Home & School
In 1977 I was asked to be the President of the Home & School Committee (formerly the PTA) at Cedarvale Public School where my daughter was in Senior Kindergarten. I had been the President of the Holy Blossom Nursery School for 2 years prior so I was up for the job.
On my first visit as the Prez I noticed that there was no soap in the boy’s washroom. It was odd but it was the beginning of the school year so I let it go. On my second and third visits I noticed the same thing. I went to the Principal, Stewart Hill, and I told him of my findings. His response was “Well you know we’ve had 3 janitors die”. I answered in amazement, “You think it was the soap?” I never did find out what he meant, but the soap “mysteriously” turned up.
A General Meeting
I was sitting in a meeting in a hotel with my colleagues listening to our Chief Actuary explain why our product was superior to our closest competitor. I was the senior general manager at that time and I knew what my colleagues all knew that the Chief Actuary was, how shall I put it, “full of crap”. Suddenly a blue light lit up above his head. We all looked up. The Chief Actuary said, “I’m not sure what that means.”. Without thinking I replied, “I think it’s a bull shit detector”. My colleagues were hysterical. Even the Actuary laughed.
I hate it when young people try to explain technical things to me.
I had a young guy try to explain to me how easy it was to setup my Galaxy 7 phone. “You do this, do that and then do “, I stopped him and asked if he’d ever heard of Danny Kaye. He said, “no”. “Have you ever heard of The Court Jester”, I enquired, already knowing the answer which was “no”. “Ah, then“, I continued. “You probably don’t know that the chalice from the palace has the pellet with the poison”, his eyes started to glaze over and he shrugged. I continued. “and the flagon with the dragon is the brew which is true. Ah but they broke the chalice from the palace and replaced it with a vessel with the picture of a pestle. So now the flagon with the dragon has the pellet with the poison and the vessel with the pestle is the brew that is true. Are you following this?”. He was dumbstruck. “so you are not able to repeat what I just told you?”. “No”, he answered honestly. I replied, “well now you know how I feel when you talk to me in phone language”. We laughed and sometime later he told me that he watched the movie and now he gets it. https://youtu.be/746kQ-Da9bg
The Faith Healer
My mother was troubled throughout her adult life with a rheumatic heart. She was often ill, often in hospital. But she never lost her acute sense of humour and irony. One time when mum was ill at home her friend, Harriet, came to visit. Harriet was distraught. She told my mum that she had been to a faith healer and paid for the healer to make my mum better. Harriet was distraught because she realized when she arrived at our apartment that she had given the faith healer the number of the apartment next door. Mum reacted to Harriet’s distress at the possibility of having wasted her time and money by laughing hysterically. Mum didn’t believe in faith healers and the thought that her friend did and was so upset over the mistake was too much for her and she laughed and laughed. And then she felt much better. Go figure!
Clive Dillon or The Sale of Two Titties
One day I phoned my cousin and she couldn’t speak to me because her boyfriend, Clive Dillon (who is now Jennifer Mallows, but that’s another story) was broadcasting on 208 meters. That’s illegal as you all know. So I phoned Clive and impersonated a guy from the GPO (General Post Office). I told him that we would be there in 5 minutes and to cease and desist. I got to his house 20 minutes later and found that he had buried the equipment in his backyard and was now on the phone accusing his friend of a practical joke. I never told him it was me.
BTW. My cousin married the guy and then got a divorce some years later. Now Clive is a she and they are good friends. Why not, at last they have something in common. Clothes!
Some years after his sex-change, Clive, now Jennifer, married. She and her new husband then proceeded to defraud British banks. You can read all about it by clicking on the link below.
http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/transgender-fraudster-is-back-in-town-25920097.html
My understanding is that he was jailed for 2 years. However because his birth certificate says “male” he was sent to a men’s prison. I just know there is an ex con somewhere thanking g-d.
At The Ballet
This incident occurred when my daughter was 6 years old. We took my children to see The Nutcracker at The Royal Alex. We had excellent seats about 5 rows from the stage and my daughter, although small, had an unrestricted view of the ballet.
