I was also a crotchety young man once. Why, way back when I was only middle-aged my mother-in-law gave me a book called “The Portable Curmudgeon” by Jon Winokur. One of the best presents I ever received (well, from her, anyway). Had a lot of fun hours reading that book. I even went out and got the sequel when it was published. Naturally, it wasn’t as good. Sequels never seldom never are. Oops, wait a minute. Something important just came up.
Hey, you kids — get off my lawn!!!
Now, where were we? Oh yeah. I was explaining that I’m not just crotchety because I’m old. It’s a gift. Like that book I once got from my mother-in-law. Oh, you know about that.
Well, did I ever tell you why my feet hurt all the time? Settle back and make yourself comfortable, it’s a long story. It all started back during WWII, the big one. Everybody was wearing pointy-toed shoes, but nobody had pointy feet. Which, since everybody did a lot of walking on account of the gas shortage that wasn’t a gas shortage at all but rather a rubber shortage so they called it a gas shortage to keep us from driving and wearing out our tires, caused bunions.
Now this part will be important later, so remember it. All we had to eat were mashed potatoes, but they didn’t call them mashed potatoes. Instead they called them, hmmmm, they called them Mussolini patatas. Or was it Kaiser Kartoffel? No, that was WWI, the big one. In WWII, it was Mussolini patatas.
Now the word ‘patatas’ sounded a lot like TaTas, which was slang for, you know, lady parts. No, no, the upper thingys. Right. That’s what gave me the bright idea to…zzzzzzzzzz
Bearly Holding On 