Status report: feeling quite good the last two days but tired from lack of sleep. I wake up in the middle of the night and have trouble falling back to sleep but it doesn't seem to be cancer related. Tomorrow starts another round of chemo so I'm quite thrilled about that. We hope to go to a comedy show at 7:00 tonight.
The other day I was almost run over crossing the street by a biker zooming through a red light. I may have been in even more danger when he didn't like that I shouted, "You went through a red light, Asshole." But at least he kept riding and shouting but didn't come back after me. This reminds me of another story. Baseball manager Lou Piniella said to an umpire, "Where was that pitch at?" The Ump replied, "You shouldn't end a sentence with a preposition." So Piniella responded with, "Okay, where was that pitch at, Asshole."
And now three stories of the unknowing, having been reminded of the first the night after the wedding and the others then came back to me.
In 1986 Linda and a partner started a children's book and music festival called Children's Expo, a remarkably good event with the best children's author's and top performers and a low cost admission. It was held at Memorial Hall in Philadelphia's Fairmount Park for one weekend day in October from 10 to 5. It was raining and we expected about 100 people by 11:00. By 9:30 there was a huge line outside the venue and eventually about 4,000 people came. The next two years the event was held at the much larger Civic Center for 2 days each and the crowds were over 10,000. Unfortunately, without a major corporate sponsor, the event was not much of a net money maker. Anyway (a word I seem to use a lot), at this first Expo, a feature was the Phila. Orchestra playing "Peter and the Wolf" with Levar Burton reading the score in the room where the orchestra actually makes its recordings. Linda and Rachel were on stage behind the speakers. (I was in charge of the money and twice had to drive back to my neighborhood to get as many $1 bills as I could get for change so I didn't see this.) Mayor Wilson Goode was making introductory remarks when the audience applauded something he said. This inspired 5 year old Rachel, who liked doing deep curtsey bows, to walk out behind the mayor and start deep bowing until Linda was able to grab her. The audience was laughing but the Mayor didn't understand why.
Next, I was traveling for work and in a hotel. I picked up my room phone and was interposed into a conversation of two other hotel residents. After a little while, one guy said to the other, "I'll meet you down in the lobby in 10 minutes." And I said, "Sure." And the first guy started to say okay but the 2nd guy said, "Who said 'sure?'" I remained silent. And the confused first guy confirmed that they would meet downstairs and they hung up. I've often wondered what their conversation was like in the lobby.
Lastly, I'm a big zoo lover and occasionally, if alone in front of certain monkeys, will toss a glove or something in the air that gets them very excited and staring wild-eyed out of their cage and following the movement of the glove. One day I noticed this woman in front of a cage of the right kind of monkeys and she was sitting in a chair apparently taking notes on their rather placid activity. I started tossing a glove in the air behind her and the monkeys went wild. After a minute or two I stopped and left but the woman never turned around and saw me. I've wondered about what her notes showed about the monkeys.
And this reminds me of another zoo story. When Rachel was at Columbia, we went to the Bronx Zoo one day and there was a gorilla just on the other side of the glass. The crowd outside would wave and wave at the gorilla and finally with a look of disgust, the gorilla would wave back and the crowd would go wild. This happened a few times and I can still vividly remember the roar of the crowd and the image of the young Asian woman who was leading all of us.
That's it for now from Memory Lane. Off to Jefferson tomorrow.
Elkan - Wed. at 5:30
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