Jay to the World May 2021

Happy May everyone!! Well, it’s 9:08 p.m. on Sunday, May 2nd and I’m just sitting down at my desk to somehow piece together some semblance of a newsletter that is worthy of your time. I’m not going to lie…about an hour ago I was playing basketball in my driveway with the kids and came this close (picture two fingers really close together because I don’t know how to do emojis on my computer) to punting on this month’s JTTW. Not sure what the problem is – the old noggin’ has been feeling really foggy lately, and I can’t decide if it’s the medication I’m on to help me not get up 10 times a night, or if it’s the 2nd COVID shot I got a couple weeks ago (I was going to ask the person who administered the 2nd shot if I could upgrade to the grape flavor, but apparently not everyone gets my sense of humor so I decided to zip it). Anyway, I hope everyone out there in JTTW-land is doing great and being that it’s now 9:31 p.m. and this is all the farther I’ve gotten, there isn’t going to be much time for editing, but thankfully I’m pretty short on jokes this month so there shouldn’t be too many opportunities to offend anyone. 

And now for a trip down ‘Mowing Memory Lane’: So, I was mowing my lawn late at night last week and when I got about halfway done it started to finally dawn on me that many areas of the yard that I know I had already been over weren’t being cut, which was probably a result of the fact that my blade wasn’t engaged because I had inadvertently shut it off while shifting in reverse and my noise-cancelling headphones apparently were really doing their job because I had no idea that I wasn’t cutting any grass for at least 10 minutes. Anyway, the only thing I worry about in moments like this is whether my wife saw it or not, and I don’t think she did so I just kept on going like nothing happened and pretty much mowed the lawn twice. But that whole episode did bring me back to a time in my life when mowing the lawn was, shall we say, kind of traumatic. Here’s the set-up: Back in my teenage years, my father insisted on mowing his own lawn. He was also a huge procrastinator, which is a really bad combination in the world of lawn mowing. He had this old orange mower (Allis-Chalmers maybe??) with a HUGE grass-catching bag on the back. And when I say huge, I’m not exaggerating when I say that you could have fit Jimmy Hoffa in that thing. But back to the procrastinator part: my dad would let the grass get to be roughly, oh, 4 inches or so tall, and then he’d wait another month to mow it. Not kidding. There were goats that would be like ‘don’t look at us’. So, he’d go out and start mowing and I would just wait in the house until I heard the engine shut off. That was the worst part, because I only had one job in this whole production, and that was to help lift a 100-pound body bag full of grass off the back of the mower and dump it into the back of his baby-blue Mazda pickup. How in God’s name the mower wasn’t doing a wheelie will probably go down as one the greatest physics questions of all time.

So anyway, we would somehow hoist the bag off the mower and into the truck, at which time I’d make the walk of shame back to the house just hoping that the neighbors weren’t watching. I would have to repeat this walk hundreds of times in my life until my dad, mercifully, decided to out-source his yard care after I was done with college and took a job in Columbia, Missouri. But as horrifying as it was at age 17, now I look back on those summers with a smile because it helped shape who I am as a person and as a father, and to this day I start to get the shakes when I go more than 5 days without mowing the lawn. Thanks, big guy.

While we’re on the subject of Big Al, did you see that a guy recently filled his bowling ball with his father’s ashes and proceeded to roll a perfect game?? I don’t know about you, but I’m thinking my dad would LOVE to go for another ride in a race car, and I just happen to have a few little race car ornaments filled with his ashes. So, buckle up Big Al, because you’re going for the zip-tie ride of your life on May 15th in Corning. Now I’m sure I won’t see the same type of result as the guy who rolled a perfect game because apparently talent is a requirement in the world of dirt track racing. But just knowing I’ve got a passenger is going to be pretty cool, so if anyone out there in JTTW-land wants to go watch some big-time racing on May 15th, just call the bank and I’ll get you hooked up with some tickets.

A French nuclear submarine that was damaged in a fire was recently cut in half and fused with a portion of another nuclear submarine to form one working unit. French experts agree that this is the first time that two subs had been cut in half and put back together since a tragic misunderstanding at a nearby Jimmy Johns four years ago.

Did you see the story about the guy who proposed to his girlfriend and gave her a choice of 5 different engagement rings?? That’s crazy…just last week I about ruptured my spleen trying to decide between the 3 sauces for my McNuggets.

And finally, in Texas, a snake breeder has accidentally created a snake that appears to have smiley faces on it. The breeder then announced that his next project will involve Ted Cruz…

Until Next Time…
Jay