Thursday, December 18, 2025

I'M NOT FEELING PARTICULARLY HUMOROUS THIS WEEK

 

"When it rains, it pours" is an old saying that means one problem often can be followed by many more, all within a short period of time. I remember first seeing those words printed on the Morton salt containers decades ago, to indicate that when the weather is damp, their salt still freely flows and doesn't clump.

I, for one, can attest to the fact their salt does indeed clump, because Morton is the brand I've been using for years, and more than once, especially during humid weather, I've had to bang the salt shaker like a gavel before any salt came out of it.

But I digress...

My “when it rains, it pours” week began on December 8th, when I went to the local post office to mail some Christmas cards, a package and my all-important check for $6,100 to the town for my half-year property-tax payment. The town hall is only one street away from the post office and although I could have gone over there and paid my tax in person, the lines usually are so long, I decided to just drop the payment into the mail slot inside the post office. I wasn’t concerned because the payment wasn't due until December 15th, so there still was plenty of time for it to reach its destination.

Two days later, my visit to the P.O. came back to haunt me. I woke up feeling less than perky – a stuffy head and nose, sore throat, headache and a voice that sounded like that of a 13-year-old boy going through puberty. I hadn't been anywhere other than to the post office, so that, I deduced, was where the germs must have mercilessly attacked me.

I planned to rest, stay warm and drink plenty of fluids so I could shake whatever it was as quickly as possible. But when I turned on my laptop to check my e-mail and messages later that morning, I was informed I had no Internet connection. That wasn't unusual, however, as my Internet is controlled by a satellite dish with a signal so unreliable, a bird flapping its wings in front of it can affect it. But usually if I wait, the service will return in about 15 minutes.

Alas, by that night, there still was no Internet, so I decided to call the provider to find out why. I picked up my phone – my trusty old landline, which is the only type of phone that comes in up in the Forest Primeval where I live – and it was dead. No dial tone, no static, nothing. Just plain dead.

The Internet and the landline are two totally separate entities and neither one affects the other, so what, I wondered, was going on? Why would they both decide to go on strike at the same time? A Martian takeover? 

Being sick made me feel even more apprehensive. What if I suddenly became so ill, I needed help? How would I get it? Send up a flare?

So I dug out my rarely used cell phone...a flip phone. It's rarely used because anywhere within the walls of my house it gets zero bars, no signal at all. That night, the wind chill was minus 7 degrees Fahrenheit, but the only place where I knew I could get a signal of almost one whole bar was halfway up my driveway. So I bundled up in warm clothing, grabbed a small flashlight and headed out there. 

When I called the phone company, I had to remove my gloves to punch in all of the "press one, press two, enter the phone number you wish to have repaired, enter your zip code, enter your PIN" instructions before I actually reached a human. By then, my hands were so cold, I was pretty sure my fingers would crack and shatter into pieces if I had to move them again.

Unfortunately, things only got worse from there.

"Do us a favor and check the outside NID box attached to your house," the tech-department employee advised me. "It should be next to your electric meter. Unscrew the door on it and then take one of your phones outside and plug it into the test jack inside the box. Then call me back and tell me if you hear a dial tone out there."

So I went back into the house, thawed out for a few minutes, unplugged one of my phones and headed outside with it. Once again, I couldn't wear gloves while I was unscrewing the door on the box and plugging in the phone line...as I held the flashlight between my teeth. It took six tries before I finally was able to bend my fingers enough to fit the little plastic connector tip into the jack. 

There was no dial tone out there either. Everything was dead...and I found myself suddenly thinking I would be next...from hypothermia.

But I still had to call back the phone company, which meant standing out in the driveway with my cell phone and going through punching in all of the "press this" numbers once again. 

The employee said, "Okay, then it's apparently an outside problem with the lines, not your problem, so you won't be charged for the repair and you won't have to be home when the technician arrives. We'll send someone up there as soon as possible. Now please write down this ticket number for the repair."

"I don't have a pen or paper," I said, as my voice became more laryngitic by the minute. I wasn’t sure if it was from the bug I’d caught or if my vocal chords had frozen.

"Pardon me?" she asked.

"I'm standing outside in the dark in sub-zero weather at the moment because it's the only place where I can get any reception on this cell phone," I explained.

