Person, Woman, Man, Camera, TV Are Not Even On The Test
A Geezer’s Notebook, By Jim Foster
I showed last week’s column to Mary expecting her to say something like, ‘Shakespeare would wish he had written that; an essay on a par with the best of Ralph Waldo Emerson,’ or similar words of praise. Instead she just mumbled something about me getting weirder every day.
I’m sure all the great thinkers of the world have had to face poor reviews from time to time. Yet we must soldier on knowing that occasionally it takes those of lesser intelligence weeks and sometimes years to catch up. We are rarely upset by such inane criticism, but how does one know (God forbid it should happen to me) when one has slipped a few cogs and one’s sage writings are rapidly approaching the infinite number of monkeys pecking away on an infinite number of typewriters stage?
Was there a time when a citizen of Philadelphia took a long hard look at Ben Franklin standing in the pouring rain and said, ‘I think old Ben has taken too many bolts of lightning. Did you read what the silly old fart said about a penny saved being a penny earned? We better book him in to John Hopkins for a psychiatric assessment.’
I’m sure the Newton family too wondered whether Isaac really did get hit on the head with an apple or whether the whole tree came down on him. I still wonder how we stayed on this earth before his Law of Gravity was passed.
Socrates, you will remember (perhaps not, it was a few centuries ago) upset the Athenian government with his constant stream of asinine questions and they had him put down. Think about that, ladies, when you are bugging the old gentleman you live with about where he was last night and why the car is parked on the lawn.
It is a commonly held belief that there is a very fine line between genius and insanity, but how does one tell where that line is?
Now just suppose, (this is ridiculous, I know) but just suppose that I, a young man still years away from my prime, really has gone round the bend, so to speak. What if my elevator no longer goes to the top and instead is stuck between the fourth floor (lingerie) and five (kitchen appliances)? How would I know that without having my head taken to Soldiers’ Memorial for medical experimentation? There must be a test we can take in the privacy of our own homes to determine whether we are performing at maximum efficiency or whether it is time to call for the boys with the butterfly nets.
Fortunately there is a questionnaire the medical profession uses in difficult cases to decide if a patient is sane or so far gone he or she is considering running for federal politics.
- 1) Do you find yourself singing the first line of a song over and over even though your family has threatened to have your tongue crazy-glued to the roof of your mouth?
- 2) Do you find yourself complaining constantly about the blandness of your lunches even though you make them yourself? (Two slices of brown toast with a slice of cheese food material inside)
- 3) Do you find yourself worrying what cheese food actually is? If you put cheese food in a mousetrap would little Mickey choose starvation instead?
- 4) Do you think Willy Nelson is a snappy dresser and wonder how you would look with a scruffy beard and an Apache sweatband around your head? Worse, have you ever gone downtown that way? Your friends didn’t think you looked like Willy, did they? They thought you were one of the dead guys from Pirates of the Caribbean.
- 5) Do you wonder if Lois Lane ever found out Clark Kent was Superman? The man wore red boots with a business suit for heaven’s sake. What did they teach them in journalism school back in 1939 anyway?
- 6) When Lois and Super finally married in the 2nd or 3rd movie, did she wake up one morning and say, “Look, Supe, this multiple orgasm business is great, but enough is enough. I’m down to 55 pounds.”
If you have ever thought of any of these, you may be starting down the slippery slope to madness. If No. 6 has even crossed your mind, run, don’t walk, to your doctor’s office and have him change your medication.
(Image Supplied)
