess one little thing.  I now have an appreciation for the fact that it can happen.  Even I am not immune to moments of disorientation.  One or two seconds and I'm back.  It happened to me just about a week ago.  It's all the more embarrassing that it happens at night in the dark when I have just decided that it would be better to get up than to wet the bed.  I have noticed that since I was quite ill about 1.5 years ago, I have moments of wavering when there is dim or almost no light.  If I fell then and couldn't get up, that would be quite a sight.  There is good news though.  The Voice from the Kitchen [oops, there I go again] says that I glow in the dark.  It would therefore be easy to find me.  Are all brown people that nasty? ~(;-)-[--<
Anyway, I am beginning to accept the fact that old people fall.  If that's the way I die, you have my permission to make all the jokes about it that you want, even if I am blushing in the box.  It's better to make all kinds of silly jokes and snide gossipy remarks at my funeral rather than crying.  No crying at my funeral, you hear?  Especially if it's because of a fall...even if it is just falling from a foot or two, or from stubbing my toe, or from getting lost on the way back from the biffy in the middle of the night.  
I'm glad I got that off my chest.  But I still can't figure out how people die from falling at home.  My Malagasy friend was a really nice guy too.  

MAY I ASK A STUPID QUESTION?

Tonight I was preparing the sixth day of the running Christmas Card and I have to admit that I was doing a lot of on-going research.  You know what that means...Go ogle the images on Google.  As I was doing that I asked myself for the Nth time, "What did I do before this?"  Well, I asked questions, for one thing.  Some of them were smart.  Some were dumb.  Some were stupid.  Some were even "smart ass."  You know the kind:  "Do you have have Prince Albert in a can?"
Now that we have the Internet and Google, you can get Smart Ass questions by the dozen.  Except now they call them, "100 questions that you forgot to ask when you were growing up."   But it was really different then.  I remember my grandfather reading the newspaper a lot.  He used to say that the only thing anyone had to really learn in life was how to read.  I believed him then.  Now though I think I would challenge that.  After all if all anyone would learn is how to read, who could write anything for anybody else to read?  Hmmmm?  Never thought of that, did you Joe?  [Yes, that was his name, except in French it was always pronounced "Joseph."]  It's the same kind of question that I was asked when I first got to Italy.  "Why do the 'Federali' [Federal Police] always go around in pairs?"  Now this is a fairly intelligent question, right?  In this case it's the answer that is bent.  The correct answer is, "One knows how to read, one knows how to write."  One of them broke Joe's rule.
Seriously, the amount of information that is immediately available in today's world causes more questions than it gives answers.  It is really a very challenging world.  When a person my age has to wonder who ever needs a pencil any more.  I can't remember the last time I used a pencil.  Of course it goes without saying therefore, that I can't remember the last time that I used an eraser.  Hey, wait!  That's great.  That means that it's been a long time since I make a mistake.  I knew it.  I knew it.  I always did know that I hardly ever made mistakes.  I always knew that I was smarter than to make mistakes.  Maybe I was just using the eraser to keep in shape or something like that.
I really did not have to go far to research anything.  I just used to ask EFR Dion, and he would tell me.  If it was a catechism question, I would ask my grandfather, Joe, I mean, Joseph.  He was a walking encyclopedia about religion.  He had the right answer to everything about the Catholic religion.  I mean it.  I would ask him something I had never heard about before and he would say, "You don't know that?  You should know that, the Pope said so."  End of story.  Period.  No question mark.  If it was really important it had an exclamation point after the word Pope.  So apparently besides reading, you had to learn to hear what the Pope said too.
So all of this to say that I think a lot about how Ol' Larry and Sergei got to know so many things.  Maybe I should not care or worry about them.  All I have to do is to learn how to read the first 10 of the 371,978,466, 001 answers that they say they got when I punched in the question, "Stupid."
See, Grandpa Joe was right.  And I dared to doubt him...He's coming after me tonight, sure as hell.

WHAT DID WE DO BEFORE...???

