My mother would have been 81 today, and my elegiac mood was enhanced this morning when I walked next door to reset my nonagenarian neighbor's windblown lawn chair and noticed what somehow I'd never noticed before: a cement block in which his kids had written their names below imprints of their hands and feet. At the top one of them had scrawled the year--1965--in the wet cement. I think Wayne and his wife, Clo, who died about a year and a half ago, moved in in 1960. Wayne is still around once in awhile, but he seems to live elsewhere--maybe with the owner of one of those sets of hands and feet, who was about my age in 1965 and, alas for her, still is today. As one of my friends says, "I used to be young. Now I'm not."
On a cheerfuller note, I have funny FB friends who make me laugh out loud like a moron on public transportation. Joe Bozic, father of girls who are our girls' daycare runningmates, has a fellow professionally funny friend, Mike Fotis, who recently posted:
The dude sitting across from me is a wedding planner. In the hour I've been in this coffee shop, he's met with two prospective clients and he's landed them both. The conversations ended with the clients saying, "HERE'S A BUNCH OF MONEY THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR SAYING THAT MY DAY IS IMPORTANT."
Scrolling through the Comments, I came to this:
If I were a wedding planner, I'd just tell every last client to do it at the courthouse and save the reception money for a kick-ass honeymoon instead. And then watch the big bucks roll in for that amazing advice.
And then Fotis, a few minutes later, commenting on his own post (apparently, a third prospective client has entered the coffee house):
This guy is a goddammed MAESTRO!
I never read The Culture of Narcissism but it can't even begin to describe it.
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