I’ve grown fond of publicly writing the phrase, “as I begin to approach middle age.” It irritates many literal thinkers with sound math and logic skills. They note if I’m three-quarters of the way to 100, ergo, by claiming I’m approaching middle age, then I’ll live to be 150, which, with the right diet, exercise and staying far away from banjo music, I see as doable.
A dear friend (93) has been nagging me the last several months to get myself a proper and notarized last will and testament. Over the years, I’ve had several. Depending on which ex-flame’s patience I was testing, a Betty Lou was scheduled to get the poker chips and Blanche would win the elk’s head. If she survived me.
For clarity and PETA’s sake, it should be pointed out the elk’s head is no longer attached to the elk. The forest grazer from the Cervus canadensis species made his transition decades ago when his head was removed by the taxidermist and, for eternity, he carries a much more intelligent and noble expression than some of my exes or blood relatives.
I’m kidding.
Blanche will never get the elk’s head.
Although, if the elk were still with us, I might be tempted to write up a will and leave him Blanche’s noggin.
Stuffed human ex-wife heads. When giving gifts, which anniversary year is that?
Anywho. Where was I? Gotta write up a will and settle who gets what. This should be pretty easy because except for the six bucks in chemicals that make up my body, I don’t have much. I’ve got a $1,000 O’Farrell 1000X cowboy hat. That’s being buried with me. As I’m asking to be lowered into the casket face down, I’d like my hat to be positioned atop my Gluteus Maximus, to confuse archaeologists 80 million years from now. I’d also like to ask the priest, rabbi, minister or captain of my Wednesday night bowling team to add, during my eulogy: “Gluteus Maximus. Good Italian band name.”
It’ll be an open casket ceremony. Frankly? I’d like to look around one last time, maybe to sit up and hiss at any community leader who even looks like they’re going to take the mic and do 940 harrumphing minutes, starting with, “While I never actually met Jerry Boston …”
I have a titanium hip (left) and some precious metal (lead) fillings. I’m wondering. Can they melt my artificial components and make one of those ant sculptures? It could be on permanent display in front of the Newhall Library, with the rest of that Edward Scissorhands crafts class welding passing as art.
There used to be this humorless teen intern girl at the paper. First assignment, Signal Editor Tim Whyte pranked her, instructing that, as the daily columnist, I suffered a rare dyslexia and couldn’t express adverbs. Tim said her first job was to go through my next Shakespearean prose and insert adverbs — and to not be stingy.
Well. Very, very, really stingy.
I’d ask The Signal to hunt the girl down — she’s probably a greying great-grandmother of countless broods by now — and will my remaining adverbs to her.
Geez. If I believe my own copy about approaching middle age? I’ve another seven decades through which to stumble. I wonder what happened to all that cool stuff I used to have? Still have my saddle. I’d donate that to the city of Santa Clarita, to place on mule or zebra in memoriam for future Fourth of July parades, but, I hear they’ve outlawed horses. If I succumb to some foreign or domestic pox, obviously, I’m not going to take the microbes with me to The Hereafter. Rather? I’ll will said fatal malady to the Crabby Appletons who came up with the bright idea that the sight of anything equine during the celebration of America’s independence is somehow dangerous, pornographic or hate speech.
Underwear? In heaven, I hear they just have hospital robes that open in the back. What do people do with their underwear after they kick El Bucketo? Pretty much nobody at City Hall talks to me anymore. But, if someone in charge of Holiday Décor over at SClarita World HQ wouldn’t mind, I’d like to see a John Boston Underwear Museum somewhere in Olde Towne Newhalle. If that’s too much to ask, perhaps in August, when the calendar is empty, they could string my underwear — washed, of course — up and over Main Street. Perhaps they could take one of my paisley boxers from my XXXXL days and just tug it on the backside of one of the many ceramic Grizzly bear statues stalking city limits. Is this pushing it? How about, in my will, mandating that the second Friday in every August is John Boston Memorial Underwear Day. Three-day weekend. Amidst all the flags, banners, pennants, streamers and gonfalons that litter the valley year-round, a display of giant BVDs strikes me as patriotic, if not exhibitionist.
Would it be doable to arrange for my frozen remains to be displayed, standing up like a bear, hands outstretched in menacing claw-position in a see-through glass freezer by the tracks at Railroad and Newhall Avenue to make the Metrolink commute less tedious?
You know what sounds noble and romantic?
A Viking funeral for me, out at Lake Piru. It’s Ventura County. Firefighting codes are less fussy. Just push me out in a row boat with my prized possessions (my epee, computer with all my history notes, columns, novels, saved YouTube Sasquatch videos, that snap-button cowboy shirt with the hootchie-cootchie 1940s pin-up cowgirls some socio-political demographic finds offensive and a rejection note from Doubleday that read: “Drop Dead”). Set me, the boat, my earthly possessions and the weeping exes on fire while a mournful kazoo plays, “I Don’t Want To Set The World, On, Fire …”
With more than 11,000 columns and 100-plus awards (119!), Santa Clarita’s John Boston is the most prolific humorist/satirist in world history. Visit his bookstore online at johnlovesamerica.com/bookstore and support American literature by buying stuff.
