Hayter for July 6, 2025
A welcome visit from Jill
My kid sister, Jill, visited last
week to pick up her car. I let her borrow my Yaris so I could have Christopher
Auto, in Conroe, work on her Toyota Matrix. Jill doesn’t trust the mechanics in
her area.
ill is the most worrisome of my siblings… probably. I haven’t been in contact with my sister Susan, who lives near Seattle, so I’m unaware of any family goings on in the Northwest. Before Mom’s passing in 2006, seven of us siblings kept up with one another. We each called Mom throughout the week, and she shared with us anything important about the rest of the crew.
About once a month, Jill managed to arrange events for the family. At times, Al and I would invite the family to Conroe. Either that or everyone would gather at Jill’s house. Our family has numerically gotten so large that Al and I have curbed our hosting of get-togethers.
I particularly enjoyed Jill’s latest visit. I enjoy our conversations. She is dead set against men. She experienced too much bad juju in her multi-year role as “wife.” And the years she had an office at San Jacinto Jr. College warehouse were a real test for her. It was there that she developed a lack of respect for men. I once felt obligated to let her know that I am one among a few billion human males. She said, “Yeah, right. But you seem to take things better.” -- I said, “Okay, but I’m still scared of you.” -- My sense of humor is well-connected with my kid sister.
Apparently, Kay wanted a change of subject, because out of the blue, she said, “Bob Newhart’s dead.” What a lousy subject change! Bob Newhart reminded me of me. And she just blurted out that he died. That got us talking about our favorite Newhart series. It was the one called “The Bob Newhart Show.” I thought it was a decent title. Johnny Carson’s show was merely called “Johnny Carson.” Apparently, the producers of Bob Newhart’s second series, liked the simple name of Carson’s show, so they named theirs “Carson”—I mean “Newhart.” Can we stay on the subject here?
“Newhart” was an okay series, just not as good as the first. We couldn’t remember, nor care about, any of his later series. Before leaving the topic, I asked Kay what Newhart died of. She said, “I don’t remember.”
That threw me off a bit, because she had just read about it. So, I asked, “Well, when did he die, darling?” – She said, “He passed away last year in mid-July.”
That was a real kick in the rear, so I sanely asked her why she waited so long to blurt out the news of his passing. I had actually remembered his dying, but didn’t know what gave Kay the thought to bring it up. After all, a lot of other famous people had died more recently. When I asked her about that, Jill grinned and said, “Why make a big deal out of it, Moke?” Jill had meandered back to her dislike of men.
Fortunately,she chose to change the subject. “That reminds me,” she said. “Isn’t it crazy how we use so many appliances and such, yet don’t know what makes them work. We push a button, and ‘Walla!’ I interrupted with, “Are you talking about handkerchiefs, to which she replied, “Moke, don’t make me hurt you.”
By the way, Jill calls me “Moke” because it’s short for Smokey, as in “Smokey the Bear.” She came up with that after I became a forester with the Texas Forest Service in Conroe, back in ’71. I’m sure I’ve mentioned that before, but it never hurts to bring up some of your life’s experiences.
Kay wisely chose to latch onto the conversation about our lack of understanding of how things work. She mentioned our TV remote. “You push a button, and some kind of invisible ray comes out of the remote and hits part of the TV that somehow changes a channel or turns up the volume up, or freezes the, uh—”
I interrupted her to say, “Yes, darling. We have no idea how all of that happens. But what about cell phones? I don’t even know what they’re called nowadays. Androids, smartphones, iPhones. Each one of them with tiny digital keyboard that is impossible for a person over the age of one to hit individually. How do they make stuff like that? They now have one that you can attach to your eyeglasses. The tiny device mysteriously sends a signal to a tower at the speed of light. From there, it goes to a satellite, which sends it to another tower. And each of these towers and satellites grab hold, sorts, and then relays millions of signals all at once.
That brought up the question, how many people on this planet have a clue as to what the next magic device will be, or has been done? Maybe 100,000 people in India, China, and Massachusetts have a clue as to how things work. But eight billion of us remain are in the dark.
An hour or so after that, we called it a night. -- “Night!” -- Jill said it before I did. She’s quick.
The next morning, I helped Jill put her things into her newly repaired Matrix. I told her to call me when she got home. She forgot to call me, and I forgot to call her to tell her she forgot to call me. Yes, there comes a time when we get too involved in ourselves. More to the point, we just forget. It seems to have become quite common.
End
No comments:
Post a Comment