Joe ~ May 1

 

May Day

 

Well May has snuck up on me. It was just February and now it’s May. Time is simply melting away and I’m doing my best to keep up. I mean, I really don’t have to keep up. I don’t have to do much…Take care of myself: bath, change my clothes, brush my teeth…keep in touch with my spouse and kids, be available to friends and acquaintances that might need my assistance. The rest is choices. For the most part I can choose to go to that appointment, eat that 3 pound bison burger from Jim Dandy’s or stand in the middle of Times Square pretending to be the Naked Cowboy’s lost uncle with my flesh colored body suit concealing my Rubenesque physique…singing songs of the old west while dancing with a kindly Minnie Mouse who is so eager to win the hearts and minds of all the little children on their class trip from Perth Amboy. Hey? Why not? It’s a living. But I digress. 

Sometimes the highlight of my day is revving up my old Waterpik and scouring away at my teeth and gums. It’s truly satisfying when you have that feeling of plaqueless bliss. Only to be followed by the brushing of the teeth with my favorite toothpaste. I can’t remember the brand…I just mechanically give a little squirt on the bristles and start the rotational exercise: up and down and back and forth. I think the toothpaste is some Ayurvedic concoction which has a lot of good chemicals and less of the bad ones. Auromere….that’s it. Cool Name!! But, All my life I’ve been so let down by the whole toothpaste experience. When I was young and watching the old Philco black and white TV, Madison Avenue advertising execs bombarded the airwaves with those sleek, polished commercials with the toothpaste coming slowly and smoothly out of the metal tube….yes, they were metal back then….maybe they’re still metal, I’ll have to check. Anyway, there this tantalizing blob of shapely and creamy goop adhering to the brush at the right angle and bookended by those perfect curly Qs. It made my sick!!! I could never get my toothpaste to do that. I bet there was millions of kids wasting tons of Colgate or Pepsodent who could not get their toothbrush to ascend to that level of aesthetique. It left me in quite a state of bewilderment. Not to mention my Mom’s dismay and confusion over our rapid use of our toothpaste supply. And then, they came out with Stripes…striped toothpaste…well of course we had to have that. New bars were set in my daily hygiene regimen. Squeeze out that beautiful graphically pleasing, sweet tasting, candy-like substance and marvel at it’s subtle twisting stripes glistening in the fluorescence of our medicine cabinet light. Surely those stripes that were much more expensive and over the course of a year would have burned up enough cash to heat a three bedroom house. But…STRIPES….ooooooo! Each color of those evenly paralleled hues represented a special magical power that would make my teeth better than they ever were before. What was this mysterious happening that allowed this substance to present itself in such a grand and masterful display. Oh? What? It’s just the chemicals and the dyes they use and some engineer had come up with a way to jury-rig the tube to separate the colors so they entice little naive kids like myself to indulge in such tomfoolery. What a dope I was. I was hoodwinked then and I’m still being hoodwinked today: Try that wrinkle cream…it prevents aging….and that energy drink will let you watch every episode of Friends without having to go to the bathroom…and that baseball player, who’s paid 50 million a year will tell you why his romantic life is going so well because he’s taking artificial testosterone supplements the size of horse pills and certainly if it works for him,  just think what it will do for you.

But in my wiser years,  I’m reaping the benefits from becoming  the discerning soul that can read between the cable news network’s lines and the meteoric blurbs that are flashing across our pupils and constantly challenging our reasonable selves. And even with that…I still can’t figure out how to spread that perfect flow of peanut butter across a piece of bread. I have tried all my life….I must be doing something wrong. Maybe it’s the Skippy Chunk brand that’s causing me to mess it up. I’ve tried the organic…but, forget about it…nothing works….I’ll continue to just haphazardly apply my peanut butter as I do my toothpaste and try to forget all the heartbreak of the promises of youth that have faded away…