"Oh, I'm sorry! No problem then. Is this a good number to call you back on when we need to reach you?"

I would have rolled my eyes, but they also were frozen by then. "The odds are pretty slim I actually will be standing out here in the driveway to receive the call when and if you try," I said, trying my best not to sound too sarcastic. The problem is, when I’m sick, I rapidly transform into Sally the Sourpuss, who has little or no patience.

"OK,” she said. “Then when your phone is repaired, I'll have the technician knock on your door and let you know it's all set."

"Um, if he's going to let me know that my phone is repaired, then why doesn't he just call me on that phone?" I asked. "Hearing it ring should be a pretty good indication to me that it's working."

"Oh... right," she said.

"So when can I expect to have my phone service back?" I asked.

"Right now, we're looking at the 17th," she said.

"A week?" I squeaked in disbelief. "That's the soonest someone can get here?"

"Afraid so," she said.

Desperate, I tossed everything I could think of at her to convince her to speed things up: I'm a widow, I'm sick, I have no other means of communication, and what if I need an ambulance or the fire department? What if the bodies in the graveyard down the road rise up and become the Walking Dead and surround my house?

"I'll try to get someone out there sooner," she said. "But there's really not much I can do, considering the shortage in the number of workers we currently have."

Fortunately, the Internet returned, so I felt less vulnerable. At least I had some form of communication again, via my laptop, which was better than nothing.

But with the return of the Internet also came something even more disturbing than having no phone. By the 14th, my $6,100 check for my property tax still hadn't been cashed and my tax, according to the town's online kiosk, still was marked as unpaid. If I didn't pay it by the next day, the 15th, I would be considered late and get hit with a penalty of eight percent! What on earth, I wondered, could have happened to a check that was mailed six days ago to a place only one street away from the post office? Upset, I grabbed the phone to call the town hall.

The phone that still was dead, of course.

So I sent an e-mail instead, asking if maybe the tax collector had received my payment and just hadn't processed it yet, or if I should contact the P.O. to track it.

Or even worse, pay $30 to put a stop-payment on the check.

I once again checked my online bank account to see if maybe the check had been cashed. Not yet. But when I further studied my accounts, I noticed something else of concern. It said that my paper statements had been mailed on the 3rd (I like the paper ones because I shove them into my income-tax folder – also, my printer is broken so I can't print out anything myself) but I hadn't received them yet. Again, in a panic, I grabbed the phone...but only because I wanted to hurl it through the nearest window at that point.

So I sent an e-mail to the bank and asked for any information they could provide about where my paper statements might be. The response came back quickly and was obviously AI generated.

"Thank you for informing us about losing your statements. We understand your concerns. We have turned your message over to our fraud resolution team for your protection, and they will put a hold on your accounts until this matter is settled."

"Nooo!" I shouted at my laptop in a voice that came out sounding like an eagle's during mating season. "You can't put a hold on my accounts! What about my automatic payments coming up? What about the Christmas shopping I still have to do?"

So once again, I got dressed in five layers of clothing and along with my cell phone, waddled out to the driveway – this time, to call the bank. By the time I finished being on hold and was forced to listen to pre-recorded sales pitches for every product the bank currently offered (and even a few they didn't), I was pretty sure I had turned into a human popsicle. Even worse, the guy I spoke with sounded as if he kept dozing off during our conversation. His voice reminded me of an old 45-rpm vinyl record being played on the 33-rpm speed.

"Well-l-l-l-l-l...you also can see your statements online," he said, when I mentioned I was missing my paper statements. "Just print them out."

He obviously didn't seem nearly as concerned about the missing statements as the AI-generated e-mail had.

"I can't print anything," I said, "My printer isn't working. But please, just take the hold off my accounts, okay?"

"Let me check," he said.

He put me on hold for five minutes. By then, my cell phone was frozen to the side of my head.

"There's no hold on your accounts," he finally returned and said, yawning. "At least not yet."

By then, I was so desperate to get back inside my warm house while I still was able to move my joints, I just hung up.

And I hate to admit it, but I later did something only a desperate person would do. I responded to the bank's previous AI e-mail with a lie.

"No need to have your fraud resolution team put a hold on my accounts,” I wrote. “I called customer service and everything was straightened out and is just fine now. Thank you."

