The usual Thursday sh**

 The usual Thursday sh** 

“Great minds think alike - or completely unalike,” Uncle Albert said. “As the case may be,” he added.

     This was this morning. I was helping him into the car; we were on our usual way to see Dr. Feight. Mondays and Thursdays I pick him up. He reads the magazines in the waiting room while I’m in with the doctor, then we eat lunch: sometimes I fix it, sometimes we go out.

     He turned around, back to the car, and sat down. He pulled his legs in one by one. He finally got buckled. I shut the door, walked around the car, got in myself, and restarted the engine. It was cold; there was lots of sun, but it was cold. I hadn’t slept well, and maneuvering Uncle Albert, bundled up in his long wool overcoat, his stupid Cossack hat made of baa-baa-black-sheep, into, and settling him in, the car was a painstaking business - a painful business, especially watching him trying to pull the seatbelt around the increased bulk of the coat, his arms also covered in the thick wool, then his hands in gloves trying to get it latched.

     “Whose great minds?” I said as I buckled my own belt. I never to remember to buckle-up before I start the car. Who knows how many thousands of gallons gas I’ve wasted over the years, how much my idiot start-the-engine-then-fasten-your-belt clan has contributed to global warming.

     “Yours for one,” he said. “And your Cousin Jack’s. Here,” he said, leaning away from me.

     “What?”

     “In my pocket,” he said. The left one of his overcoat, underneath his seat belt. I managed to get three fingers in. A postcard.

 It was hardly mint.

     “I know what you’re thinking,” he said, “but I just got it.”

     I looked at it, tucked it under his lap belt, shrugged. “Monday,” he said, “this Monday.”

* * * * *

“So, what do you think?” he said when we were home for lunch. I was heating up some chicken and vegetable soup Roz had put together on the weekend and putting two slices of bread in the toaster. He was sitting at the kitchen table.

     “Did you talk to Feight about it?” he said.

     “About what?” I was pretending ignorance, but I’m not very good at it.

     “You know what,” he said. “This loss of faith business.”

     “I did not,” I said. “Instead I told him what a jackass you are - and Jack, too. I told him ‘to hell with both of you and the horses you rode in on.’”

     “But you didn’t mean it,” Uncle Albert said.

     “No,” I said. “I guess not. At least not literally.”

* * * * *

Nothing I say can be taken literally.

11.29.18