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Last Saturday night, at General Yee’s Olde Tavern, I ran into a guy I hadn’t seen for a year or two. Guy saw me wandering around, zombie-like. He hailed. “Hey,” he said, “how you been? I haven’t seen you in a year, maybe two.” (Obviously, Guy had not read the first part of this paragraph.)

I said, “I haven’t seen me either. In fact, I was just looking for myself.”

Guy said, “Ha!”, and then he pointed at his girlfriend, who was also saying, “ha!” Guy said, “this is my girlfriend, Whosit.” He looked at Whosit, who was no longer saying “ha,” and he looked back at me, and I could tell that he was trying to remember my name. “Whosit,” said he, “this is . . .”

There was a brief pause, and then Guy said “Ken,” and I said “John.”

Whosit said, “Soooooo, which is it, Ken or John?”

Guy looked at me. “I thought your name was Ken,” he said.

Not knowing how to delicately sidestep the awkward social situation, I said, “Well, my name used to be Ken, but now it’s John.”

Whosit and Guy said, “Ha!”

Before her 11:00 a.m. hair-poofing appointment, my elderly mother and I strolled through Sears. We saw only one other customer. He was standing in the aisle between Electronics and Appliances, and he was so still, I nearly mistook him for a mannequin.

Perhaps I should have suspected mischief. I mean, how often do you see a mannequin in Electronics or Appliances? How often do you see a petrified customer? But I was not alarmed. If a customer had been petrified in Sears, then surely there was a reasonable explanation. Maybe he was struggling with a difficult decision — should he buy the pacific blue Kenmore Elite King-Size Front Load Washer or the Hitachi 50-inch Plasma HD1080 Television? My friends, we have all done battle in the retail arena. Which of us has never been paralyzed by indecision?

The elderly mother and I walked blithely on. When we were about five feet away from Mannequin Man, he started ranting. Apparently, he was motion-activated.

“When you reach a roadblock,” he said, “you MUST seek alternate routes! There are always alternate routes, and you MUST seek them when you reach a roadblock! If the alternate routes are also blocked, then you must seek alternate alternate routes! There is a way around every roadblock!”

Mannequin Man followed us with his eyes as we stepped carefully around him.

The elderly mother glanced over her shoulder and quickened her pace. “Oh, dear,” she said.

“Hey, lady, don’t run from the truth” I said. “Hey, lady, wait up!”

“He’s crazy,” she whispered.

“Maybe he is,” I said. “Or maybe he’s an omniscient commentator.”

“Eh? Is that like a store greeter or something?”

“Nope. It’s more like the chorus in Greek tragedy. That guy is probably trying to reinforce the moral of our particular shopping story.”

“Which is?”

“Don’t be discouraged by obstacles. Don’t let anything stand between you and big poofy hair.”

I’m in the driveway,
shoveling snow, sleet and rain . . .
Stirring a slurpee

String beans, potato balls, Purina Monkey Chow . . . ooh, and one angry old woman who swears in Italian.

Well, hello, fine female-person. I was so busy with my grocery list, I didn’t see you there. Come in, come in! Have you been waiting long? You have? Well, I apologize, and I promise that I’ll never keep you waiting again. Oop, hang on a sec. . . .

One personal-sized Christmas tree (trimmed), a wool hat with ear flaps, a secret freckle . . . there! If I don’t write these things down immediately, they go right out of my head.

So where were we? The Superbowl? Yes, as a matter of fact I did watch the Superbowl this year. I watched it at the Old Same Place. The crowd went wild when that Giant caught a wobbly pass right on top of his head. Amazing! I saw a seal do that with a beach ball once, but not during a football game. Wazzat? Oh, no, don’t feel sorry for Tom Brady. When the game ended, Tom limped home to Gisele Bundchen. Hmm . . . when those two are alone, do you think Gisele teaches Tom how to catch satin babydoll teddies on top of his head? I certainly hope so. The right foot may not be the only appendage Tom Brady keeps in a brace, if you catch my drift.

Hey, are you going to be here for a while? You are? Don’t move a fine female muscle. I’ll be right back.

Post-it notes, plastic hula girls, White Hut caramelized onions. . . .

Okay, I’m back, and I have a confession to make. One time, when I was unhappy, I ate chocolate truffles and drank red wine while sitting in a bath tub. Of course the tub was filled with water, baby . . . kripes. What? No, I am not a girl. Maybe if I had placed smelly candles around the edge of the WATER-FILLED tub, or if I had added scented Bubble Bath to the water before diving in . . . maybe then you’d have a point. But there were no smelly candles — neither bayberry, nor gardenia, nor white ginger — and the only bubbles floating in my WATER-FILLED tub were squirrel-made gas bubbles.

Hey, where’d you go? What did I say? Was it the gas thing?

And last but not least, Beano.

In the autumn of 1965, the University of Florida’s head football coach asked Dr. Robert Cade why Gators players never “wee-wee” after games. This simple, yet disturbing question changed Dr. Cade’s life forever. It lit the Bunsen burner of science beneath his personal pan-sized Petri dish of curiosity. Before he left the football field that day, Dr. Cade promised the coach and players that he would work tirelessly, selflessly, and he wouldn’t stop working until the wee-wee problem was solved.

No, he wouldn’t even stop for a pee break.

After weeks of exhaustive research, Dr. Cade concluded that blocking, tackling and ass-patting caused football players to perspire, and that the process of perspiration caused players to leak water. Through the hot summer days, Dr. Cade worked to end perspiration. Late in 1965, he invented “antiperspirant.” While this generally improved the smell of Gators football players, it did not stop the leakage.

In January, 1966, Dr. Cade abandoned his experiments in fluid retention and focused instead on fluid replacement. With the help of his faithful pet alligator, Samantha Letherpants, Cade concocted a greenish-yellow cocktail loaded with carbohydrates, electrolytes and Siberian vodka. He named the product Gatorade and rushed it into clinical trials.

Early test subjects complained that formulation tasted like pee, and the inventor agreed.

“I guzzled it and I vomited,” Cade said. “It did taste like pee, gator pee, to be specific. Not that I know what gator pee tastes like. Samantha and I don’t have that kind of relationship . . . cough.”

To improve the taste of Gatorade, Dr. Cade infused it with fresh local huckleberries. He named this new flavor “Urinberry.” And with this stroke of marketing genius, the sports drink market was born.

The polar bear is a dangerous and unpredictable predator, but it is not nearly as unpredictable as the bi-polar bear.