The reply said, "Thank you for informing us. We will forward your message to fraud resolution."

I honestly no longer care where my statements are. I figure they probably will show up in March sometime. That was when the Christmas card I sent last year to one of my friends who lives only 20 miles away finally reached her.

The town hall didn't answer my e-mail concerning my missing tax check, but on Monday night, the 15th, I logged into the town's tax kiosk online at about 9:00 PM for the 20th time that day, and my tax bill suddenly popped up as being paid. The check still hadn't been cashed, but at least I finally knew it had reached the town hall and they’d probably just been ignoring it all week. My e-mail must have forced them to go search for it.

Meanwhile, whatever bug I caught was feeling worse (can't imagine why). The Covid test came back negative, though, so I guess that was good news. 

And the telephone repairman showed up early Monday morning, the 15th...twice. The second time, I saw him standing out there, frowning at the phone box and scratching his head. Not too reassuring. And then he just drove off.

I still had no phone that night, so I thought I should contact the phone company again and ask them what was up, especially after they sent me an online survey to fill out about my degree of satisfaction. I mean, did they think everything was all set?

But the more I thought about calling, the more I felt too crummy to bother. I was in no mood to go stand out in the driveway during the deep-freeze again, not unless it was for something a lot more important, like finding out I'd just been named the big winner of Wheel of Fortune's Secret Santa contest and had only 24 hours to claim my cash prize.

Then Tuesday afternoon, I finally heard the most glorious sound I'd heard in a long time.

The dial tone.

So now I'm hoping to rest, relax and pamper myself so I'll be feeling fine by Christmas. No longer having to stand shivering with my cell phone out in the driveway during sub-freezing weather just might help my recovery a bit.

And if not, then at least I'll have my newly repaired phone to use when I get the urge to call one of my friends and whine.

#   #   #


WISHING A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO ALL OF MY READERS!

 







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Tuesday, December 9, 2025

I'M FINALLY BEGINNING TO THINK STREISAND HAS NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT


Be honest...how many of you, at one time or another, have sung into a hairbrush or some similar object and pretended it was a microphone as you stared at your reflection in the mirror and pictured yourself as the next platinum-selling recording artist?

I can't count the number of times I've done it - sometimes even complete with choreography. 

Ever since I was very young, when the only song I knew at the time was “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” I have longed to be a singer, and have imagined myself winning every talent show from Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour to Star Search, American Idol and America's Got Talent.

The only problem was whenever I attempted to belt out a tune, especially when the windows were open, my neighbors who had outdoor cats thought one of them was being tortured...by a coyote.

I blame my mother for my lack of dulcet tones whenever I sing, because I inherited her voice. She never denied that she probably was the world’s worst singer. In fact, she used to joke that she could sing an entire song and not hit even one note correctly. And back when she was in grade school and the class had to sing during events such as Christmas pageants, her teachers would tell her to lip-sync and just pretend to be singing,

Believe it or not, when I was young, my mother often used her singing as a form of punishment.

“Time for bed now,” she would say to me.

“But I’m not tired!” I’d whine. “I don’t want to go to bed!”

“If you don’t go to bed right now, I’ll sing to you for the next 20 minutes,” she’d threaten.

At that point, I would do a running swan-dive into my bed.

I have to confess, however, that unlike my mother, I’ve always been in denial about my own singing ability (or lack thereof). I actually managed to convince myself I was destined to be the next Streisand. But in reality, if I were facing a firing squad and they told me if I sang for them and it pleased them, I’d be granted a stay of execution, the moment I opened my mouth and released the first note, they'd shoot me full of holes just to shut me up.

And I’m pretty sure it would be considered self-defense.

Still, I never gave up my dream of becoming a famous singer. When I was 15, I even saved up for a guitar, learned how to play a few chords on it and then formed a three-girl band called The Triple Gears. Whenever we gathered in my tenement building's basement to rehearse, my parents would receive phone calls from the tenants on the second floor, asking if someone needed help.

Needless to say, The Triple Gears never were asked to entertain anywhere.

I did study ballet for 10 years and discovered I was a fairly talented dancer. I even performed in a local production of Swan Lake. So when a talent show with excellent prizes was holding auditions in town, I announced to my parents that I wanted to try out for it.

