Category: Humour

That's just weird

5/2/2017

At breakfast this morning I found we had run out of milk for cereal so I went to Plan B, a bagel. I put it in the toaster and got the butter and jam out ready to get it on there while the thing was still hot. The butter's got to melt into it, and the whole thing has to be warm when I put it in my mouth.

Linda saw what I was doing and asked me to get a bagel out for her too, since she hadn't eaten yet either. While mine was toasting, she started spreading butter on hers cold, and then peanut butter on top of that.

I looked at it, and looked at it again, and said, "That's weird. That's just plain weird. Aren't you even going to toast it?"

"No. I like it cold," whereupon she walked out into the living room with it and plunked herself down in front of the TV.

That got me thinking. "You know," I said, as I sat on a chair at the kitchen table, "it's good that we all have these little differences in what we like. It makes us feel like individuals, instead of just doing what we're supposed to do all the time."

Without turning around: "That's for sure."

At our advanced age, we've stared at all the supposed-tos in our lives so many times, and catered to them and fought with them so often, that they're like heavily armed jailers always crowding in on us wherever we are, just now leaning down over my bagel with their typical grim expressions.

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Erin Kelly were you eating Russian 'black bagels'?
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Stan Burfield No, brown, whole-wheat ones. Why?
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Erin Kelly Something about your metaphor reminded me of Russian literature...
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Stan Burfield Ha ha. It would be so much fun having a conversation with you, Erin.
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Erin Kelly Stan Burfield same!
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· Reply · 2 May at 20:38

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The Picard Card

12/5/2016

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Each Christmas, after watching the new James Bond,
I would walk to the mall feeling tall and ornery,
and Santa would see me stroll in and would know
that my only dreams were those heavy eyebrows,
that slick black hair, and the voice of Sean Connery.
But I grew, and Bond became just a dumb show;
His stunts against the entire Star Trek galaxy? Not likely.
So when white-haired Jean-Luc took his chair, I grieved
and finally let Connery go, and ever since then,
my friend, it’s been
let it snow, make it so, let it snow.

Watch the video.

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I THINK IT’S LIKE THIS.

12/2/2016

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Carl Lapp, who is a long-retired MD and has heard me mumble about my sleeping problems too many times, said, “Why can’t you sleep? What do you do that keeps you awake?”

I thought about it and said, “Well, I start thinking.”

He said, “Why does the thinking keep you awake?”

“I guess it makes me anxious. Yes. I start thinking about things that cause me anxiety, and then I’m wide awake.”

Pause.

“So how do you get to sleep in the first place?”

“I stop myself from thinking.”

“Like in meditation?”

“Yeah, I keep myself from thinking as long as I can and suddenly I’m asleep. But sometimes, like they say always happens in meditation, I start thinking again and then have to stop myself over again. But usually I can do it.”

Another pause.

“So then thinking causes anxiety?”

“Now that you mention it, it seems to quite often. And yet I get many of my most fulfilling moments from thinking. Trying to understand things.”

Carl left me hanging there, which is something he gets a big kick out of doing. He likes to ask a lot of questions but never give any answers.

Well, later, as it sank in, which he knew it would, I thought to myself: “I guess it’s finally time to start meditating.” But just as I thought that, I thought, “No, it’s not the meditating I need to do but the stopping thinking.” And then suddenly I imagined myself moving calmly through my normal day, doing chores, taking care of responsibilities, socializing, listening to Mozart, all without thinking. Just gliding through everything. Wow. Such a beautiful vision!

Okay, I think I’m going to try it. Who knows, maybe it’s easier done than thought about. Or done without thinking about it.

Or just done. Is that the way to think about it?

Carl? Are you there?

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My world of coincidences

4/20/2016

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These things happen to me far too often for intellectual comfort. For instance, today. Three hours ago I posted, here, just below this posting, a humourous blurb about my continual problem with ADHD. My poor wife, Linda, has to put up with my endless mental outbursts. I do try to stifle myself but with limited success.

So what's the big coincidence? Just now, only a couple hours later, I got a call from my doctor saying that after what must be about a year she finally has a response from the ADHD specialist asking me to request from them an "intake package" to fill out.

"Oh! Finally! So when will they take me in for diagnosis?"

"Well," she said, "It's usually about 16 weeks after they receive the intake package."

"!"

I'm actually happy with a friend's original diagnosis of me. I had mentioned to her my lifelong difficulty concentrating on virtually anything: text books, any other books, lectures, conversations, and now the open mic poetry readings. She was able to diagnose me (hesitantly) right away because she has children with the same problems.

But what are the chances against hearing from my doctor about this within minutes after I wrote about it, which was at some random point in the middle of this year and a half of waiting? Pretty steep, but this kind of thing seems to happen to me a lot more often than it should.

So, okay then. If my existence is so tuned into the universe, maybe I can actually "force" coincidences to happen! Why not? It's no more unlikely than the other. So for instance, maybe, just from me writing this second blurb the doctor will have to get back to me before this day is out. No choice.

I'm waiting.

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Donald Brackett Synchronicity rules.
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Stan Burfield Weirdness all of it.
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Donald Brackett Indeed. gets weirder every day.
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Stan Burfield Well, my weirdness just stays pretty much at the same level.
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Donald Brackett Mine too. But the world is catching up.
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Stan Burfield yeah, yes. The population increases, and so do the possible connections and coincidences.
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Donald Brackett Especially with social media and Trump, our civilization itself now has ADHD, just like us, but on a mass scale.
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Stan Burfield Oh dear. And I've been counting on the world to calm down my jitters. Great. Well, at least I know now that the world isn't responsible for them.

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Is that rumble a distant train or the city?

4/20/2016

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It was midnight and Linda went out on the balcony to sit and absorb the cool night and the quiet. I left her in peace as long as I could but finally gave up and came out and sat in the other chair. There were very few cars on the roads down below. The only sound was the continual hiss of my tinnitus. And when I managed to delete it, the remaining silence was so unusual and obvious it seemed nearly audible.

I wondered why. What am I not hearing? Ah! The crickets haven't begun their season yet. No birds are singing either. Too late at night for them.

"Do you think in summer the crickets start in when the birds stop?" Linda thought about it. "Because just from memory it seems like you either hear the one or the other."

She smiled. "I don't know." She put her head back again.

I listened.

"Is that the train in the distance?"

"I don't know. It sounds like it but it's going on too long isn't it?"

"Well, it's probably a really long train."

I was thinking. "And from here it's like we're over there watching the train go by but at two intersections, not just one."

"What?"

"Well, say we were sitting in a car at one intersection and the train just started going by." I drew it on the table with my finger. "And we waited till say a hundred cars went by and just before it finished we backed up and drove to an intersection a long ways ahead where the train was just getting to and we sat there and watched it go by again." Linda was staring at me. "Well, that would be the same as us sitting here and listening to it in the distance going past those two intersections."

"Stan-ley!! Can't you just shut that brain down for ten seconds and relax and listen to the silence?!?!"

5 likes: Kathryn Alexander, Silvia Palacios and 3 others
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Cambridge Keenan lol
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Kathryn Alexander shhhhhhhhhhhh! listen to the silence
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That's just weird

The Picard Card

I THINK IT’S LIKE THIS.

My world of coincidences

Is that rumble a distant train or the city?

Stan Burfield's Blog

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