This from the rat's nest:
The Telemarketing people have my vote, folks. There's this thick catalogue with all the wacky stuff you see on late-night infomercials-- all kinds of exercise equipment (tons of weight-loss crap), gadgets, etc. The girl that lived next door kept getting the catalogue after she moved, so I just grabbed it one day. It's fun to look through, kind of like a Miles Kimball or something. Anyway, when I needed a thin mattress topper to cover my hospital bed because my back hurt so bad I started hallucinating that the bars of the bed were pushing up through the mattress, I ordered the brilliant "Dormeo" from the catalogue, and rounded out my order with a great metal LED flashlight for ten bucks (I never really owned a flashlight for the apartment, weirdly enough) and 3 mosquito rackets!!! Delivery smooth as you like in two days, follow-up call to make sure I'd gotten it, additional follow-up call to make sure I liked everything and to thank me for my business. Who does that these days?
SHOUT OUT to my three readers, Rach, Mer and El (age before beauty, El):
So ladies, let me get to the point of the post. Let me take you back 20 years to the N........s back yard in Wilmette. Recall, if you will, the triangle of black-light-lit bug zappers whose musical dzz would accompany any barbeque, gathering or concert of Captain Apathy, eliminating any small winged night creature within a several-mile radius. God, the neighbors must have thought we were so weird. Those zappers were probably our trademark in the summer. Everybody else seemed to follow some kind of cookie-cutter West Wilmette status quo, and I think we may have been the nutters. But I digress.
So the mosquito "terminator" (instructions and label in French!?!) is like one of those bug zappers, except on a stick. You wave it around and kill flies and mosquitoes in mid-air. I had seen one last summer at Eva's and experienced how cool they are so when I saw them in the catalogue, I snapped up three: one for the rat's nest, one for the perch and one for the priests' hole. Kazzie's baba has the racket down to a science and my father is also getting the hang of it. In bed at night, when he hears a mozzie, he just waves it slowly in the air over his head without even getting up. Dolly and I have not had much practice since the rat's nest doesn't get that many mozzies, thanks be. But you know how sometimes you spontaneously give somebody a little present, and you hear they are really getting into it and use it? Isn't that a treat? Especially when it was relatively cheap. Cheapskates like me always get that extra little bit of glee from something like that.
I will close with 4 words: "Savoury Potato Cheese Soup" (Gram's recipe)
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4 comments:
What are Kazzie and I? Chopped liver? Also, didn't Korye just comment a few days ago?
First of all, thanks for any comment. Second, how come you always pick on some detail and ignore the gist of the post? My purpose in writing that may have been to get a couple of readers to come out of the woodwork...but you're right, Korye has been to our old back yard and can relate big time. Also he is an occasional commenter, as are you. I don't think the Spaz can complain about her coverage, however.
Of course I remember that Zapper! I loved that thing and wanted one. Super dramatic, in keeping with our many backyard entertainments... still remember some of our top ten lists, and JJ Goldman impression, and my sister's Paul McCartney act?
Enjoy your new toy!
How could I forget when you have photographic evidence? I remember a particularly attractive picture of me in YOUR backyard in beige culottes (or whatever those really wide, knee-length shorts were called). I may have been reciting haiku. And then Tim goes and becomes the published poet...Go figure.
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