A Gas By Any Other Name

My wife has changed her nickname for me.  She used to call me "Slush."

This originated early in our marriage one time when I had strep throat.  Apparently I was moaning in my sleep, delirious with fever, and she reached over, put her hand on my forehead, and asked, "Are you okay, Honey?"

I woke up slightly and blurted assertively, "Don't call me Honey...  call me Slush."

I could have said, "Call me Ishmael."  Or, "Call me in the morning."  Or, "They call me Mr. Tibbs."   But no, up from the depths of mental quicksand, I burped, "Call me Slush."  Don't ask me why.

And for years and years, that's exactly what she did.  And sometimes she would embellish the word with an affectionate Southern drawl, as in:  "Now don't leave your clipped toenails on the coffee table, Sluuuuuuush."  She would often cushion such wicked commandments with this term of endearment.

But no longer.

Now she calls me "Beaner."  I assumed, as anyone would, that this was a nasty reference to the frequency with which I experience a profusion of intestinal gas.  This was cruel, I thought.  I probably enjoy asparagus and frijoles as much as the next guy, and I don't think I am a standout in the area of sound effects.  So, "Beaner" seemed a bit harsh and inappropriate.

There was a vaudeville performer in the 1890s, I read about years ago, whose talent was this:  he could fart at will.  Out on the stage he would go, and with certain "maneuvering", he could produce musical tones of varying pitches and volume.  I am not proud that I have made this factoid available in my memory reserves in case I have needed it.  But the point is this:  If ever an individual earned the nickname, it would have been that brilliant vaudevillian:  "And now ladies and gentlemen, presenting for your auditory and olfactory amazement,  Beaner the Magnificent!"

But as it turns out, I misunderstood my wife.  Recently while she was on the phone, I was talking to Dog, as I often do, in high-pitched Spanish.  Dog was groggy, had just left her nap on the couch, and both of her ears were inadvertently turned inside out.  You can often see Dog with one of her ears all cockeyed this way, but two for the price of one, au naturale, was kind of a treat.   As such, I was trying to tell Dog, in high-pitched Spanish, that she looked like an Italian prostitute.  I'm sorry, but such a one-sided conversation in our house is not that unusual.  Dog is used to it.  She just yawns, shakes her head to right her ears, and wants to be let outside.  She is either trying to ignore me, or maybe she hasn't learned Spanish.

Apparently, the person on the other end of the line asked my wife what all the noise was about, because I heard my wife say, "Oh that?  That's just Beaner."

"That's just Beaner"?  When she hung up, I asked her if Dog had been having gas.  No, she explained, "Beaner" had nothing to do with beans, that I was the Beaner.  It was an expansion of B.N. and that at those times when I was manic, such as then, it helped her focus on tasks by referring to me as B. N., or BeaNer, short for...   "Background Noise".  My betrothed, for richer or poorer, believes I resemble background noise.

In elementary school I was called "Shrimp" because I was so small for my age.  In junior high, they called my "Bonnie", short for Bohnhorst.  In college, I became known first as "Turk" because I lived in Turkey, and then it expanded to "The Lustful Turk", the name, apparently, of an old silent film.  But mainly, The Lustful Turk fit the persona I had created at parties and impromptu jam sessions, when I would down about 10 beers, grab the microphone in front of my rockin', electric guitar totin' friends, and famously wail and strut and kick out the vocal jams to rock "songs" never before heard and never heard since.  The unbridled energy and sheer (drunken) showmanship of The Lustful Turk would have shamed Mick Jagger and his meek brethren by comparison.

To these former names, I could identify.  I didn't like Shrimp, but I was small.  Bonnie was said with affection, the way a puppy gets a pat on the head.  The Lustful Turk made a name for himself on the Michigan State University circuit of alcohol abuse mixed on weekends with roaring rock.  Slush, I brought on myself.

But, Background Noise?  Like elevator music heading up to the fifth floor?  Like frogs in concert on a spring night in a meadow pond?  My incessant chucklehead chortling had become synonomous with the indistinguishable croaks of frogs?  What was that familiar yet strangely annoying sound?  Oh that?  That's just Beaner.

I feel a case of strep throat coming on. It will be the middle of the night. I will become delirious as my faux fever soars.  I will moan.  And my wife will touch my forehead and whisper, "Are you okay, Beaner?"

To which I will counter, "Don't call me Beaner.  Just call me Honey."




Comments are welcome at tombohn2@yahoo.com
   

Self Golfulation

If I play golf well, for days I feel sweet.  If I play golf like a hack, for days I feel sour.

Ah, me. During golf season, I'm usually puckered up like a rich boy in an outhouse.

If I play well, I reek of compassion and charity.  I greet the shy neighbor.  I whistle while I weed.  Dog gets the extra biscuit. If I roll in a 30 footer and sink everything under six feet, Putter gets to ride shotgun on the way home. If I hit some beautiful sand shots, I want to reserve a condo at the beach.  If I hit beautiful iron shots, I want to brand a barn full of cows.  If I hit long and lusty drives, I want to buy some dirty magazines.  If I escape disaster with a miraculous shot, I want to watch the Shawshank Redemption.

But when I slice a drive deep into the woods, I want to assault any nearby chipmunk.  When I chunk my ball into a pond, I want to foul any nearby goose, or if no goose, foul any fowl at all.  When I miss a two-footer, I want to swing said goose by its neck. If no goose, I want to insert my tongue in a ball washer.

My ego is a yoyo, bound to the string of the golf god's whim.