“That’s great!” my mother said, looking genuinely pleased. “Have you decided yet which dance you’re going to do?”

I frowned at her. “Dance? I’m going to sing!”

Her expression clearly told me she thought I'd been out in the sun too long that morning.

Luckily, I wasn’t brave enough to try out for the talent show alone, so I asked my friend, Dee, who happened to be an excellent singer, to come with me. We ended up singing a Beatles song together, and her melodious voice drowned out my flat one, so we actually made it into the talent show. When I came home and excitedly announced the good news to my parents, they thought I was joking.

“Were the judges…really elderly?” my mother asked.

“And hearing impaired?” my dad added.

“No! Dee and I honestly sounded great!”

“Dee sang with you?” my mom asked.

I nodded.

“Oh, then that explains it,” my parents said in unison.

Dee and I had fun participating in the talent show, but we didn’t win. We didn’t even place in the top ten. In retrospect, I think if I had just moved my lips and let Dee do all of the singing, we might have stood a fighting chance.

And then there was the time in high school when Mr. Dobe, who taught Spanish, actually thought it would be a good idea for my class to go sing Christmas carols (in Spanish, no less) at area nursing homes and senior-care facilities one December weekend.

While some of the students, especially the guys, muttered and complained, I was all for the idea. I belted out "Noche de Paz" (Silent Night) and "Campanas de Navidad" (Jingle Bells) with gusto in my loudest (and flattest) voice everywhere we sang. When I noticed that most of the eyes in the audience were turned directly toward me, I was flattered, thinking my moment to shine finally had arrived. So I sang even louder.

At our last stop on our Christmas-caroling tour, after we took our bows, one of the elderly residents approached me and handed me a box of chocolates. "These are for you, dear," she said.

I felt as if I'd just won a Grammy Award (pun intended). I mean, out of all of the kids in our caroling group, she had singled me out for the gift! Such an honor!

The woman, mistakenly thinking we were a group of foreigners because we'd sung only in Spanish, then leaned over and in a hushed voice said to me, "If you've come here to this country hoping to make a living as a singer...I fear you're going to starve to death. So enjoy the chocolates."

I was mercilessly teased about it for ages.

Nowadays, the only time I sing is when I’m in the car. I crank up the radio and happily sing along with my favorite songs.

And when I hear myself, I’m still convinced I could be the next Streisand.

I just wish that when I take my two dogs for a ride with me, they’d stop whining and pawing at their ears while I'm singing.

It can be very distracting.

#   #   #

Sally Breslin is an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science-fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net.







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Tuesday, December 2, 2025

AT THE TIME, I THOUGHT THE MONEY TREE WAS A GREAT IDEA

 

As I’m writing this, it’s Cyber Monday, which means I should be shopping online, as about a zillion other people are doing at the moment.

Unfortunately, because there are so many people feverishly shopping, I tried but failed to even get online because I kept getting an error message that said to try again later. After trying about 25 “laters” without any success, I dozed off.

It's the same every December. Without fail, I spend countless hours searching online for new and unique Christmas gifts. I’m not satisfied unless the gifts I give incite a chorus of “oohs” and “aahs” and gasps of “Where on earth did you find this? I’ve never seen anything like it before!”

I have to confess, however, some of the gasps  my gifts have incited probably couldn't be described as pleasurable ones…more like gasps of horror…but hey, at least I tried.

Still, I’d like to think my successes have outweighed my failures.

And speaking of failures, I often am reminded of one of my several less-than-successful gift ideas, mainly because I’d initially been so excited about it.

Back then, during my annual holiday search, I truly believed I’d finally found the perfect “ooh"-inspiring gift, one that would be suitable for everyone on my list. It was an eye-catching Christmas-tree-shaped candle covered with green glitter. But it wasn’t just any ordinary holiday candle. No, this candle was called the Money Tree, according to the title printed in big letters on the decorative box it came in.