During the Dance of The Sugar Plum Fairy my daughter asked, in her usual speaking voice which was quite audible to the surrounding audience, “Daddy, what’s that in that man’s pants?” Without missing a beat and in the same vocal volume I replied “Oh, those are his sugar plums.” Immediately there was a quiet roar of laughter from those in ear shot. I thought the male ballet dancer was going to drop the ballerina.
The First Computer
In 1979 I was a Brokerage Rep. at The Paul Revere Life Insurance Company. I pioneered the use of desktop computers. I had bought and programmed a Radio Shack TRS-80. It took me 3 years to convince them about the value of desk top computers. Finally, they took my advice and …. went with IBM. My program was designed to work on a TRS-80 not an IBM. However, the day came when Computerland delivered our desktop IBM. It had one floppy disk drive. After 3 years I was already into desktop publishing and graphic programs. I bought Word 2000 and excitedly put it into the disk drive and waited for the program to come up on the screen. I waited and waited. Nothing was happening. I phoned the Computerland store which was just down the street and spoke to Gwen. I told her that I couldn’t get Word 2000 up onto the screen. Gwen explained the correct procedure for getting the program up onto the screen. It still didn’t work. I phoned again and Gwen told me to bring the disk in to their store and she would try it for me.
Extremely frustrated I went down to the Computerland store and asked for Gwen. The staff pointed me to a petite, very pretty lady, helping another customer. I walked over to Gwen and introduced myself. “Oh” she said, in a loud voice, “You’re the one having trouble getting it up”. The store fell silent. I replied in mock nervousness, “Well, er, er, I am but that’s not why I’m here”. She went crimson with embarrassment while the rest of the people in the store, including her customer, were howling with laughter.
Whenever I entered the store after that, the first store sales person I met would always ask me if I was still having trouble getting it up.
The Captain
I worked for a while in a stockbroker’s office next to the London Stock Exchange. Captain Edward Burnham was a partner who believed he should have been born a blue-blood. He was a pompous, red faced, chubby individual with white hair who had an affected way of speaking; almost as if he had a plum in his mouth, very much like Wilfrid Hyde-White in My Fair Lady. If you can imagine an overweight Wilfrid Hyde-White, you’ve got the picture. He would pick up the phone and tell his secretary back at the office, in a slow drawl, things like “Well if anybody wants me I’m at the club”. One day he had a temporary secretary working in place of his usual secretary. The Captain, as we called him, picked up the phone and told the temp the usual, “if anybody wants me I’m at the club”, and then we heard “no club, you damned fool, not pub. So will you hold my calls? No, my calls, not my…. b…, oh what’s the point”. He slammed the phone down, rolled his eyes and stormed out. Gerry and I fell apart laughing at the thought of this pompous person in a common place like a pub. We spent the rest of the day mimicking him and telling anyone who came in, the story. We must have done that routine dozens of times and it was always funny. Still is.
The Farnborough Airshow.
The world-famous Farnborough International Airshow has been held at the airfield at Farnborough since 1948 and over the decades has showcased many pioneering triumphs in aerospace.
I went for a few years with my cousin Edna and her husband Victor.
Victor was an Electronics Engineer with General Electric, who make jet engines, among many other things. I was 9 years old when I first went and very small for my age.
It was a very important airshow with many wonderful sights for me to enjoy. Jet planes, aerobatics and goodies to eat.
I had just turned 10 and still was a tiny kid when we went for my second time to the airshow. Edna was now pregnant with her first child. The big excitement this year was the first appearance of the delta wing Avro Vulcan.
The Avro Vulcan was a jet-powered delta wing strategic bomber, which was operated by the Royal Air Force (RAF) from 1956 until 1984.
The airshow was packed with many more people than the previous year. So many people that I couldn’t see the plane on the runway.
There were fire extinguishers all over the grass where the spectators were standing. There was one next to me, so I tried to stand on it to see over the heads of the crowd. The extinguisher was wobbly, so I used Edna’s shoulder for support. She asked me not to stand on the fire extinguisher as it was unsteady. I got down. Still couldn’t see so I got back up again, this time holding on to Victor. Now I could see, but it was very wobbly and of course the extinguisher tipped over and fell against Edna’s leg and became active, shooting a great plume of foam up her skirt. Edna jumped back and the extinguisher continued to gush into the air and about 150 feet ahead towards the runway.