I was at the Holy Mass yesterday, thinking of a bunch of non-spiritual stuff. This was caused by the priest saying something in his sermon that I hadn't reflected on before, even though I had heard the Scripture for more than 65 years.

DO YOUR CHILDREN KNOW THIS GAME?

"Why didn't more boys kill people instead of playing 'Mumbly Peg Baseball with sharp knives all Summer long?"
"Do they still make 'Lil' Red Ryder' B-B guns?"
So, I ask, "Do they still make pen nibs that you have to dip into the bottle?"
Oh, by the way, "Do ball point pens still write underwater?"
I also ask, "Do they still make bicycles with horns and headlights?"
On, yeah, "Why don't they put the shifting lever on the steering post any more?"
"Have we forgotten that tires used to have inner tubes?"
"Why did we have to put only 32 lbs per square inch of air in "fat tired" bicycle wheels and 75 lbs in skinny tired, racing bike wheels?"
"When about 90% of autos have automatic transmissions, why is it still less expensive to buy an auto with a manual, five-speed transmission?"
"When dogs don't mind eating their own vomit, why do people spend big money buying expensive dog food with exotic ingredients?"
"When people profess that all they need to know about God is in the Bible, why do they go to church to listen to someone preach at them from the Bible?"
"Why does the choir leader announce the number of the following hymn when it is clearly displayed on the Hymnal Guide protruding from the wall for all to see?"
"Why do we run for our cell phone when we are looking for our misplaced wallet?"
"Why do we send emails to one another when we are working in the same 15' X 15' area?"
"Why do we complain when we are told to reread e-mails and other documents to check for mistakes?  Is it because we are afraid that we'll run out of carbon paper?"
"Why do we comb our hair after showering just 15 minutes before retiring for the night?"
"Why do we wash bananas, oranges and lemons before eating them?"
"With food so expensive and jobs so scarce, why do we grow grass instead of vegetables?

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You've all received lists similar to this one in your email.  I sat here and did these all by myself.  I'm telling you, many of this came to me in church and much of it also came to me as we were driving the 90 miles back from San Diego to our home in Moreno Valley.  I hope you enjoy it.  The one about combing your hair after a late night shower has a story to it.  It's actually a GP rated story, but it is too inane for bright people like you.  So, for tonight, "Thh,tthhaaa,  tha, tha, thasss, aaa-aa-aall Folks."

HOW LONG IS A PIECE OF STRING?

How long is a piece of string?  I really don't want any wise crack answers from any of you.  I mean, how many answers could there really be?  Think about it for a short while and when you think you have the answer, raise your hand and go to the bathroom.  You have my permission in advance.  Let me give you a hint.  The brightest answer is the same is how long is an hour?  It's even the same answer as How far is a mile?  This is so easy, that If you keep wondering and kanoodling around with this easy stuff, we'll never get to the hard stuff.  While you're fighting with that, quick, tell me what a ship weighs when it leaves the pier?  See, this stuff is ultra simple.  It's just one of the exercises that you have to do on a daily basis to avoid being victimized by Alzheimer's disease.  You have to exercise your brain.  Some questions blind-side you and when you open your eyes you ask yourself how you could have thought that the question was intelligent to begin with.  Now, while you're still trying to figure out how long a piece of string is, let me ask for help with this one that I have been fiddle-faddling around with all day:  "How do you lift an elephant with one hand?"  Hah!  You'll never get that one. That's Divine engineering stuff that no human can calculate his/her way out of.  I have to tell you that it is much more meaningful than that stupid question we had to solve as teen agers, "How do you put two elephants in a Volkswagen?"  That was ridiculously easy.  It was so easy that my friend didn't help me with it for at least three days.
You're all sitting there with your scrolling fingers itching, wondering when I am going to reach the bottom and give you a list of answers.  HEY YOU, come back up here.
OK, I'll cave in and give you a list of answers:
1. Answers
2. Answers
3. Answers


That long enough for you?  You really didn't think that I would divulge the answers to such magnificently esoteric secrets, did you?


You want answers, send a picture of Benjamin Franklin kissing Marie Antoinette.