ORANGES!

There are three people I haven't seen for a while that I wonder about. Two of them, worry. The former journalist in his eighties hasn't been around since April, and we haven't heard anything. He was a bit poorly then, so the question whether anyhing happened is valid, as it also is for the retired photography professor of the same vintage. He's been out of contact since early August. Both of them are good men. The first is deaf as a post, the second had trouble with his legs. The third gentleman is 'little white nipple dude', and he might simply be a bad penny. Never-the-less, because all evidence shows that he is quite incapable of functioning on his own, one wonders.

If his caretaker had a medical event, little white nipple dude may be hungry and desperate about opening those cans of Spam. Disconsolately he stares at the can opener. How does it work? Why is there nothing in the rice cooker? It used to be full! Oh woe!
And how come everything smells bad?

Seriously. I worry about him. There is so much that in half a century he hasn't ever figured out. He knows everything there is to know about ten gallon hats and personal helicopters (he doesn't own or have access to one), as well as nuclear fusion and the bones of the feet (in a mystical and lord-of-the-rings sense, of course), and so little evidence that he can actually fend for himself, that he might be completely helpless in that last regard.

I also miss his gibbering. Sort of.

Sometimes there is little that one can do.

The weather will not cooperate, the wildfire rages too intently, the pot of spaghetti was out on the counter too long, and the fuel ran out. The emergency airstrip is snowed under, there's a blizzard in the rice paddy, and the grizzly bear doesn't go all the way to the top.

I'm starting to think that investigative telephoning might be good.

It is unlikely that any of them have been abducted.


I rather like the first two mentioned.


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