Mitchell Way
2009-2020
My granddog, Milton Barry and I walked through the tall grass to a hilly knoll overlooking the ocean. He wasn’t walking as fast in his old age, but he didn’t mind the walk together. As the afternoon sun was setting, we sat together and I laid my hand on his back.
Never, never, ever use Rogaine ™ that has gone beyond its expiration date.
Snow skiing ranks quite high on my list of humiliations and though, through the years I have impressed others with an innate ability to humiliate myself continuously on the ski slopes, last year’s little incident which I call, “the getting to know you ride,” sums up my life on the slopes.
Actually the idea should have worked. The premise was this: “The Fall Out Team”, namely Neutron (me), Atom (Myron Voth), Proton (John Zylstra), and Electron (Rex Ely) were highlighted as possibly showing up at a high school rally of 800 kids in the Seattle area.
When moms have their first born child they tend to want to try out every thing they learned in High School home economics class. In my case, how to sew a circus jacket. All I really wanted to do was to run around the yard and chase the cat with a stick. So we struck up a bargain; if she could sew me suits, I could chase that cat around the yard with a stick. This agreement continued up until I graduated from high school.
The story I am about to tell, though it may seem far-fetched and made up, is indeed 100% true. It is important that I protect the names of those involved, so it is for that reason I will be going by the name Mike.
And so you see, this is what happens when you are singing, “The hills are alive with the sound of music” and a hawk swoops down and grabs your toupee.
Being intrigued by the constant barrage of late night TV ads which challenge you to find your lineage, I signed up with Ancestory.com and traced my family back to medieval times in ancient Britain. Knowing for sure that I must be a descendant of King Arthur or Sir Lancelot, I was sorely disappointed to learn that my oldest relative on record was an extremely colorblind and nearsighted foot soldier named Larry who accidentally chopped up seven of his own fellow warriors in battle before being reminded that the Vikings were the ones coming to shore from off of the boats. O well. He wasn’t a bad looking dude though.
Last night my grand dog Milton Barry and I were sitting on the living room couch telling stories. He starts telling me how he fought in the great Dog and Cat War of the 1950s. I know he’s lying because he can’t possibly be that old but I let him ramble on and I try to keep a straight face because I know that out of courtesy he listens to my lies too.