Dear Waldo,
My daughter asked me what love is and I felt like such a fool, starting and stopping and starting again and stopping again and starting again and stopping again. I’m forty six. I should know what love is by now, shouldn’t I? Waldo, what is love?
Crestfallen in Greenfield
Dear Crestfallen,
You ask a tough and heart-breaking and wonderful question. Here’s the best answer I’ve ever been able to come up with: Putting love into words is like putting rose petals into a chipper. The heart rattles, the soul shakes, and for what? Out comes pink goo. Thank you for asking. That’s the best I can do.
Your Fan, Waldo Mellon
Dear Waldo,
So why is it that when I am doing the laundry there is usually a sock that has gone missing in the time frame of loading the machine, turning it on, and then emptying it? Where does it go? Huh?
Inept in Montague
Dear Inept,
Your terrific question has been asked many times and so it’s no surprise that someone has come up with a terrific answer that I don’t think can be topped. Your missing sock has ended up in The Hose Zone. Pretty good, right? The real, less enjoyable answer is this: Your lost sock is somewhere you haven’t looked yet. But The Hose Zone is a great example of another word that doesn’t exist but should: Schlimmergling. A Schlimmergling is everything that would delight you if only you knew about it, a treasure pulsating in your Just Beyond, spring-loaded to improve your life simply by being discovered. Schlimmerglings come tiny and huge. A good example of a sweet little Schlimmerling is stumbling upon the right word when you’re writing a love-letter or a poem, or happening upon a wonderful book or movie or play. Bigger Schlimmerlings include finding a pearl in your dinner of oysters, or tripping on your shoelace and ricocheting into someone who becomes your partner for life. However, Inept in Montague, I should mention that Schlimmerglings can be dangerous. The bright glare of What Might Be may blind you to the sparkle of What You Have. I hope you find your sock.
Your Fan, Waldo Mellon
Dear Waldo,
Aaron Judge makes $40,000,000 a year playing professional baseball and I make $62,280 a year teaching high school math to teenagers. I have a very nice life. However. In a year, both Aaron and I work at our jobs for around 180 days. Aaron makes around two hundred and twenty thousand dollars a day every day he works at hitting a ball with a stick, and I make around three hundred and forty-six dollars a day every day I work at teaching my students math. Some of my students are pains in the neck, but I do love them, the youth of them, their loose limbs, their fun hair, their wide-opened eyes. Don’t get me wrong. I love baseball. And so why am I made so upset by how much money Aaron Judge makes?
Thanks, Grouchy in Northampton
Dear Grouchy In Northampton,
Grouchy, thanks to your question I had a wonderful dream. I dreamed there was such a thing as an Enough-O-Meter. An Enough-O-Meter detects Enough the way a metal-detector detects metal. To test it out in my dream I focused my Enough-O-Meter on my underwear drawer, and the Enough-O-Meter began blinking and beeping like crazy. Good start. I then focused my Enough-O-Meter on my self-doubts, and the thing blinked and beeped like crazy again. Ok. The gizmo works.
Finally I focused my Enough-O-Meter on Aaron Judge’s annual salary, and uh-oh. Smoke came pouring out, which according to the dream-manual happens only when Enough enters The Silly Zone of Much Too Much. And Grouchy, that’s when The Distribute-O-Blower arrived ready for action in my dream.
The Distribute-O-Blower is like a leaf-blower, only much more powerful and it comes with its own dream-instruction manual: 1. Focus Enough-O-Meter on Yearly Incomes; 2. At first hint of smoke, establish The Upper Limit of Enough; 3. Take Distribute-O-Blower (with its lifetime guarantee) and blow all money above The Upper Limit of Enough onto Mt. Sherrittall; 5. Affix telescopic sight (included) to Distribute-O-Blower, aim, and blow blow blow all the dough on Mt. Sherritall to Everyone Without Enough. And keep blowing.
Because thanks to goofy Capitalism which is made giddy by the fluke of good luck and good genetics and the power of power, Mt. Sherritall will keep growing. Thanks to all those folks sitting there in The Silly Zone watching their money make more money with nothing but money, Distribute-O-Blowers will keep busy, busy, busy. And thanks to the delightful freaks like Aaron Judge, who can make us fling hundreds of dollars for tickets and peanuts and hot-dogs so that we can watch him hit a ball with a stick, I say in advance to him thank you sir for your contributions to Mt. Sherrittall.
Then I woke up. Some dream, eh, Grouchy in Northampton? I’m not sure my dream would go over so hot with all those folks in The Silly Zone, but Aaron seems like a good guy and maybe he’d start a trend.
Maybe not. In my opinion, grouchy is a fine start. I say keep up the grumbling.
Your Fan, Waldo Mellon
Waldo invites all questions! The realer the better. Send to waldomellon1@gmail.com. His most recent book is ‘What’s What and What To Do About It’ (Seven Stories Press).