The foam was now falling on the crowd which parted like the Red Sea. The only difference was, the Jews weren’t crossing. The Jews now had a perfect view of the runway and the Avro Vulcan.
I can still see the trench created by the foam and I can still hear the comments from the unhappy crowd the foam had fallen on. I remember one guy coming by muttering foul oaths. “If I catch the geezer who did this, I’ll f…ing kill him”, said one guy, as he came by wiping the foam from his stained jacket.
I was never invited back again. I was also surprised that Edna’s baby was born without a foam hat. Oh well. Another story for the book I had no idea I was going to write.
Oklahoma
I have been a fan of Broadway musicals since I was a kid. I bought the LP of Oklahoma when I was a teen and played it endlessly. I knew all the words to all the songs, except, Poor Judd is dead. Hated that song then and still do.
In 1963/64 I was living on a kibbutz in Israel. I lived in a big new house with 32 other boys and girls my age. The house had showers, but only cold water. Not a problem in the summer, but impossible in the winter. The kibbutz had a communal shower near the dining room. The shower had hot and cold water. It was a long rectangular building with a wall down the centre separating the men from the women, visually, if not aurally. The wall didn’t reach entirely up to the ceiling so we could hear every word spoken by either side.
One Saturday, after my work was done, I made the trip to the shower. I was alone on my side, but I could hear the water running on the other side of the wall. Then, suddenly, I could hear the person start to sing, “Oh! What a Beautiful Morning”, from the Oklahoma album. So I joined in. We went through the whole album, except for Poor Judd, may he rest in peace.
Many of the songs are duets and we sang our hearts out while we washed and then dried ourselves. I had no idea who was singing, but she had my heart.
As I left the building, I could see my singing partner ahead of me and to my right. She turned to see who she was singing with and that’s when we both had the shock of our young lives. It was Brenda, my nemesis. We hated each other. Today I can’t remember why, but our duets didn’t change anything.
Oh! Well, another story for my book.
The Sleeping Pill
In 1967, I was in hospital for a very minor procedure. Even minor procedures in those days could require a lengthy stay compared to today.
So there I was, in a semi-private ward, otherwise quite healthy. The night after the operation the nurse came and offered me two pills. “Here you go, Mr. Ross, take these pills”. “What are they for?”, I enquired. “Well this one is to help you sleep and this one is a laxative”. I looked down at the two pills in my hand and I asked. “Which one do I take first?” She looked at me quizzically. I continued, “Well, if I take the sleeping pill first and then the laxative, I could shit myself in bed. And if I take the laxative first and then the sleeping pill, I could fall asleep in the toilet. So, which is it?” “It doesn’t work that fast”, she replied smugly, turned around and hightailed out of the ward.
One time they wheeled a guy back from his operation with a nurse sitting on his bed playing x’s and o’s on the guy’s forehead. I found out later that he was an employee at the hospital.
The Christmas Holidays
Until recently, in the weeks leading up to Christmas, it was quite usual to be asked by sales clerks in the stores, if we had done our Christmas shopping yet. My answer was always, “no, we’re Jewish, we don’t celebrate Christmas, we celebrate Boxing Day”. The clerk would then ask why we celebrate Boxing Day and I would always reply, “because everything’s half-price”. That was the end of that conversation.
A Telemarketing Call
This event occurred in the late 70’s, before you could pause TV. I was home alone watching TV when the phone rang. It was a young lady asking me “Are you the ‘man of the house’?” Without thinking about it and still watching TV, I answered, “I was the last time I looked”. There was a moment of silence and then came uncontrolled laughter from her end of the phone. I waited for her to regain her composure, but it was taking so long I eventually hung up.
The day after the Provincial Elections… June 8th 2018
Nona & Russell are talking by the pool. Nona is a senior. She is knowledgeable and still working. She is Catholic and sings in the choir every Sunday.
Nona: What do you think of the election outcome?”
Russell: Well, I voted for the party, not the leader. Here’s hoping we can get through the next 4 years.
Nona: But at what cost? Wynne did so much for the Province.
Russell: Like what?
Nona: She got rid of coal burning facilities, so we don’t have anymore smog.
Russell: She did?
Nona: Well haven’t you noticed we don’t have anymore smog alerts.
Russell: To tell you the truth I hadn’t noticed.
