Another Joke and a Few Thoughts about Time

As long as I’m on a joke parade, I guess I can throw in another one. I found this long joke in a Canadian magazine called Absolute Rubbish.  It’s called “The Italian who went to Toronto.” And is recounted by that Italian who went to Toronto:

“One day I go to Toronto and stay in bigga hotel.  I go down to eat soma breakfast, I tella the waitress I wanna two pissa toast.  She brings me only one piss.  I tella her I wanna two piss; she say, go to toilet—I say you no understand, I wanna two pissa on my plate.  She say you betta no piss on plate, you sonna ma bitch!  I don’t even know lady, ana she calls me sonna ma bitch.  Then I go to pharmacia with a cougha.  The man he give me candy ana tell me fa cough!  Fa cough!—I don’t even know man ana he tella me FA COUIGH!  Later, I go to eat soma lunch at Ricky’s Place, the waitress she bring me spoon, a knife, but no fock.  I tella her I wanna fock, she tell me everybody wanna fock.  I tella her, you no understand, I wanna fock ona table.  She say you betta not fock ona table, you somma ma bitch.  I not even know lady, ana she call me sonna ma bitch.  So, I got back to my hotel room, an there’s no sheet on my bed.  I calla the manager and tells him I wanna sheet.  He tell me to go to toilet.  So, I say you no understand, I wanna sheet on bed.  He say you betts not sheet on bed, you somma ma bitch.  I don’t even know man ana he call me sonna ma bitch!  I go to check out of hotel and man at desk he say peace to you.  I say peace on you too!  You sonna ma bitch!  I go back to Italia."

          Here’s something I found a long time ago, a clever observation about the relativity of time. David Martin’s The Crying Heart Tattoo is a most unusual story, a very funny, sad, moving love story.  The narrator is a young/old man named Sonny retelling the lifelong ups and downs of his life and his relationship with Felicity, a woman twenty years Sonny’s senior, but a fascinating woman no matter what her age.  Interwoven with the outer story of Sonny and Felicity is Felicity’s story of Gravêda and Genipur, a tale she spends her lifetime telling to Sonny, which Sonny then relates of the reader.  I just can’t say enough about how good a novel it is, how true it is as a picture of callow, self-centered youth.  But it also says a lot that’s true about life as Sonny sees it later in his life, and says it well.  For example, “When I was twenty, I thought thirty was old, was when you start to uncrank and settle down and go to church and wait to die.  Whatever age you are, I have observed, someone twice you age seems old.  When you’re four, eight seems incredibly old and worldly.  When you’re ten, twenty represents that exotic state of adulthood.  And when you’re twenty, forty seems old—just as when you’re forty, eighty seems old.  I suppose the opposite is true, too: someone half your age seems incredibly young; I know that, now, twenty-five-year-olds strike me as being childlike.

I’ll tell you something I have observed: The older women I slept with when I was in my thirties (although, come to think of it, our liaisons were marked by a distinct lack of sleep) now are collecting Social Security.  The only observation I can make that’s ghastlier than that one is this one: By the time the younger women I now sleep with (and we do a lot of that) are old enough to hold a civilized conversation, I’ll be collecting Social Security.”

Isn’t that nice?