Call me slow, or maybe just blissfully unaware of the
obvious. But I just discovered today that my birthday suit doesn’t fit anymore.
Not sure when it happened, but somehow the damned thing got stretched out in
the front, sags in the back, and has so many wrinkles my steam iron just laughs
at me (hysterically).
Add to that, it hangs in places it shouldn’t and very
obviously doesn’t hang in places it used to (embarrassing). The feet now look
like a hobbit/duck cross-genetic experiment gone awry and the knees have
permanent Lewinsky pads…you may recall the whole Bill & Monica affair?
Shortly thereafter I was installing some ceramic floor tile and christened my
knee pads “Lewinskys”. My wife thought it was disgusting, of course. But my
kids thought I was pretty witty at the time. They’re a better (and more
forgiving) audience than my spouse, so I tend to believe them more than her.
Making matters worse, I sneezed this morning…repeatedly.
Sneezing by itself is an all-encompassing experience, but generally without
lasting impact. Unfortunately, I was shaving at that particular moment. So the
result is that I have a mangy looking beard to go with my decrepit birthday
suit.
Continuing on the theme, I then scratched my eye while
putting in my bi-focal contact lens which promptly tiger-striped the white of
the eye a vivid red.
I forgot to mention, over the last few days I had sequestered
myself on the 9th floor of my hotel, safe from any rising flood
waters that may have been forthcoming as a result of Hurricane Isaac. Needless
to say, the flood waters didn’t happen, for me at least. But we did lose power.
Consequently, every trip for a meal was accompanied by a death march, (down
& up) 18 flights of stairs. Two days of this and I now kind of hobble from
one side of the room to the other, listing slightly to the left and correcting
the list with an occasional lunge to the right.
The resulting combination of the sagging suit, mange-ridden
beard, blood-laced eye and stagger-lunge gait have left me looking not unlike
one of the walking dead I see in so many movies and TV series these days. So I
shouldn’t have been surprised by the horrified glances I received from
passersby on the street this morning.
The good news is that only the tourists were horrified and, truth be
told, I may have hammed it up a bit with them just to get a better response.
The other good news is the locals just assumed I was another
homeless wino. And in the short course of one hour, I had collected twelve
dollars and thirty-37 cents.
At this rate, in a few more days I’ll have enough money to
maybe get a new birthday suit!
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