I admit it: I am given to bald statements and sweeping generalizations. I like to encapsulate situations, and I probably don’t pay enough attention to truth or accuracy. Many of my pronouncements are made for effect, usually humorous. I don’t care or insist that you agree with me, just that you acknowledge the thought, and maybe take it a step further. This tendency is most likely at the core of my relative success as a broadcaster and a writer.
That being said, this volubility is the source of tremendous amusement to my family, particularly my children. I recently discovered that my younger son has been keeping a list of what he considers my more ridiculous declarations. He’s taken to trotting this list out at family occasions, not to humiliate me so much as to reduce the entire table, myself included, to tears of laughter. I don’t really mind. What do they say? If you can’t laugh at yourself everyone else will beat you to it? Something like that. Anyway, I’m going to share some of these maxims with you today. Some of them might require some context or explanation. Others will just have to be accepted at face value. By no means do I stand by any of them. If you come to fight me on any of these hills, I will run away. So here goes:
All gingers are giants
Maybe not all, but many.
Why wouldn’t Jamie (my daughter-in-law) take MY last name?
This was a critical response to the patriarchal insistence that a woman give up her name - alright, her father’s name - to take on her husband’s. To what purpose? In any case, Jamie kept her own name, or rather her father’s.
Yes, I know what an upper decker is. I invented it.
I have no idea what prompted me to say this, considering the upper decker in question is not a two level bus. I did not invent the upper decker; I was simply trying to convey that certain pranks have been around as long as plumbing has.
Your generation can’t travel without water
You may not be able to buy a house, but at least you’re hydrated.
I would have a baby right now if I could
This is not meant to pressure my own children. I’ve often felt there I could have had a third child, but we never got around to it. Now I gaze at babies in strollers with barely concealed covetousness until their mothers nervously wheel them away.
Nobody went to Switzerland before “The Sound of Music”
Never mind that it was set in Austria
We’ve been fantastic members of the community
That one is pretty much horseshit. I’ve done nothing for the community, other than live in it.
I brake for lesbians
I brake for anyone, but two women were jaywalking hand in hand in front of my car.
(At the cottage) That was an emergency loon call.
Loons have four distinct calls. The tremolo signals distress and acts as a warning. Not to us. We are not on call.
I miss the days when I smoked and drank
Said with drink and cigarette in hand
A single man is always welcome at a dinner party, and that hasn’t changed in a thousand years
Not since the Battle of Hastings
Good Friday is a the weirdest day of the year
And has been for two thousand years
There are more. Sadly, so many more. Will there one day be a compilation of my wit and wisdom? I very much doubt it. But I’ll leave you with this, which I also said, and this one’s true:
I may not be right but I’m having a good time!
I hope you are too. We have opened up the comments to everyone, so go ahead and share your own half-assed opinions - isn’t that what comments are for? But if you aren’t a paid subscriber, please consider becoming one. Your support allows to us continue writing and talking about things that actually matter, for the most part. Thank you, and now I must go see about that loon.
I tell people I invented Post-Its, à la Mira Sorvino in Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion 😬
A cup of filthy? That's a strange one.