A Quick One

Years ago. I'm working the cash register close to closing time. The only customer in the store is an old guy who eventually comes up to buy a Penthouse. I don't really look at him as I ring it up and tell him the total is something like $6.24. He gives me a five and a one then proceeds to haul out one of those vinyl coin things where you have to squeeze the top and bottom to get it to open, a mechanical maneuver I never mastered, thus my disdain for the things. He starts shaking out coins onto the counter top. For my own amusement (and maybe my own--who knows, his too?--comfort, since ringing up nudie mag sales is always a bit awkward) I start counting aloud the change as it worms its way out of the vinyl thing to clink down to the counter: "Ten, fifteen, twenty, one, two, three, and...four," I exclaim in triumph, "six twenty-four, right on the nose!" And just as I say "nose" I look up at the guy for the first time and all I see is nose--the biggest, gnarliest, pockmarkedest, bulbous honker I've ever seen. The olfactory equivalent of a Macy's parade balloon. It was the guy's face. I'm sure if the guy had more coin in that little vinyl venus flytrap of his he would have gladly paid for a nose job the "after" picture of which would have made him look like Jimmy Durante or Karl Malden. I almost swallowed my own non-descript nose in embarrassment. Luckily the guy was old and must have been well used to people looking him in the nose with utter astonishment because he didn't react in any noticeable way. Good thing, too, because if he had flared his nostrils and inhaled even slightly, I'd have been the Jonah of proboscises. But no, he just took the receipt and the bagged mag, smiled and said thank you, and followed his nose out the door. Still, I'd rather have an occasionally accident-prone big mouth than that big nose, any day.

Richard Thompson-Oops!...I Did It Again

Hot or Cold?

Among the various either/or philosophical quandaries that have vexed me for a lifetime--among them, plain or peanut, Betty or Wilma, burrito or enchilada, Scranton or Wilkes-Barre--one just might have been solved this morning. The way I consider it, the question is a complex one: based on how good achieving the opposite sensation--thus, relief--feels, would you prefer (I'm talking literally here, no figurative shadings of meaning) being cold or hot? Simply put, does it feel better to be warmed up after being very cold, or cooled off after being overly hot? I'm also talking domestically; I'd rather not mull over the grim prospects of being stranded in deserts or blizzards. In everyday life, what's your preference?

Now I realize that for someone who lives where I do, Cleveland, Ohio, I should consider this question only on either May 15th or September 15th, to be free of all environmental bias. That said, this morning, as I loitered in bed wrapped in a thick blanket, with, as far as I could tell, only my pert proboscis protruding into the cold air, visions of heaven coursed through my cozy sinews. One mere extremity spasm, which would have resulted in a blanket flap rending my cocoon and exposing my entire corporeality to a true draught that would have instantly brought the horrible word ague to my mind, was all that lay between bliss and bedevilment; I hunkered still as I could, even trying to perfect the art of breathing in and out of one nostril to minimize movement.

While the body lay luxuriously dormant, though, the mind reeled. I remembered a long ago hot August night, stuffed in a tiny Manhattan apartment, when I slithered out of the hideaway bed and stood in front of an opened refrigerator door until the milk started to turn; I remembered the initial splash of boyhood plunges in bodies of water; I remembered air-conditioned 19th holes after six-hours of duffing; I remembered escaping into the walk-in fridge, ostensibly to get more potato salad, but really just to cool off from shaking out five large pots of steaming green beans; I remembered countless mini-ecstasies that merely turning the pillow over in the middle of the night brought about. But un-unh, nothing, not one hot-to-cool memory, as great as they are, could match the wondrous feeling of how I felt at that moment, warm, snug, stupendously static, when brazen, burring cold was only a motion away. So gleeful was I that soon I even voluntarily rolled over, just to experience once more the cold-to-warmth sensation that the necessary blanket rearranging would cause.

So it's done with. Case settled. I'm a cold-to-warmth kind of guy. Now it's on to other questions, such as, if I had to make a choice, would I rather be blind or deaf? But before that, I've got some plumbing to do--gonna install those separate taps so I can hold my hands under the cold one for several minutes then shift them over to the hot. What are your weekend plans?

Richard Thompson-Cold Feet