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Bud Grossmann’s
Words of the Week
for the Week of
April 5, 2009
Previously unpublished fiction.
© 2009 by Bud Grossmann.
All Rights Reserved.
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Teeth, 2008
© 2008 by Bud Grossmann
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HOW ARE MY FOLKS, YOU ASKED
Thanks for asking. My folks are real good. Mom is still with me full-time, but, I may have told you, Debbie Albertini, a sort-of-retired friend from California, is staying with us indefinitely. Debbie’s a big help. Mom needs lifting from time to time, but Dad is not yet authorized to lift anything as weighty as my mother or a bag of portland cement (three pounds more than Mom, and dustier). Dad and Debbie together have given me recent breaks of more than an hour out of the house. Couple weeks ago, I ventured twenty miles from home, all by myself, to pick up my tax returns from the tax guy, and just two days ago I drove three blocks here in Fjord (through freezing rain) to the dentist’s office to get my teeth cleaned for the first time in more than a year. I asked the dental hygienist, Molly Lundgren, if she enters a code on the patients’ charts to record how carefully the patients trim their nose hairs. The question made her laugh, and she said she doesn’t, so I said I suppose I wasted the extra effort in getting ready for my big outing. Molly advised me that the view of noses goes both ways; what her teenaged daughter most disliked about visits to the orthodontist was the unavoidable glimpse of the man’s hairy nostrils. I asked if perhaps the orthodontist would appreciate an anonymous note, but Molly said he is retired now and thus not so much in need of feedback as he once may have been. Though my garrulousness slows Molly in her work, she makes up for lost time with frantic flossing towards the end of our allotted hour.
This, my friend, should teach you to ask how are my folks.
And your family, sir, how are you all? ♦
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