The description of the candle stated that when it was lit, it melted down until it revealed genuine U.S. money (wrapped in protective foil) hidden inside. The lowest amount each tree was guaranteed to contain was one dollar. The highest was $50. I thought the candles sounded both intriguing and exciting…the equivalent of a 3-dimensional lottery scratch-ticket, which most people I know really enjoy. I mean, anyone who's ever been to one of those Yankee gift swaps during the Christmas season knows what I'm talking about. One minute the person opening a gift is saying, "Oh, what a lovely crocheted scarf!" And then in the very next breath, "But I want to trade it for the scratch tickets."

So I ordered a case of the candles.

When they arrived, I felt it was my duty to immediately test one to determine whether or not it was gift worthy. I opened one of the boxes, removed the candle and lit it.

Then I eagerly waited…and waited. And then I waited some more.

The candle burned so slowly, I figured that by the time it actually revealed the reward inside, the money would be rare, collectible currency. I was tempted to just grab a butcher knife and hack open the candle, but I was worried I might damage a $50 bill in the process, so I continued to wait.

As the candle melted, it formed a glittery green pool on the plate I’d had the good sense to put underneath it. I blew on the candle, thinking it might burn faster, but all I succeeded in doing was blowing out the flame.

Finally, after standing there so long while waiting for the candle to reveal my impending treasure, my eyeballs were flickering, I saw a flash of silver poking out of the wax. Without thinking, I reached to grab it.

“Yeeeoooww!”  I shouted, frantically blowing on my glittery, wax-covered fingertips. That’s when I happened to notice, written in bold letters on the back of the box, “Tweezers, not bare fingers, should be used to remove the money from the candle!”

I rushed to find my tweezers, then grasped the silvery treasure and yanked it out of the candle.

It was a foil-wrapped Susan B. Anthony dollar.

I frowned, upset that I’d nearly burned off most of my identifiable fingerprints for only a lousy dollar. Even worse, each candle had cost me nearly $15.

Still, I mailed a couple of the candles to my out-of-state friends, including one to my friend Pam in Scotland. For that one, I had to pay so much for the postage, I expected the package to be sitting in a first-class seat at the front of the plane and being served champagne.

I kept the rest of the candles to wrap and give to other friends on my list.

But when one of the out-of-state friends called me the week before Christmas to tell me she’d already lit her candle and it had contained a $20 bill, I found myself staring greedily at the remaining candles, which I'd already wrapped.

“I can always buy scratch tickets for Angie,” I reasoned as I tore into her gift and lit the candle.

After what seemed like 200 hours later, another Susan B. Anthony dollar finally emerged.

So I decided to try just one more candle…and then another.

I ended up with a nice collection of Susan B. Anthony dollars (and then had to rush out to buy last-minute replacement gifts).

On New Year’s Day, Pam in Scotland informed me she still hadn’t received my gift.

That night, as I was lying in bed, a scary thought crossed my mind about the delay of Pam's package. What if when it was x-rayed by Customs, they’d noticed that the candle contained something  hidden deep inside…something wrapped in foil, which was guaranteed to raise a bunch of red flags?

After that, I expected the police to burst through my door at any moment and arrest me for suspicion of smuggling contraband inside Christmas-tree candles.

“Well, if they do,” my husband said with a shrug when I expressed my concerns to him, “at least I can bail you out of jail with Susan B. Anthony dollars.”

Nobody likes a wiseguy.

                              #   #   #

Sally Breslin is an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science-fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net.








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Tuesday, November 25, 2025

WHY ARE SOME CHRISTMAS TOYS SPECIFICALLY MADE TO TORMENT PARENTS?

 


It seems as if every few years some toy comes out that turns normally level-headed adults into rampaging, aggressive maniacs who will push, shove and stomp on anyone who dares to get in their way during their frenzied quest to procure it for Christmas for one or more of their children or grandchildren.

I remember the bruises several of my friends were sporting after joining the stampedes for Cabbage Patch Kid dolls and any newly released member of the Beanie Babies clan. 

And then there was the Furby, the fuzzy little computerized creature with huge eyes, that forced me to waste about 200 hours on a futile search because my young niece desperately wanted one. I ended up spending $150 on eBay to finally get one...well, actually two. For some reason, the seller insisted on selling them in pairs. But by that point, I probably would have bought a dozen of them, even if I had to mortgage the house, just so I could get some rest.

I gave one of the Furbies to my niece for Christmas and stuffed the other one into a trunk in the basement so I never would have to look at its buggy-eyed, smirking face again.

