On your mark, get set….

wait a second.  I forgot my timer.

OK, here we go.

Wait, wait.  OK.  Ah, it’s no use.  The mind is like a molasses pond.  Hands like spoons.  Nothing good will come of this.

“There you go, again,” comes an uncanny Reagan in my ear.  

“Some boys are not content to let these nocturnal emissions come naturally,” says the Boy Scout manual, in the years before one spoke openly of masturbation.  “While this may cause no real harm, any real boy knows that anything that causes him to worry should be shared with a scout master or priest.”

“Father, I don’t know what it is, but I am not content to let these nocturnal emissions come naturally to me,” says the boy.  

“Oh boy,” says the reader, eyes rolled heavenwards, tired of this frog march already.  

“Have no fear, gentle reader, less than five minutes left,” writes the blahgger reassuringly.  

“We are not reassured….” says Meryl Streep, in her uncanny Eleanor Roosevelt voice.   It was her, the credits revealed, who read Eleanor’s part so perfectly in the brilliant Ken Burns documentary on the Roosevelts.  

“THIS is what you are doing today?” asks a disembodied voice incredulously.

We could use a class traitor like FDR in the White House today.  Is nobody inspired by his example any more?

“That’s it,” says the guitar in the stand, “you will pick me up and play some standard in C.  How about the intro to Stardust?  There, that’s a good boy.  Leave everyone alone now.”  

When she’s right she’s right, I think wearily, either that or a short nap, or both.

Still 50 seconds left.  Are you concerned about that?  I am not, just waiting for the beep.  Turns out I don’t have pneumonia, something much more vague.

BEEP!