You Say, "Potato," I Say, "Solar-Powered Rainbow Maker"

Gerry's World: Everyone's got a different way of looking at everyone else, but it's all a paint-by-numbers scheme.

To my doctor, I'm a 140/90 - that was my blood pressure during our visit last week.

To my teammates and legions of fans, I'm a 48, my jersey number when I played for the University of Michigan football team.

To my wife, I'm a 6.2 on the Richter scale every time I sit on the couch next to her. She gets all huffy when I make my move from standing to sitting by her side.

To the acne-scorched teenager working his first job at Best Buy who I hassled on Friday about gifts for my tween grandchildren, I'm a 6 - pretty hot, but he wouldn't know what to do with me if he could get me.

To Jimmy Carter, I'll always be a 240 - the number of electoral votes I won, to his 297 during our presidential face-off. Damn him.



Anyway, I've just returned from Thanksgiving with the family, and I'm figuring I'll just use hibernation as an excuse to skip Christmas altogether. What a bother! Everyone forced together to say things like "My how you've grown!" or "Your children are so darling!" or "Really, that goiter isn't noticeable unless you are in anyone's line of vision." Back when I actually engaged in this fake merriment, my son actually said all these things to me, and then revealed that he had been sarcastic. It took me a couple seconds, but I got it. And now I'm just bitter.

And what do you get an ex-president in his 90s? The answer is nothing - literally, there is nothing that I could possibly want except another shot at the White House. I get John McCain could give me that by dropping out of the race and aggressively supporting my candidacy. Same with Hillary Clinton.

So here, below, I've come up with a list of things that I definitely don't want, if you're thinking of getting something for me. Everything here costs under $40 - in 1974 dollars, anyway:

-Dom Perrignon Champagne - What is there to celebrate, after all?

-Handheld Food Lifter - For when you need to scoop something up off a hot pan or something. But I don't do any cooking, so I don't need that.

-Curveless Rectangle of Transmitted Sound & Light - I'm very comfortable with my current cathode ray tube product, and I don't want to waste any of my precious time dealing with some new-fangled technology.

-Collection of Words Printed Coherently in Rows and Bound Betwixt Covers - Never a fan of reading, I stopped bothering years ago. When people ask me what I've consumed lately, I tell them, 'Soylent Green - that shizz was for real!'

-Prism - My vision's already going, along with every other part of me besides my steel-trap mind, so why would I want to make myself see things that don't exist, like refracted light?

Actually, you know there is one thing y'all could get me that would make me happy. You could create flattering pictures of me, as I suggested a couple posts ago as a contest. No entries yet except from from Karaoke Mike, but since he's the one who gave me the idea in the first place, I don't think it'd be fair if he won. That's all I'm saying - enter today!

There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe,
Gerry