That is, until a few days ago.   

I happened to see this online article about items people might have lying around in their homes that could make them very rich. As my eyes scanned the list, they locked on the words, "Original Furby, still in the box."

My heart began to pound because the value was listed in the thousands of dollars. I couldn't believe that something I'd resented for so many years now could turn me into a thousand-aire. I dashed down to the basement and rummaged through every trunk down there until I found the 27-year-old toy. I gave it a quick once-over and was relieved to see it still looked fresh and new, even after spending so many years sitting in a trunk.

I hurried back upstairs and checked out the particular color of my Furby (white with blue eyes) on eBay to see what he currently was selling for. My fingers actually were trembling as I hit the "search" key.

The Furbies like mine were selling for a whopping $25 each.

So mine currently is back in its trunk in the basement…never to see the light of day again, if I can help it.

I've heard that this year, the aforementioned stampeding and hair-pulling is over some toy called Labubu, which is described as a plush little monster with lots of teeth. I've never seen one, so I wouldn't recognize one even if it stood right in front me. But I doubt that will ever happen because according to the news, Labubus have been sold out everywhere since July. 

Fortunately, no one on my Christmas list wants one. My body is much too old and rickety now to withstand hunting for a toy that might end up sending me on a trip to the emergency room after a woman built like Xena, Warrior Princess, tackles me and rips the toy out of my hands.

I don't have any children or grandchildren, so I suppose I've suffered a lot less holiday stress over the years than people who do, especially those who annually are tasked with trying find whatever toy is hot that Christmas. 

About 12 years ago, however, I unexpectedly did find myself searching for yet another toy that was impossible to find, all because I wanted to do a good deed.

On that particular day, I'd stopped by the town hall to pay my property taxes, which usually are due the week before Christmas (talk about a bunch of Scrooges!), when I noticed a Christmas tree with children's wish lists attached to the branches. I inquired about the tree and was told it was there so people could choose a child's list and buy the gifts on it, then bring them back, unwrapped, to the town hall for delivery by Santa to that child. I thought it sounded like a great idea, so I grabbed a list.

I was heading directly to Concord to do some shopping anyway, so I figured I probably could pick up a few items on the list at the same time. It wasn't until I was standing in the middle of a department store that I actually took my first good look at the list. It said the child was a four-year-old girl, and the first item she wanted was Doc McStuffins.

I had no clue who or what Doc McStuffins was. My first thought was pajamas – like the Doctor Dentons from my childhood days. I headed to the kids’ sleepwear department. There, I approached a female clerk who looked about my age.

“Do you have Doc McStuffins?” I asked her.

She just stared at me.

“I think they’re pajamas,” I added. “For little girls.”

The clerk helped me look through the pajamas. We found every type imaginable, with pictures on them of every children’s character ever created. But there was nothing about a Doc McStuffins.

“Well, if Doc McStuffins isn’t pajamas,” I said to the clerk, “what do you think it might be?”

She looked thoughtful for a moment. “Well the 'Stuffins' part sounds like it could be a stuffed animal. It might be a teddy bear or something dressed up like a doctor.”

That sounded logical. I rushed over to the toy department and searched through a virtual zoo of stuffed animals but didn’t see anything that resembled a doctor…although a couple of them did remind me of my own doctor back then, especially when he didn’t comb his hair or shave.

I found a young male clerk in the toy department and asked him about Doc McStuffins. Again, I received only a blank look. I was beginning to think that this McStuffins character was only a figment of the four-year-old’s imagination.

“I've never heard of Doc MStuffins,” the clerk finally said. “Is it a game?”

I shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. It could be a brand of mattress for all I know!”

He told me to wait a minute and he’d see what he could find out. He disappeared for a short while, then returned and said, “It’s a doll from Disney… and we’re all sold out. From what they tell me, it’s also sold out everywhere else, and going for big bucks now on eBay.”

Suddenly the whole Furby fiasco and the $150 I'd had to spend, all came rushing back to me in a flash of painful deja vu.

I groaned. Leave it to me, I thought, to pick a child who wanted a gift that would require me to either go to 25 different stores or end up in a bidding war on eBay...only to get outbid during the last two seconds of the auction.

