“How’d you hurt your leg, Joe?”
“Oh, I was running a marathon and a pulled a hamstring.”
“How’d you hurt your shoulder, Bob?”
“Oh, I was skydiving and I came in a little hard.”
“How’d you hurt your neck, Mendeaux?”
“…mmblemmblemble…”
“What?”
“I slept in a weird position.”

See what I mean? I’ve decided that if anyone asks, I was on an expedition to climb to the top of Mt. Everest when our group was caught in an avalanche. When all was said and done, I was the only survivor, but I didn’t come out unscathed.

Shhhh… it’ll be our little secret.

I was saddened to hear of the death of Bea Arthur though I was never really a huge Bea Arthur fan. I’ve seen a few episodes of The Golden Girls, and I do remember her singing something in the Star Wars Holiday Special (a memory I have tried vigorously to erase). I must have watched the t.v. show Maude when I was very young, because although I remember nothing about the show itself, one of the things I carry with me from my childhood is the theme song. Well, not the whole thing, just the bit that goes “…and then there’s Maude.” And every time I see pictures of Bea Arthur, or see her on t.v. or whatever, that bit of tune goes through my head for hours, and I’m not sure why.

Anyway, today, when I was reading reports of her death online, that bit of tune went through my head again, and that got me thinking about 70s sitcoms, and one of the sitcoms I remember watching when I was very little was a show called Good Times. It starred Jimmy Walker, whose trademark “Dy-no-mite!” made him a star for quite a while. I remember a bit of the theme song to that show as well, but like the Maude theme song it’s only a fragment and it goes “…ain’t we lucky we got ‘em. Good times!” But anyway, I guess I was thinking about death and the show Good Times and I remembered that in one episode the father in that show (played by John Amos) died. I remember it being a very sad episode, and I remember feeling very bad about it. I was only 8 or 9 at the time and my ability to distinguish fantasy from reality wasn’t quite wholly developed yet. In my mind, this was nearly a real family going through a real tragedy. So, fast forward to 1990. I’m now 22 years old. I’m sitting down to watch Die Hard 2, and who should pop onto the screen but John Amos (who played the bad guy in the movie). I guess I hadn’t seen him in anything else since Good Times, because I just about fell out of my chair. “Holy crap! That’s the dad from Good Times! But… but… he’s dead…” It probably took me a good 10 minutes for to figure out why I thought that, and when I finally sussed it I smacked myself in the head and called myself all sorts of stupid. But on the inside… on the inside I was smiling, because part of my childhood that was sad wasn’t so sad anymore, because the dad from Good Times was still alive… Pity his character in the movie was such an a-hole.

TR: It does.

TR: What size do you wear?

Me: Between a 34 and a 36. So 35, I guess… but they don’t make odd sizes.

TR: They do, they just don’t make many of them, so they’re hard to find.

Me: Yeah. I think the ratio’s like 50 to 1.

TR: Something like that.

Me: Or, more likely, every few hundred pairs of pants, some worker measures wrong, and they go “Oops. Can’t throw those out, slap a 35 label on it.”

… end of rant …