Once when a friend missed a two-footer, he spontaneously heaved his putter skyward.  The thing got hung up on the top branches of a pine tree. My muttering mate had to climb aloft, limb by limb, while several groups behind were allowed to "play through."  They must have wondered, "Why is that fat man in the plaid shorts climbing that tree?"

Furious golfers always entertain. I used to live near a golf course and every day would drive around the front nine en route to work or errands. Sometimes I would catch a glimpse of some poor hack, after a pathetic whack at his ball, hurl his golf club at full throttle like a whirling boomerang up the fairway.  One time I saw some miserable bastard, after he missed a short putt, break his putter over his knee and throw the two pieces into the long grass that rimmed my road.  I completely sympathize, but when you're on the outside looking in, it's pretty damn funny. I would like to view a montage of such candid scenes placed on film. For comic effect, they could be juxtaposed with shots of volcanoes erupting.

I know a guy, we'll call Mr. Nice Guy, who once couldn't get out of a bunker.  Mr. Nice Guy kept chunking his ball about a foot in the air before it would roll back gently by his sand-immersed feet.  After his last failed attempt, he hurled his sand wedge into a nearby pond.  This forever enshrined Mr. Nice Guy into the local Golf Hall of Infamy. A month later, a full four weeks later, someone in the pro shop teased him by asking him which brand of sand wedge he would recommend. Mr. Nice Guy recoiled like a shotgun, screamed a shrill expletive, and stormed out. 

Go ahead and say it:  "It's just a game." To normal people it is. My father-in-law played the game like it was a game, and felt the game was a game.  He laughed at his many foibles and when he made a rare par now and then, he would celebrate with a happy "hooray!" His wife, my mother-in-law, however, was over-the-top serious and constantly shoved her irons down his throat, so to speak, which constantly endangered his emotional health.  For him, it was just a game, unless he was playing with his wife. He would try to soothe her. Can you soothe a wounded hornet by pointing out its swing flaw? No, you get a seven iron shoved down your throat. 

You can hear laughter on a golf course when normal people play the game.  Like my father-in-law, they cheer at the flukish par and howl at the absurdities.  When an errant shot careens off a tree and plops back into water, they are overjoyed.  But I, like my non-human ilk, just simmer and stew just below the boiling point.  I can't laugh at myself, the stubbed chip, the bladed wedge, or the fat iron shot that splashes like a breeching whale into a water hazard. I may chuckle to dampen my embarrassment, but inside, and I hate to admit this, I pout.

I once was a pretty good golfer.  I could launch straight and nicely arcing drives from the tee box.  I could hit crisp and consistent irons that took toupee-sized divots. I could pitch and chip short shots that mostly wound up near the hole. And I was a great putter. I could almost close my eyes.

But in golf, thine opponent is thyself.

Of course, there are the external challenges that lurk: the bunkers, the swamps, the woods, the ponds, the grasses, the humps, the dips, the mud, the rocks, the winds, the rains, the heat, the cold, the sun, the bugs, the crappy lies that befall unfairly.  Even alligators.  In Turkey, I had to watch out for wild dogs.

And golf makes for strange bedfellows. I have a friend who pays off his golf debts in nickels and dimes. I have another friend who suddenly suffers from "tendonitis" whenever his game goes awry.  I have another friend who is consistently calm and cool when he plays, a sweet and regular guy, except for about two times a round when he releases a piercing primal scream. Then, like it never happened, he's fine again.

Three cronies and I once went out to Sundance Golf Course, overlooking beautiful Torch Lake, for our regular Tuesday outing. I was looking forward to it. To further tantalize, here is the description of the 17th Hole on the Sundance website:

 "A magnificent setting with an eighty-foot drop to the green. A breathtaking view is yours from a tee complex that overlooks the shimmering Caribbean blue waters of Torch Lake and the pristine beauty of the forested horizon surrounding it. Below you, surrounded by deep bunkers and aggressive heather, the green awaits as a rose among thorns."

A rose among thorns, my ass. There was nothing magnificent about Torch on that Tuesday, or should I say nothing visible, blinded as we were by driving drizzle under a low-slung cloud cover. We slogged around the front nine with our golf balls splatting down on saturated fairways and squirting chaotically on super fast greens. I wore light gray trousers that wound up heavy and dark gray from the knee down as water continually seeped up and through. Even so, I hit the long ball fairly well, but my short game lacked any common decency. After I four-putted the sixth hole, a depression emptied me, fathoms below the plunging barometric pressure. The strain, for me at least, is always compounded by the competitive spirit of the group, as gambling for precious quarters torques the pressure. I was losing and I was wet and I was pissed.

But the golf gods smiled down on the 11th green. I snaked in a long and (heretofore) impossible par putt that not only won the skin, but bested my opponents by several strokes and put me squarely in the driver's seat to win, win, win! It was as though the finest strain of Prozac found traction in my brain. Despite the added weight of my soaked shoes and socks, I found a sudden lightness in my step, a grin undid my face, and I even found love for my freshly flattened friends. And in this fresh momentum of joy, I did go on to win the match, collected a few dollars, and on the drive home, felt an unfamiliar hope against the wicked ways of the world.

As I retrace those soggy steps, I am stunned at the sheer shallowness and smallness of it all. To be plunged headlong into despair, and then thanks to a blind-squirrel putt to become at once resurrected, I admit to feeling ashamed. Those down and up feelings weren't guided by beliefs or values, but the knee-jerkiness of a needy ego.

Should I not, therefore, take up pickle ball instead?  Listen, there are cows to brand and chipmunks to chase and dirty magazines with which to read my putter to sleep.  Besides, I've just started a collection of old nickels and dimes. 

  

Comments are welcome at tombohn2@yahoo.com