Patience required

I’ve reached the saturation point with Aaron Aardvark. I mean, really – figure out your sex life, dude, and get on with it. Ya wanna sleep with boys, sleep with boys. Ya wanna sleep with girls, sleep with girls. But you’re screwin’ with Cindy and Jeffrey's heads, ya know what I’m sayin’?

This morning I walked the dog and he pooped in front of a postal box. You know, the old kind – before there was any Internet, Facebook, texting, tweeting, or any other social avoidance mechanisms. Okay, yeah, we had Gilligan’s Island, the Flintstones, and the Brady Bunch, but that was nothing like today's medicated entertainment, ya know what I’m sayin’?

When I was eight years old, I dropped a half-eaten ice cream cone in a postal box right in front of our local Baskin Robbins, the suburban Pittsburgh variety. For years afterward, I expected the police to come after me and lock me behind bars for the rest of my life. It was chocolate chip and peanut butter that must’ve melted on someone’s payment to the Duquesne Light Company or someone’s Playboy subscription renewall, ya know what I'm sayin'?

My mother rolled her eyes, huffed and puffed, and balled me out all the way home in the Bel Air station wagon. I couldn’t have ice cream for a month, that was her punishment. She had no patience for me – but patience, as Nanny told her, was required for Little Boy Jimmy. But she huffed and puffed to her mother, he’s the straw that broke this camel’s back. Why couldn't Jimmy be a good little boy like Gary and Jeff?

Too bad my mother didn’t have patience with me -- or anyone else, for that matter. If she had any patience, she might not have had the hemorrhagic stroke two years ago that condemned her to that nursing home in Hilton Head. You know, the one for upscale Republicans who hate Obama care at the same time they’re rackin’ up those Medicare claims – that one. Ya know what I’m sayin?

Okay, gotta run. Someone’s knockin’ at the door. Maybe it’s the Pittsburgh police, finally caught up with me. I’m doomed, just like my mother.