So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[2jakes]

A father who was totally indifferent to his son growing up is something
that took a long time to understand.
Later in life, I never approached him about it & why he was like that.
What good would it have done now, except probably make him feel guilty.

He left this world knowing that I was with him towards the end.
There was tears in his eyes & although he could no longer speak,
he smiled & closed his eyes forever.

Although I was sad, I had no tears at the time.
It was just a matter of fact.
It was not until much later that I did cry.

Not sure if they were tears for my father or myself,
probably for both.

 

[EngProf]

As someone who grew up in a Southern suburb in the '50's in a big new brick house, on an acre+ lot with trees and grass, and with a creek at the rear of our lot, and with woods within walking distance, seeing the Kramdens on TV was like watching people from another planet. No one and nothing I knew was *anything* like them. As a kid I can't say that I actually got the idea that people could live in just two rooms in a big building.

I became a fan later, after the infinite number of reruns, but there is still a bit of "alien-ness" about them and their situation.

Combining "The Honeymooners", Ralph Kramden, and the possibility of misunderstanding over time of what was said/meant, I think one of the best examples of that was in one of the early episodes of the SF animation-series "Futurama". In very short summary, the main character was accidentally frozen in the year 2000 and was unfrozen in the year 3000.

In order to make him feel more at home, the residents of the year 3000 show him a statue of someone of his time who was recognized by them as a hero of the early-era of space exploration for his strong advocacy of space travel.

They visit a statue of Ralph Kramden, in his bus-driver outfit, standing next to Alice. He is pointing upward, and the inscription on the base of the statue is: "TO THE MOON, ALICE!".

 

[ChiTownScion]

On another note, while sitting in the doctor's waiting room today I saw a woman come in with a little girl about five years old -- on a leash, strapped into a harness like she was a wire-haired terrier or something. I can understand this with a toddler -- but jeez, when I was five years old I was walking upstreet to the store and school by myself. If anybody'd tried to put a leash on me, there'd have been hell to pay.

The other thing that always amazes me is the age - and size- of kids who are still riding in car seats. Mrs. Scion informs me that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that kids be put into the booster version up to age 12, 100 pounds, or five foot height. Had I been riding in a car seat over the age of two I am certain that I'd been beaten up by other kids. I was riding subway trains all around Chicago by myself when I was ten: stuff me into a kiddie car seat at the peril of your life, Doc.

Reminds me of when we adopted the second kid (then age ten) from Russia. The pediatricians essentially wanted any kid under 12 (per AAP guidelines) in the back seat, and voiced that suggestion. I had to suppress the reflex to laugh in his face: two days earlier I had picked our son up from a Russian orphanage where the older kids were engaging in impromptu boxing matches on a regular basis, and their favorite playground activity was flying out of swings and slamming full bore into an oak tree trunk. He continued to ride in the front- and that was that.

 

[Stearmen]

While driving home from a doctor's appointment today I was thinking about Gleason's TV work in general, spurred by this thread, and it occurs to me that he is one of only a very few American comedians who consistently used their work to lay bare their own psychological issues and fears. Buster Keaton did this in silent pictures, Woody Allen's been doing it for the past fifty years in modern movies, and Gleason did it every week for twenty years on television. All of his characters, one way or another, come out of his own inner demons, and it's fascinating to examine them in that light.

Ralph Kramden expresses his fear of ending up as what he constantly feared growing up -- just another hopeless Brooklyn moax in a crummy apartment with a dead end job and no money.

Fenwick Babbitt and the Poor Soul, neither of whom could ever seem to do anything right, expressed his sense of inadequacy and his fear of public failure.

Joe the Bartender is his whitewashed nostalgia for the old neighborhood, remembering only the good times and none of the bad.

And most interestingly, Charlie "The Loudmouth" Bratton and Reggie Van Gleason III are pointed metatextual critiques by Gleason of Gleason himself -- expressing in a comic way his own worst traits. Charlie is his dominating, aggressive side that never shut up, and Reggie, as a working-class fantasy of what it would be like to be rich, is Gleason's subconscious critique of his own excesses -- the women, the liquor, the extravagant clothes and opulent surroundings exaggerated to the point of ridiculousness.

Once you think about his work in this way, you can never look at it in the same way again. Only Keaton and Allen ever exposed their inner vulnerablities more completely in the guise of comedy.

But yeah, they were funny, too.

Jackie did have guts, not sure I could lay my soul bare for millions to see! That's why I always liked this scene with McQueen.

 

[Stearmen]

A father who was totally indifferent to his son growing up is something
that took a long time to understand.
Later in life, I never approached him about it & why he was like that.
What good would it have done now, except probably make him feel guilty.

He left this world knowing that I was with him towards the end.
There was tears in his eyes & although he could no longer speak,
he smiled & closed his eyes forever.

Although I was sad, I had no tears at the time.
It was just a matter of fact.
It was not until much later that I did cry.

Not sure if they were tears for my father, me,
or both.

