Meals On Wheels essay - Month 15 & content discussion

N.B. There has been a noticeable lack of good, old fashioned sensible humor and simple, clean, wholesome family values in the last several dozen Meals On Wheels essays. I have strayed from my original purpose of producing these little stories for the sole purpose of informing and entertaining with a lot of humor dashed with just a little pathos and an even smaller tweak to Club involvement as drivers for this very worthy project. I have the sense that the "pathos" has gone a little too far at the expense of the humor. To paraphrase Samuel Clemens, '...there is humor in the essays, but for every laugh there have been five blushes, ten shudders and a vomit. The laugh is too expensive.'

Since I have this nagging impression of not always completely satisfying everyone who reads this prose, it is with the light and fresh heart of the season that I offer a very “normal” Meals On Wheels Essay this month that is guaranteed to satisfy every type of humor, sensibility and psychology in our Club, even though there are an excessive plethora of these to satisfy. In doing so however, I cast an envious eye to Hercules and his task of cleaning out King Augeas' stables. He had by far, the easier job...

As a courtesy and as I aim to be a gentleman and because adult solutions to stress incontinence will be found to be grossly ineffective if you read any further, I will stop writing for a few moments while you prepare for the eventual calamitous loss of control as happens when you are caught short in a perfect maelstrom of unexpected hilarity...

The essay that follows is extremely funny. I guarantee it. These two sentences are a very good example of audacious understatement and they are included here as a bonus. This piece will make you laugh to the extent that many of the smaller but critically useful internal organs that you so depend on through the course of the day may become dislodged from their happy moorings and drift around aimlessly within your body cavity, convulsing like pond water amoebae on a third grade microscope slide.

Indeed, even the most jaded conservative and serious person will at the very least, pucker at every orifice. Some people, who have more and/or larger orifices, will find this piece much more troublesome as the length and breadth of the pucker may become problematic as their particular pucker devolves into seismic peristalses. This piece will flare nostrils, tighten lips, set the jaw, grit teeth and grind molars. It will screw up the brow, protrude the eyes and furrow tongues. It will make persons inclined to laugh at anything, need emergency consultation with a urologist. It will make persons inclined not to laugh at anything, lean towards virulent hatred.

As we do not really know or understand anything and certainly the author knows less, the prose will be kept as close to actual reality as the facts will allow. In the essay that follows, there will be no references to various states of mind, longings for a childhood missed or sad and lonely old people wasting away their few remaining days in lonely darkened rooms. There will be no discussion of death, sickness, dismemberments, exploding children, ghosts or deep philosophical concepts or conjectures. These things are the childish head-games of adults and do not deserve a place in proper Rotary anecdotal prose. There will be no mention of driving, other drivers, bad driving, morons, idiots or other impaired persons unless it is in the context of referring to the author personally. There will be no attempts made to analyse the human condition, politics, economics, the Greek propensity to avoid paying taxes or the current texting-while-driving epidemic.

No animals will be eaten, hurt or frightened during the creation of this piece. No rare nesting birds will have their habitat compromised and no primary dunes along the Jersey Shore will be trod on by families cutting through to the beach from their "..only 12 blocks from the beach.." shack rentals. No mention will be made that, given our current economic state caused by us not actually producing anything for the last 30 years, China will be employing your grandchild to clean their homes by 2050. Tiger Woods and any references to fallen heroes, like Mercury, Achilles, Hercules and Apollo will not be found. Mythological and classical references inserted to show how clever the author is and how smartly he weaves these into the fabric of the story shall not used. The author is an intellectual yokel and has no business knowing anything more than anyone else and he knows it.

Kevin B. will not be mentioned at all, nor will his irritating habit of coming up with good Club projects. I have mentioned him for his good nature and pestering personality so much, I'm sure there are one or two people who are almost tired of it. Dawn F., will not be mentioned because although she is a very nice person, she has taken over the duty of pestering Meals On Wheels drivers from Kevin and is nearly as good at it as he was. In another week or so, she will exceed him at it. She is that good...

You will not see any hint of dark melancholy, altered states of mind or references to psychotic dream states or mental illness or pounding temples or peen hammers - these all have been covered in past MOW pieces in a thorough and scholarly fashion. Religion, religious references, and any references to the general calamity religion has applied to humanity through the ages will be assiduously avoided. Speculations about other planets, ( ie. what would it be like to deliver Meals On Wheels on a thin atmosphere low gravity world, where a Prius could go 800 mph...) which may harbor intelligent alien life will not be discussed as life is complicated enough on this planet and intelligence here is subjective in the extreme.

Finally, there will be no discussion of or references to existentialism, that happy and pleasant twentieth-century philosophical movement emphasizing the uniqueness of each human existence in freely making its self-defining choices. Just the facts, mainly, presented with all the dryness and reserve and dignity and importance and probity and dryness commonly associated with standard Rotary International business. The piece will be dry as a camel's front hoof.

Meals On Wheels Month 15

Meals on Wheels is a vital social service to the homebound in our community. Pascack Valley Meals On Wheels delivers food to CarePlus in Paramus to make it convenient for the volunteer drivers of The Paramus Rotary Club to pick up and deliver to those needing this assistance.

Become an involved Rotarian and donate an hour out of your busy day, only one day a month and put a smile on someone who otherwise does not have the resources to fend for themselves.