Snot What I Meant to Write
Here's the remarkable story of how a couple of tiny, obscure newspaper items prevented you from having to read a column about snot, mucus and phlegm.
See, my mom had some surgery last week, and my two sisters and I managed to get back "home" all at the same time in order to visit her and dad and perform important duties like (1) standing around her hospital bed tattling on each other for unexplained household accidents that occured in the 1960s; and (2) assuring that dad ate right by making him buy us dinner at nice restaurants every night.
It was over one of those dinners that I raised my arm to my mouth to lightly cough into the crook of my elbow. This is something my sisters do also, as long as it's not a so-called "productive" cough, where something icky might issue forth.
This led to a thorough discussion of the pros and cons of capturing coughs with the crook of one's elbow, which segued into the appropriateness of stifling sneezes with the crook of one's elbow, and before you know it, my sisters, who both have college educations, began insisting that I write a column about which word was funnier: "snot," "mucus," or "phlegm."
So aren't you thankful that, instead, I got fixated earlier in the week on two news tidbits about how well things are going for wildlife in the state of Idaho?
Tidbit number one revealed that Idahoans just voted an otter into the governor's chair. No kidding. Idaho's Governor-elect is Butch Otter, who upon his inauguration will become the nation's second-highest ranking aquatic mammal, just behind the stars of Disney's "PB&J Otter" TV show.
More interestingly (I'll bet you're desperately hoping it's more interesting, anyway), tidbit number two explained that Idaho's moose count has reached an estimated 15,000 to 20,000.
At first, this utterly flabbergasted me. After all, I pride myself on pretending to
know a little about a lot of things, but I never knew -- or pretended to know -- that moose could count.
Thankfully, there isn't a gap in my trivial knowledge (wait, maybe that should read "knowedge of trivia"). It turns out that the numbers refer to the moose population in Idaho. And they may still qualify as flabbergasting, since 50 years ago, there were less than 1,000
moose there.
So I told my sisters that no matter how hard they might try to immerse me in snot, mucus and phlegm, it wouldn't overcome my fixation to write about moose.
To which my big sister replied, "Moose? You mean your dog?" To which my little sister and my dad replied, "Dog? What dog?"
Well, my big sister had somehow remembered that, while I was in college, I co-owned, for a few fleeting weeks, a little puppy dog named "Moose." My fellow owner was my college roomie Bill Hunter. Bill and I had big hearts for that little dog, but not big enough to overlook his tendency to, umm, expel certain bodily fluids inside our room, fluids that one would NOT, under any circumstance, want to capture in the crook of one's elbow.
As I recall, Moose got packed off to live with Bill's sister, who took great care of him and named him something very different, like "Hoss." No wait, that was Bill's nickname.
Thankfully, that nickname gets us right back on track, talking about moose, because every so often you hear a story about a hoss that's being romantically wooed by some lonely moose. A guy from the Idaho Fish and Game Department says these encounters are a lot funnier to us humans than they are to the object of the moose's affection: "Horses are terrified of moose," he says.
(Come to think of it, Hoss Hunter often behaved a little skittish around Moose the dog.)
But darn it, this column isn't about that Moose, any more than it's about the outputs of infected sinuses. Although that's about all this piece amounts to, since I've already reached my word limit.
Sorry, faithful readers. I promise to write a funny column about moose someday, when I'm not so distracted by members of my very own phlegm-ly.
# # #
TakefiveT5@yahoo.com
See, my mom had some surgery last week, and my two sisters and I managed to get back "home" all at the same time in order to visit her and dad and perform important duties like (1) standing around her hospital bed tattling on each other for unexplained household accidents that occured in the 1960s; and (2) assuring that dad ate right by making him buy us dinner at nice restaurants every night.
It was over one of those dinners that I raised my arm to my mouth to lightly cough into the crook of my elbow. This is something my sisters do also, as long as it's not a so-called "productive" cough, where something icky might issue forth.
This led to a thorough discussion of the pros and cons of capturing coughs with the crook of one's elbow, which segued into the appropriateness of stifling sneezes with the crook of one's elbow, and before you know it, my sisters, who both have college educations, began insisting that I write a column about which word was funnier: "snot," "mucus," or "phlegm."
So aren't you thankful that, instead, I got fixated earlier in the week on two news tidbits about how well things are going for wildlife in the state of Idaho?
Tidbit number one revealed that Idahoans just voted an otter into the governor's chair. No kidding. Idaho's Governor-elect is Butch Otter, who upon his inauguration will become the nation's second-highest ranking aquatic mammal, just behind the stars of Disney's "PB&J Otter" TV show.
More interestingly (I'll bet you're desperately hoping it's more interesting, anyway), tidbit number two explained that Idaho's moose count has reached an estimated 15,000 to 20,000.
At first, this utterly flabbergasted me. After all, I pride myself on pretending to
know a little about a lot of things, but I never knew -- or pretended to know -- that moose could count.
Thankfully, there isn't a gap in my trivial knowledge (wait, maybe that should read "knowedge of trivia"). It turns out that the numbers refer to the moose population in Idaho. And they may still qualify as flabbergasting, since 50 years ago, there were less than 1,000
moose there.
So I told my sisters that no matter how hard they might try to immerse me in snot, mucus and phlegm, it wouldn't overcome my fixation to write about moose.
To which my big sister replied, "Moose? You mean your dog?" To which my little sister and my dad replied, "Dog? What dog?"
Well, my big sister had somehow remembered that, while I was in college, I co-owned, for a few fleeting weeks, a little puppy dog named "Moose." My fellow owner was my college roomie Bill Hunter. Bill and I had big hearts for that little dog, but not big enough to overlook his tendency to, umm, expel certain bodily fluids inside our room, fluids that one would NOT, under any circumstance, want to capture in the crook of one's elbow.
As I recall, Moose got packed off to live with Bill's sister, who took great care of him and named him something very different, like "Hoss." No wait, that was Bill's nickname.
Thankfully, that nickname gets us right back on track, talking about moose, because every so often you hear a story about a hoss that's being romantically wooed by some lonely moose. A guy from the Idaho Fish and Game Department says these encounters are a lot funnier to us humans than they are to the object of the moose's affection: "Horses are terrified of moose," he says.
(Come to think of it, Hoss Hunter often behaved a little skittish around Moose the dog.)
But darn it, this column isn't about that Moose, any more than it's about the outputs of infected sinuses. Although that's about all this piece amounts to, since I've already reached my word limit.
Sorry, faithful readers. I promise to write a funny column about moose someday, when I'm not so distracted by members of my very own phlegm-ly.
# # #
TakefiveT5@yahoo.com
posted by Don Stuart at 8:42 AM
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