Even worse, I still had no idea what Doc McStuffins looked like. Sure, at least I knew it was a doll, but was it even a human?  Knowing Disney, it could have been something like a talking wart hog.

After browsing through Target, Walmart and all of the Steeplegate Mall, I was ready to admit defeat. That's when I decided to stop at Toys R Us, just for the heck of it. Once inside, I headed straight for the doll aisle. I checked out so many dolls, I nearly forgot what a real human face looked like. Finally, I tracked down a clerk…who appeared to be human.

I was so tired by then, I mistakenly blurted out, “Do you, by some miracle, have any Doc McMuffin dolls?”

He smiled in amusement. “You mean Doc McStuffins?”

I burst out laughing. “God, I sound as if I’m at McDonald’s!”

“I think I saw one in the preschool department,” he said. “Over this way.”

The entire time I was following him, I silently prayed he was leading me to what I suspected would be the last Doc McStuffins doll in the entire state, or maybe even the entire country. We finally arrived at an aisle that had a lot of empty spaces on the shelves. My heart sank. If Doc McStuffins had been there, I was pretty sure he or she now represented one of those empty spaces.

The clerk rubbed his chin and stood staring at the shelves for a moment, then he moved aside a couple large Playskool toys so he could see what was behind them, and pulled out a small plastic package with some tiny figures in it.

“Here you go,” he said, smiling, and walked off.

I clasped the package to my chest and frantically looked around, making certain no one was going to leap out from behind one of the floor displays and yank it away from me. When I was certain the coast was clear, I finally looked at what I was holding. In the package was a small African American doll wearing a white lab coat and a stethoscope. A glittery pink and purple doctor’s bag was in her hand. She looked no older than five or six. Next to her were several tiny stuffed animals sitting on an examination table. I figured she must be a veterinarian…for toy animals.

Clutching my newly found treasure, I rushed to the register to pay for it before some sleep-deprived, desperate parent accosted me. The minute I got home, I looked up Doc McStuffins on eBay. The clerk at the first department store had been right. The doll I’d just bought was selling for five times what I’d paid for it. A variety of other Doc McStuffins toys in larger sizes were selling for even more.

So I hopefully made a little four-year-old's Christmas a very happy one that year. But to this day, I still wonder if maybe I should have tacked the following note onto the Doc McStuffins package: “Merry Christmas! But do not open this or play with it! Wait a few years and then sell it. If you’re careful with and kind to your toys, one of them very possibly could fund your college education someday.”

That is, unless it's a Furby.


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Sally Breslin is an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science-fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net.










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Monday, November 17, 2025

I'M READY FOR "DEATH BY PIZZA"

 

I’ve been craving pizza to the point of distraction lately. It seems as if everywhere I turn, pizza keeps popping up to taunt me – on TV, the Internet, supermarket flyers and even my friends raving about someplace they recently went for pizza and how it was the best thing they’d ever eaten.

Which is why I’m on the verge of un-friending all of them on social media.

The problem is I haven’t been able to eat pizza since the 1980s, when I received the news from my doctor that all of my years of stomach pains and terrible cramps were due to the fact I was both lactose and fructose intolerant. I immediately was put on a diet that eliminated both offenders…which basically meant if something tasted good, I couldn’t have it. However, if it tasted like wallpaper-paste spread on a sheet of cardboard, then I was in luck.

Anyway, to confirm just how desperate I am for pizza right now, I’d even settle for one of those squares of pizza they used to sell at the drive-in movies – the squares that were sprinkled with powdered cheese and sat under a light-bulb for five hours to keep them warm. I think they were the same squares the ladies in the school cafeteria used to dole out on Fridays, back when it still was considered a big sin to eat meat on that day.

My first taste of real, fresh Italian pizza was back when I was about 11 and the local YMCA held weekly dances for kids in the fifth and sixth grades. Not far from the dance was a pizza parlor where a group of us would head afterwards and each get a huge slice with extra cheese, for only 25 cents. Add a Coke and it was 35 cents. I’d then spend the entire week craving another slice…or more. To this day, I still don’t know if I went to those dances because I enjoyed the dancing or just because I was hooked on that pizza.

If my late husband still were here right now, my torture would be even more unbearable. The man’s entire diet consisted of cheeseburgers and pizza. In fact, when one of the pizza chains came out with an actual cheeseburger pizza, he couldn’t have been more excited if he’d won the lottery.

