Pearls of Wisdom

Alice and Wayne

PHILOSOPHERS                                    
By Alice Freed, as told to Wayne Freed

LSPOA intelligence test: what do Mark Twain, Will Rogers, Yogi Berra, and Alice Freed have in common? If you had read the back of the card our neighbors gave Dick and Joan Kocian when they left for Martha’s Vineyard, you’d know the answer. Alice Freed had sent them off with a few well-chosen bits of life advice…very funny, very much to the point! Like those revered Dead White Males, Alice is a philosopher (philosophress?). Herewith selected samples. I suppose you had to be there.

REGARDING SPORTS

• News from Australia — water excercises were cancelled when a crocodile was found in  the swimming pool. Alice’s comment,”and I thought the Aussies were tough.”
• On October 30, 2010, it was reported that Bret Favre had broken an ankle. Alice concluded that “his team mates must have tripped him because he’s having such a bad year.”
• During Wimbledon she complained that “we’ve got to get an HD TV. I can’t see the ball.”
• Sports page headline “Federer upset by Berdich!” Alice notes sagely “and he lost, too!”
• The final soccer score was a tie. Alice asked “What do they do? Work it out later in the parking lot?”
• On which club was used by Tiger Woods, “He’s been playing with his ---- oh you know, it rhymes with stick.” And when Tiger whined about being widely misunderstood, she added “Yeah, right.”
• And then, when he missed the cut at the prestigious Quail Hollow Country Club, she cracked “bring back the girls.”
• Shuffling along in her rounded-sole Skeechers walking shoes, she stumbled occasionally. “I’ll scrape these bottoms flat if I keep this up.”
• About the Kentucky Derby: “I’m betting on Number 7 — the only female jockey, and the horse is called Pants on Fire.” Followed by a big grin.
• Race horses are dumb, I said. They have to learn only one thing — run. “Two things,” Alice replied, “run and mate.”  “But wait,” she added, “isn’t that what most men do?  Perhaps in the reverse order.”
• Watching the Preakness in 2010, she piped up “That horse is going to crap on national television, thank you very much.” It did.

REGARDING FOOD

• “I was glad to kiss that Derby pie good-bye last night…of course, I gave it a French kiss”
• “I’m going to join Weight Watchers so that I don’t have to worry about what to cook for dinner”
• “We’re not having Crab Louis tonight. We’re having Crab Fred”
• “Done it again! Started soup in too small a pot. I’m just like Charlie Brown.”
• “Dinner should take thirty minutes if I do it right…it’ll take a cab ride if I don’t”
• Attacking the raw chicken with a cleaver “here chicky, chicky, chicky”
• Drink time. I had stuffed my mouth with Cheezits and she came over for a kiss….”I love you…whatcha eating?”

I’m lucky that she does all that stuff, and with a sense of humor. I’m saving up all the sayings for her (39^th) birthday. —AF & WF  [Ed. note: and we hope Crab Fred is on the menu!]