J.P.

It’s the little things that I notice. For example, I’m looking over at a new department store in the strip mall that I’ve parked myself at for lunch time. The new store is called “Rainbow” and it is in an old Fashion Bug. The first thing I’ve noticed is that I can still see the words “Fashion Bug” underneath the Rainbow logo. The second thing I notice is that the logo and accompanying markings of this Rainbow store are completely devoid of color. Everything is in white.

You would think that a store called Rainbow would be colorful, yes? I have no idea what’s inside the store because I’ve since lost interest.

I’m sitting in the Jeep still trying to find a spot in this parking lot that still feels comfortable to me. Today I’m parked in the spot closest to the Dunkin’ Donuts drive thru speaker.

I still feel a little off my game during these lunch hours after having been evicted from my edge of the parking lot spot that used to set along side the trees. All of the trees are gone, the cat that could be spotted hunting for mice and birds has moved on to greener pastures and my spot is fenced off as they build a new store onto the end of the strip mall. Rumors have this addition housing everything from a Baby Gap to a Jamesway department store, but I think the Italian restaurant is just expanding. Only time will tell.

In the meanwhile I will try to find a place to park that has some breeze, some shade and the friendly passing by of a feline on the prowl.

Because of feeling off my game during lunch hour (solely because of the location issue), I’m unable to take my midday nap because I don’t feel “safe”. I guess I’ll just have to nap under my desk again this afternoon.

I was looking at an old photo album yesterday (it’s a book with pictures) from “J.P. and Earl, The Early Years” and was delighted to see some photos of our former homestead. Amongst the happy memories were photos of our dear son Tom. He’s a cat but we don’t quibble on details.

It’s kind of neat to remember that Tom has been a part of the family for almost as long as Earl and I have been together. He was around 2 years old when he joined our home in 1997 and he’s still around, holding his own, albeit a little slower than he used to be.

He still enjoys flinging his food around. He doesn’t race around the house with me anymore but he’ll trot in my direction. I’m a patient man so I wait for him and then he’ll throw one obligatory “bat” at a catnip mouse or something before giving me a look of disinterest.

Since he is in his senior years, he pretty much gets what he wants when he wants it. He’s about 1/2 the weight he carried a couple of years ago. All of his functions are still functioning aside from either a marked increase in disinterest or a complete lack of hearing.

Tom’s new habit is now to eat three square meals a day. At first I thought he was just begging for food just to relieve boredom (face it, we all do this), but the fact of the matter is, he wants three cans of food a day and he finishes three cans of food a day. There’s nothing wrong with that as far as I’m concerned, but as you can see, he still likes to make a mess of the situation.

I asked a simple question: “What size is the (spare) room?”

The response: “12-by-15”.

This began a discussion about math, more specifically, how we individually solved the simple multiplication of 12×15.

I’m not one to carry numbers over and do the whole swing the digits over to the left as necessary. Too. Much. Work. I get something to zero, making the whole affair much easier to figure out in my head. So, faster than you can say “Please excuse my dear Aunt Sally!”, I think: 12×15 = (12/2) * (15*2) = 6 * 30 = 6 * 3 “plus a zero”.

Yes, that’s the way I do multiplication in my head. I always get something to zero somewhere. Same thing with addition. I was the fastest student in Mrs. Delaney’s third grade class (room 205) when it came to solving simple addition problems. Given something like “7 + 6”, I would say, sometimes out loud, “7 + 6, 8 + 5, 9 + 4, 10 + 3, 13!” I would do this in a rapid fire kind of way, which would either startle my opponent in the game to the point that they couldn’t even find their fingers to start counting or else some sort of mutant weirdo gene would be showing its superpowers, thus guaranteeing my victory.

I was smug.

Earl has looked at me since the very first day he heard me do the divide/multiply thing to get multiplication or addition to a zero number to make it easy and tonight he finally asked me, “what are you doing?”

“I’m solving 12×15. It’s 180.”

“How did you get there?”

I explained to him my algebraic way of doing this.

He then spouted out, “15×10 + 15×2 = 150 + 30 = 180”.

Oh. My. God.

He takes a different avenue to get there but he does the “get to zero” thing also. He then admitted to me, for the very first time in 17 years, that when posed with a question such as “what is 7 + 8 + 9?”, he “sees” in his head 8×3, thus 24.

I then asked him what color of the stoplight he crosses the street on and he told me the dreaded red. I cross on the green because I cross with the traffic. He crosses on the red because that means the cars in front of him are stopped.

Two paths, one direction. That’s what it’s about, baby.