A Column by John Estridge
Hopefully, I don’t FORGET!!! to post this.
My biological daughters and I have been doing Wordle. It is an online thing started – as many things people do today – during COVID. Some guy made millions off it and then sold it to the New York Times and made many more millions.
Here’s a tip of my pocket Google dictionary to him. During COVID, I read, wrote, annoyed my Long Suffering Wife Ruth and played games on the computer. He made money.
A person gets five empty blocks and a keyboard-like thing at the bottom with all the letters of our alphabet. You have six levels to figure out what the day’s word is. If you guess a letter correctly in the correct position, it is shown in green. If a letter is correct but in the wrong position, then that letter is between a green and a yellow.
Really, I should ask Ruth the true color to associate with it because I call something a certain color, and she gives me that look, which is almost constant at this point, and it seems to wordlessly ask “Are you even of this world? No one can be that stupid.”
Katie, Renee and I communicate via Facebook messenger. They share this likeness of the puzzle showing the green and whatever color of the different levels until they are all green. I cannot figure out how to share even though the girls have tried to help so I just say 4th level and things like that. They have always solved the puzzle. I have failed twice.
On Friday, I started it, got sidetracked and FORGOT!!!! to finish that.
FORGOT!!!
The CAPS LOCK and !!!! are for former fellow employee Patti because we both love them so much, NOT!!! but they are both fitting here. That is because if one actually reads this to the end, the word FORGOT!!! and its friend FORGET!!! and relative FORGOTTEN!!!! will be seen in great numbers.
Anyway, that was a first for me to FORGET!!!! to finish a Wordle puzzle.
Let’s walk sideways here:
The weather lately has buoyed my usual ever-present giddy personality. I am really going sideways here because like most old males, I want to tell stories from my youth and bore the heck out of everyone. I think most people embellish stories of their youth. It is hard for me to do that because there is usually a lack of anything redeemable in them.
As a youth, I was skinny, mostly ugly, too smart for my own good and totally unable to defend myself. I was able to survive by an ability to be able to run faster and farther than my buds. When me and my buds were in grade school in Liberty, there was a bunch of junior high males who were – for lack of better terms — sadistic bullies.
If caught, the least they would do to one of we littler kids was what was called THE PECK!!!!. They would pin one of the slower, out-of-breath guys – we were all smoking our parents’ cigarettes — to the ground and continuously pound his breastbone with their fist with the middle knuckle extended. I have never been through the water torture routine, although I believe Ruth has considered it at times, but the peck cannot be any less painful or frightening.
For some unknown reasons one summer day, I got caught near the leftfield fence at the Little League ballpark by one of the junior high boys. My buds were at a safe distance behind me, not to help, but to watch what would ensue and were universally happy it was not them.
The kid who caught me was not the worst of the worst, but he was big and scary. First, he wanted to know what the L of my middle name stood for. It is a family thing. Grandpa Henry and Grandma Stella Estridge gave my dad an initial for a middle name. Who knows? As I am a junior, I also have the initial for a middle name.
Remember when I said I was too smart for my own good? I tried to explain that to him on a hot, muggy summer afternoon, long, long ago. He told me he was going to punch me if I did not tell the truth. My stupid rose up again because I tried to explain it again.
As the guy neared me to rearrange my face, one of my buds said “it is L, I asked his mom.”
So, I had a reprieve. Then, the guy told me to wipe that grin off my face. Either my mind is simple — for faithful readers remember in one column I told how on mechanical aptitude (I was tested) I scored the lowest a man of much experience as a test giver had ever seen, below idiot and moron – or I am just happy most of the time.
Whenever my mind is off, like I am not engaged in conversation, I smile. All the photos of me as a baby, I am smiling. That could have been gas as my sister Karen used to tell me, but I like to think I am happily inclined.
Anyway, on that day, I could not quit smiling. I tried, but when I tried, somehow the mouth would not turn down. Those muscles just let me down. My buds started almost screaming at me to stop smiling. The guy did not give me a peck. He just broke my nose. It turned out to be just one of many times.
What this long interlude means is I am a happy person. Little things make me ebullient.
Mother’s Day was one of the best days of my getting-longer-everyday life. That is ironic I understand because I am mostly male, but the weather, food, people, setting were all perfect. And Friday morning was more of the same. I have truly been blessed of late.
Friday morning I was sitting on my porch drinking exquisite Cinnabon coffee, writing on a long work of prose I have been writing on for years – it is called Franklin County and it is about corruption, which is complete fiction ahem, ahem, wink, wink, nod, nod – and listening to my Top 100 to be Played at my Funeral playlist (now at 373 songs) and enjoying a beautiful spring day, just warm enough, no humidity, no bugs and plenty of sunshine.
I even saw a pileated woodpecker across Franklin Avenue at a neighbor’s stump. Must have been a Golden Coral over there because he took his time and looked as happy as a non-cartoon woodpecker can look. And it is only the second pileated woodpecker I have seen in my lifetime.
While writing, I was engaging in email conversations with authorities at my job about future scheduling due to a coming dearth of fellow employees able to work their normal hours. And then, I received one email from one supervisor saying I was supposed to be at work that morning subbing for a lady on vacation, did I FORGET!!!!?
Oh man.
Earlier this week, I was told they were letting me come in one hour later on Fridays from noon to 1 p.m., which meant on Friday morning I was wearing Wal Mart-appropriate clothing much later in the day.
No time for a shower, I had not eaten yet, but did have a cup or two of coffee down my gullet. Because of my absence, my FORGETTING!!!, the History/Genealogy Dept. had remained shut and dark since 9 a.m.
About an hour after I got there, another supervisor came in, and it was her day off, which made everything worse, and asked “I heard there was a problem this morning, what happened?” I told her how I FORGOT!!!!. She did not say a word, her facial expression spoke volumes and stormed out.
I seem to do that to people.
Another fellow employee wandered through the department on a mission and innocently asked me how my day was going, and instead of just saying fine, I unloaded with an answer just about as long and meandering as this column. Surprisingly, he listened and then told me as an explanation, it is Friday, the 13th.
I wanted to smack myself on the forehead because I had FORGOTTEN!!!! the date associated with the day of the week. While this was going on or shortly thereafter, another fellow employee came into the department and reminded me I am scheduled to work for her Tuesday afternoon. As she was leaving, she said. “Don’t FORGET!!!!! with an added little giggle.
My ever-present smile evaporated, for that moment, at least.