Nona: Oh well, the air quality is so much better here now.
Russell: Hmm
Nona: And she introduced sex education into the school curriculum. Well you wouldn’t have any reason to notice.
Russell nodded in agreement.
Nona: There are many immigrants who don’t or won’t teach sex ed to their daughters. Did you know that little girls are forced into giving boys blow-jobs?
Russell: What?
Nona: Absolutely. They don’t know any better and the boys are getting away with it.
Russell: How come the girls aren’t complaining?
Nona: They’re too scared. The boys threaten to beat them up if they do.
Russell: I had no idea. That’s terrible.
Nona: By the way, do you know how they managed to get the boys to behave at the Royal Wedding?
With a puzzled look on his face, Russell shrugged and replied: Blow-jobs?
Saying Farewell at the airport
I was dropping Angie off at the airport on a busy Saturday afternoon in August. She was on her way to Winnipeg for a week to visit her mum. As she walked away she turned back to me and yelled, “see you in a week, enjoy your freedom.” I yelled back, “freedom? I’m gonna enjoy the peace”.
Then I heard a loud cheering and I looked around and saw a group of Caribbean’s laughing and smiling and giving me a thumbs-up.
What’s in a name?
- My friend was named Jordan because he was born on a boat as they entered Haifa. I said, “lucky you weren’t born early as the ship was passing Crete. They would have called you Cretin.”
- We were walking by a Middle Eastern restaurant in our local mall and my wife said, “I wonder why they call that dish Shish Tawouk? Without missing a beat I replied, “That’s the sound it makes when you’re on the toilet”.
A thought on getting older
I was asked if I liked getting older. I said “I love it. I get called “sir” and referred to as this nice gentleman”.
Only yesterday I was “marching” along the sidewalk to the tune of St. Louis Blues March in my head, (the Glenn Miller version, in case you were wondering) when I reached my destination and saw a young woman smiling at me. I looked at her quizzically. “Are you smilin’ at me”, I asked, a la Danny Devito in Wise Guys. “Well, yes” she replied. “Didn’t you hear that car go by with the music blaring and a song with vulgar swear words?”. She continued, “I was astonished and thought to myself, there’s that nice gentleman walking along what must he be thinking?”. I looked at her and asked if I was that “nice gentleman” she was referring to? “Well, yes, weren’t you offended by their music?” she asked. “F**k ’em”, I said and continued on my way.
I play the “senior” card as often as I can. I no longer need to limp up to the ticket agent at the boarding gate in order to gain pre-boarding privileges. I now walk up and calmly present my boarding pass and my ID. Rarely does anyone question my need for extra time. While overweight passengers are stuffing overweight bags into overhead compartments many rows away from their seats, I’m sitting comfortably with my bags in the compartment over my seat watching all the entertainment.
People open doors for me and give up their seats. I’m in heaven. I can talk to beautiful women without them getting nervous. After all how much harm can a septuagenarian do? I love being this age or any age for that matter.
The fact that my joints ache is just proof that I’m alive. I had my cataracts done. I have 20/30 vision so now I can spot cleavage at a 100 yards. Well the truth is I always could spot cleavage at a 100 yards but now I can tell if it’s male or female. Bonus!
Getting old is a privilege and I intend to take full advantage of it.
What the women don’t know is that I have a plan… a drug plan!
Dealing with Bureaucracy!
I went to pick up my new driver’s licence. I stood in line patiently. I got to the counter. Gave the lady my temporary licence. She took my temporary licence, looked up at me and said “do you have any photo ID?”
I replied,” lady, my licence IS my photo ID. Open it up, take it out and if the picture looks like me………. it’s mine.” Needless to say, I got my licence. What is going on here?
Passover Problems
I was sitting in my club restaurant today and one of the staff came to ask me if I eat gefilte fish. Her nose was wrinkled as if she was changing a diaper. I said, “sure, I love it, why do you ask?” “The chefs are preparing two take-out orders and can’t stand the smell”, she informed me. I went on to say, “Actually, that reminds me, we forgot to buy gefilte fish so if you have any left-over, I’ll take it.”
She went to inform the chefs. A few minutes later I heard one of the chefs yelling out, “it’s $2, is that OK”? I yelled back, “That’s fine, but you don’t have to pay me to take it”.