The Week That Perished...Plus a Funny(?) Anecdote

I mean, I laugh at it because crying loosens the tape on my glasses

This past Friday I once again didn’t post an original piece, but this time (in Don Corleone voice) I will give you my reasons.

I’ve become a bad drunk. And by that I mean, I’ve stopped being good at it. I’m not the pro I used to be. I drank every day from June 2003 to June 2019. Every single day. I took a year off from June 2019 to June 2020 because drinking had become tedious, I’d been doing it so long. But booze NEVER made me feel ill. Even when my liver numbers were really bad at the start of 2019, I never felt sick.

I took eight months off from drinking in 2022, because I wanted to give my liver another break.

But now, alls of a sudden, I can’t drink for more than two months without feeling nauseous. Every two months, I have to quit for a while.

See, the truly pro drunks will choose nausea over quitting. I’ve known alkies who have no problem throwing up every night.

Me? I hate the feeling of nausea and the thought of vomiting to such an extent, I have to take drink sabbaticals.

So, last week was a sabbatical week, and I’ll tells ya, friends, unlike the earlier times I quit, these days, going cold turkey, I get the fucking shakes like nobody’s business. TERRIBLE shakes. Shakes so bad I can’t type. I literally can’t type. I still had to do The Week That Perished, but I had to write it hunt-and-pecking like a child. All my dexterity was gone.

That was my work, so I had no choice. But I just couldn’t do it again for a Substack piece. I couldn’t even respond to your wonderful comments (as you know, I try to answer your comments personally).

So here’s the funny(?) anecdote.

I had to get some checks into the bank, and no way was I in any shape to walk to an ATM. And for several days, it tormented me - these were checks I had to deposit quick, but how? And then it hit me: my bank offers mobile deposits! So, shakily, I used the app. I’m not good with phones anyway, because my eyesight’s poor. But trying to use an app with severely trembling hands? Trying to press the right thing? Trying to take photos of the checks?

“Please keep the camera still. Please keep the camera still. Please keep the camera still.”

It was a struggle, but I did it!

So pleased was I with my victory, I decided to at least walk the short distance to my curb to take my trash out. Even shaking (and still nauseous), I could certainly do THAT much.

Having just avoided a one-mile walk because it would’ve been an ordeal, I could certainly take a twelve-yard one.

And…

To digress, my neighbor is an elderly man who, a few years ago, was on my case because one of my trees had a few branches that were overhanging his backyard. In California, a homeowner can trim a neighbor’s overhang themselves, but this guy wanted me to do it (the old man has a weekly gardener, I don’t. His gardener could’ve done it at any time). But I didn’t want to fight, so I said “sure,” even though I knew it would be costly as my “cheap” tree-bean’s prices have become inflated.

So I stalled, and the neighbor eventually forgot about it. And he’s the definition of recluse, far worse than I. He never leaves his house, never uses his backyard, so I never run into him. And he has no windows that can see the front of my house, so he never sees me taking out the garbage.

For two years, the tree issue was forgotten.

And as I’m wheeling my trashcans to the curb, he fucking emerges to put something into his cans. We see each other for the first time in two years.

“Hello David!”

He shambles over

“Seeing you just reminded me of the tree. I need that work done now, okay? Thanks.”

For two years he’d forgotten, and I leave my house for one fucking minute and he catches me. If I’d just taken the trash out five minutes earlier or later.

It’s a great gag, a really well-constructed gag, because it’s funny on two levels.

First, there’s the irony factor. I find a way to NOT walk a long distance because it would be a major hassle, and then I walk the shortest distance possible and it becomes a major hassle.

But then there’s the bigger irony: I’d just been congratulating myself on finding a way to deposit that money, and now, hiring my bean to trim that tree will erase a huge portion of what I’d struggled so hard to deposit. All that agonizing over the deposit, for nothing. That money’ll be gone.

Very funny, life, very funny. Larry David’s got nothing on you.

Any beer you buy me will go toward making this sting a little less.

Now, just because I told you an anecdote doesn’t absolve you from reading this week’s Week!

And here it is.

https://www.takimag.com/article/the-week-that-perished-296/