My wife and friends all think I'm a hypochondriac so there's no additional shame in telling you I feel lousy. I'm sick. No temperature, but I've got a hacking cough, sore throat and a stuffed nose. I've felt this way for about six days now, which means about another four to seven days of misery. I don't even get the benefit of staying home from work since I don't have an every day job anymore.
Tuesday morning around 5:30 I finally succumbed to my hypochondria and looked up strep throat on WebMD.com. I lacked the symptoms. I checked out how to treat a plain sore throat. It advised to take pain killers to relieve the discomfort of swallowing. It worked, so I’ve continued medicating, have gargled with salt water and imbibed cups of tea laced with honey.
Finley’s not aware of it, but I’m blaming him for this health setback. Come to think of it, Dagny had a running nose when they were here for Passover. Hmmm ... I rarely get sick. I’m more prone to complaining about body aches (which are real, trust me, but are mainly due to my disinterest in exercising, stretching, limbering up). Well, I guess this is a counterpoint to the joys of grandparenthood.
Colbert Joins the Attack: Move over, Mel Brooks. Stephen Colbert has joined the ranks of those who make fun of my given name.
During Monday night’s Colbert Report, the comedian was riffing on the liberal initiatives of Pope Francis, specifically his washing the feet of two women as part of last Thursday’s pre-Easter celebration. Colbert even went so far as to state, “There were no women in the Gospels. It’s a common mistranslation. Jesus was actually born of the Virgin Murray.”
Then he showed a picture of a cloaked man, which, to be honest, didn’t really look like me but did bear a striking resemblance to Gilda’s brother Carl.
Five Finger Discounts: Did you see the article in today’s NY Times about retailers using databases to screen out job seekers who might have been involved in stealing from a previous employer? (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/03/business/retailers-use-databases-to-track-worker-thefts.html?hpw&_r=0)
It’s no secret employee theft is a bigger problem than five-finger discounts perpetrated by customers. So controlling internal theft is a big issue for retailers.
The Times article dealt with prospective employees. For those already on the payroll, Kmart had a different tactic to thwart theft. I’m not sure if Kmart is still doing this, but years ago its store managers used to monitor the level of purchases made by their store staff. They reasoned that employees could not find merchandise such as paper products or toiletries for less than what they would pay at Kmart. So if someone wasn’t buying such goods at work, they probably were secreting the stuff out the back door. Closer observation of the suspects ensued.
Brooklyn On My Mind: Next Friday, the movie 42 will premiere. It’s a biopic of Jackie Robinson. From the clips I’ve seen it looks like a winner.
I can’t remember actually seeing Jackie play in person for the Brooklyn Dodgers but I’m sure I did. Growing up in Brooklyn, we had a sweet access to Ebbets Field. If you sent in a quarter plus 10 wrappers from a Borden’s Ice Cream bar, you’d get a general admission ticket for a seat along the left field foul line. I wasn’t a Dodgers fan, but my brother Bernie was, so he took me along to games.
Bernie has fond memories of visiting Ebbets Field, sitting in box seats behind first base with our mother, courtesy of tickets provided by one of our father’s sales representatives, Mr. Schaenman, who had an office in the Empire State Building. I can remember going to his office, riding the ear-popping elevators up to the sky to his office to pick up tickets for games, to Yankee Stadium for me, to Ebbets Field for Bernie, until they moved to Los Angeles, that is. After that Bernie would take me to Yankee games, though he didn’t become a fan. We’d always have box seats at Yankee Stadium, low enough that after the game we’d be close to the field and able to walk out on the outfield grass to the massive exit doors in center field (it was a different time back in the 1950s and early 1960s.)
Anyway, Bernie remembers a game at Ebbets Field when he arrived early to watch batting practice. Though he tried to get a baseball hit into the stands, he couldn’t. At the end of batting practice a policeman suggested he go after a ball headed for the seats, but he got there too late. The ball dribbled back down onto the field. However, Billy Loes, a Dodger pitcher, retrieved it and handed it to Bernie. I don’t remember us ever having a baseball, but I must have been less than seven years old when Loes played in Brooklyn, and I never played catch with a real baseball. Too dangerous. You miss catching a baseball and it could knock your front teeth out. That’s what happened to a friend one year at summer camp where they specifically told us not to play with a baseball. Too dangerous. They were right.
Bernie says he lost the ball a year or two later while playing on the street, probably down a storm sewer. Sewers were a real hazard when playing in the street or even on the sidewalk in Brooklyn. We’d lose at least one ball each time we played, until our arms were long enough to fish the sphere out of the sewer. No, we didn’t actually reach the bottom of the pit with our fingers. We’d elongate a wire clothes hanger, fashion one end into a loop, then go fishing for the ball down the sewer. Most times we’d reel in our lost balls, though they were usually Spaldeens or Pensie Pinkies—lightweight pink bouncers. Baseballs, being far more dense, were difficult to raise up. In case you suspect I’m making up this sewer fishing, here’s a corroborating post from another blogger: http://stillabrooklynkid.blogspot.com/2011/08/games-we-played-spaldeens-and-sewers.html.
