I’m madder than a cobbler told to repair a pair of flattened Air Jordan’s over the fact that things just aren’t made like they used to be — especially the stool I used to sit on every morning while I eat the most important meal of the day, which is, of course, whatever meal I’m eating at that minute!
Look, you all know the ol’Screecher has put on a few hundred extra pounds as I sped toward 80 and started looking down the barrel of 90 years of age, and I have never had any intention of changing the way I live my life, which is to say, to the fullest.
So you’ll understand that I was shocked — shocked — on my birthday — my birthday no less! — when I sat down to eat my breakfast on a stool I bought at YouKea and the stool collapsed under my own weight! Talk about starting the day with a big bang (which, by the way, is my favorite television show).
But that bang wasn’t big enough to wake my lovely snoozing wife Sharon, who sleeps with earplugs so she doesn’t have to hear me snore — or scream bloody murder when I fall in the kitchen.
Thanksfully, I was able to use my cane to reach my MePhone and put in a call to the porter at the beautiful Harway Terrace towers after 1,500 tries to my wife’s phone didn’t get her out of slumberland.
He answered on the first ring, and we got right down to business:
Porter: What is it now, Carmine?
Screecher: I’ve fallen and I can’t get up! Can you help me?
Porter: Where is your lovely wife Sharon?
Screecher: She has her earplugs in! Didn’t you read what I wrote?
Porter: Okay, I’ll be right up. I just hope you are decent, unlike the last time.
Screecher: I am! Oh, and can you get me a Daily News before you come up? I don’t want to miss today’s “Dilbert.”
In a flash, two guys were heaving me up and walking me to Tornado who is too big to get into the kitchen area, which makes the stool a requirement. I thanked them profusely and requested that they take my collapsed broken stool down with them to throw away.
Once they left, I scooted to the bedroom to awake my sleeping bride because we were leaving for the DoubeTree in Somerset, New Jersey and our friends were already there. Quick like a bunny, Sharon packed us up and we headed over to Bread Plus to pick up the giant strawberry shortcake I ordered (without the glazed straweberries) with the words “Happy Birthday Big Z” on it.
Unfortunately, our new Volkswagon Golf Wagon doesn’t have as much space in it as the old Plymouth Fury, and it was filled to the brim with Tornado’s parts in four sections, our luggage, and somewhere in between or underneath all of it, the cake.
This was not lost on the hotel consigliere, who, when we arrived at the hotel, told us that said cake was in various stages of disrepair. To be blunt, it was squashed beyond recognition. But they put it in the fridgidaire anyway (Fridgidaire, as you know, being Italian for “refrigerator”).
We were soon poolside (and when I say “soon” I mean “after sitting in horrendous traffic on the Staten Island Distressway”) Sharon informed me that they had voted and made reservations at their favorite Hunan Delight Sushi restaurant in Franklin Township.
At Hunan’s, we sat at a round table set for 8, which really should have been two round tables for the amount of specialty dishes ordered. Nobody wanted soup except me and Susie sexy socks, Carmelo’s wife. We ordered the house special soup that had everything imaginable in it. Carmelo wanted an egg roll that he didn’t want to share, so I joined him, ordering my own to share with my bride. She likes the outside, and me, being calorie conscious, only eats the inside.
Our head waiter almost had a heart attack when he called Sharon over to show her the ruined cake with strawberries and whipped cream strewn all over the box and blamed himself for the mess. However, she couldn’t bear to torture this fantastic waiter, and told him to serve it the best he could, which was elegantly.
But to make their evening most memorable, they conspired and sent my 80th birthday balloon that had been tied to Tornado for a week, to high heaven!
But all in all it was a fantastic weekend with old chums from grammar school that have all been through life together for 75 years!
Auguri per un altro centi anni!
Screech at you next week!