Pretty much the same here! I grew up partially on my Grandmothers farm, and in small city's, where large fields were just a hop skip and a jump away, so NY was like the moon to me. We could walk a few blocks and go rabbit hunting, or just shoot at cans. Even though I live in an open carry city, I imagine, if a kid walked down the street with an M1A over his shoulder, he would be surrounded by the SWAT team in minutes!

 

[BlueTrain]

I've mentioned frequently how I grew up in a small town. It was much more like a city than anything remotely like the suburbs. True, there were neighbors who still used wood-burning cook stoves in their kitchen and most people had sheds behind the house. We even had a regular barn because my grandparents kept a cow and chickens. One neighbor still kept chickens. And many had large gardens, though by no means did everyone. There were no woods behind the house but there was a nice pond about three blocks away. Yet one aunt and uncle lived "up town," all of about four blocks away, in an apartment that had four rooms. The bedrooms overlooked the main street in town. The bathroom was across the hall and it was shared.

I'm sure kids played rougher in those days. At least they did in my neighborhood. I had to get stitches twice. Even though I was skinny and still am, nobody pushed me around and got away with it, even if I did come off second best some of the time.

 

[Fading Fast]

Jackie did have guts, not sure I could lay my soul bare for millions to see! That's why I always liked this scene with McQueen.

"Let me tell you something my friend, being a fat narcissist isn't easy -" now that is a funny line.

 

[ChrisB]

Paying more for shipping than the actual cost of the merchandise.

 

[BlueTrain]

Although it is not misdelivered mail at all but something that makes me laugh, we get mail here at work for everyone who has ever been employed here in the last fifteen years. It's all catalogs and junk mail but I like to think of it as having achieved a measure of immortality for those who have passed on (to other jobs).

 

[swanson_eyes]

Paying more for shipping than the actual cost of the merchandise.

YES. I paid $9 shipping for a 4-ounce bag of marshmallow root that costed $4. It's not sold cut and sifted loose in any brick and mortar stores that I know of.

 

[Fading Fast]

Paying more for shipping than the actual cost of the merchandise.

You hit on the core challenge that chocolate companies have trying to move on-line with the rest of retail. Especially in the warmer climates and times of year, the cost to the company of packing (including some dry ice, etc. insert) makes it very expensive for them to ship even if they price the shipping to cost.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The worst example of this is electronic components and other small maintenance parts. If you don't need a gross of resistors or capacitors at a time, you're going to get skinned on the shipping no matter what. Especially if you need only one or two pieces of an odd value, where actually ordering a gross at a time would be ridiculous.

I have one supplier that's pretty much the only place you can get certain values of parts, and I only use them when absolutely necessary, because they only use UPS or FedEx for shipping and I hate paying $7.50 to ship an item that could easily be sent USPS for the cost of a 47 cent stamp.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Luckily, classic "fine-fuses" for my 70's kitchen-radio are still available, if I would need one. They are available in normal electronic chain-stores, here.

 

[tonyb]

Paying more for shipping than the actual cost of the merchandise.

Those cheesy ads for oddball gizmos ("not available in stores!") still appear on late night and other small-audience TV programming. Almost without fail they sweeten the offer ("but wait, there's more!") with a second example of the item FREE! "Just pay separate shipping and handling," they add, and that's where the money really is.

 

[Fading Fast]

Those cheesy ads for oddball gizmos ("not available in stores!") still appear on late night and other small-audience TV programming. Almost without fail they sweeten the offer ("but wait, there's more!") with a second example of the item FREE! "Just pay separate shipping and handling," they add, and that's where the money really is.

It's amazing that, that trick still works, but it must or they wouldn't still be advertising.

 

[HudsonHawk]

It's amazing that, that trick still works, but it must or they wouldn't still be advertising.

It's like the emails that promise a Nigerian prince will give you $5 million AND show you the path to natural male enhancement...it's got to be working, or they'd move on to another scam.

 

[LizzieMaine]

What I really feel sorry for is actual Nigerian princes who get in trouble and need help.

 

[vitanola]

That is so true, Malapropisms rule. At the garage that takes care of my old MG, a customer was moaning about how costive classic car ownership was. "Hasn't passed a thing all day?" I enquired. He looked perplexed. "Can you get online with your phone?" I said. He nodded and showed me a google screen. "Type costive into the search," I suggested. "It means constipated," he exclaimed, adding, "oh I get it, not passed a thing all day."
"Spare me," I thought, as I walked away leaving him finger jabbing at his phone screen.

I once drove a car like that! An Orient Buckboard. Never passed anything.

 

[LizzieMaine]

A flash of cold heart-stopping horror flashed thru me this morning when I opened the local paper to discover that, after decades of living in the North End, I am now a resident of "NoRo."

I truly despise the trend of giving old working-class neighborhoods cutesy names devised by greasy real-estate speculators to encourage gentrification. I despise it even more when it's my neighborhood so renamed.

 

[Trenchfriend]

A flash of cold heart-stopping horror flashed thru me this morning when I opened the local paper to discover that, after decades of living in the North End, I am now a resident of "NoRo."

I truly despise the trend of giving old working-class neighborhoods cutesy names devised by greasy real-estate speculators to encourage gentrification. I despise it even more when it's my neighborhood so renamed.

Probably better than "Noro-virus".