It never ceased to amaze me, however, that he liked pizza. I mean, he was the type who wouldn’t even so much as try certain foods because he judged them solely on the way they looked. He wouldn’t eat rice because it looked like maggots. He wouldn’t eat spaghetti because it looked like worms. He turned his nose up at spinach and lettuce because they reminded him of the grass and weeds out in our backyard. And the one time I attempted to serve him mushrooms, he accused me of trying to kill him.

“So how on earth did you ever talk yourself into trying pizza for the first time?” I couldn’t resist asking him. “Let’s face it, pizza can resemble a lot of disgusting things if you’re judging it only by its looks.”

He said he’d gone out clubbing with a group of his army buddies one night, and after a few drinks the guys had been hungry and ordered pizza. My husband had been determined not to have any, but the guys made bets on which one of them could succeed in “convincing” him to try it.

I had the feeling the winner of that bet probably had to physically restrain my husband and shove that first bite down his throat. But whatever method the guy used, the rest was history. A new pizza-lover had been born. 

I was tempted to ask my husband for the name of the guy so I could hire him to come over every night and also “convince” him to eat a few peas or carrots. My husband’s reason for refusing to eat carrots was because they were most commonly seen as noses on snowmen, so whenever he saw a carrot, he associated it with boogers (I’m totally serious here).

Throughout the years, he and I must have visited every pizza parlor/restaurant within a 300-mile radius. The minute a new one opened, we would race to it as if the owners were giving away $100 bills.

To my embarrassment, no matter what type of restaurant we were in, my husband still would ask if they had pizza. One time, when we went to a Chinese restaurant with friends (their choice, not ours, of course) and he asked the server if they had pizza, I nearly burst out laughing at the poor guy’s bewildered expression. As he stood there in front of a wall festooned with Chinese dragons, he looked as if he wanted to say, "Seriously, does this look like an Italian restaurant to you?"

But there was another time when my husband asked for pizza and I couldn’t control my laughter. It was the year we celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary with a trip to Las Vegas. On the night of our anniversary we decided to put on our best clothes, go to a fancy restaurant and splurge on an expensive meal – one that was served on actual plates with real silverware laid out on tables that featured linen tablecloths and napkins.

So I cringed when my husband asked the man who took our order if they had pizza. To my shock (and my husband’s delight), he said they could make one especially for him.

Sure enough, a formally dressed server delivered his pizza on a round, pedestal-type serving platter with a lid on the top. Using a silver pie-serving utensil, he delivered one slice to my husband’s plate and then stood there, his hands behind his back, patiently waiting until my husband finished chewing and was ready for the next slice, which he again served to him.

I chuckled as I ate my steak and watched the expression on my husband’s face grow more and more pained as the server continued to stand there and repeatedly ask, “Are you ready for another slice, sir?”

My husband had never had any problem eating an entire pizza in one sitting, but after he choked down slice number three-and-a-half, he told the server he was full and asked if he could take the rest back to our hotel. When we saw the bill, we determined it had to be the most expensive pizza in the history of pizzas. Even worse, my husband said it wasn’t even half as good as Pizza Hut’s.

But to me it was worth every penny because it gave me something to tease him about for years.

After my husband retired, his knees became so stiff and painful, he had to use a walker and rarely left the house. So I became the official pizza pick-up person for him, mainly because no one delivered any type of food to the prehistoric rainforest where we lived.

Depending on his mood, it was a different place every week – Domino’s, Pizza Hut, Giovanni’s or one of the  many “Houses” of Pizza…Espom House, Suncook House, Hooksett House, Supreme House, Out House (okay, maybe I made up that last one). If Door Dash had been around back then, I could have made a lot of extra money picking up pizzas and delivering them, seeing I was going to be at just about every pizza parlor in the area at some point anyway.

Many times when I was grocery shopping, my husband would call me and ask if I could pick up a pizza on my way home. I always did, but one afternoon a big snowstorm was rolling in, so I wanted to get home as soon as possible.

“That’s okay,” he said. “Just grab one of the pizzas they sell in the deli. It will do.”

That sounded easy enough. “Okay.”

“And seeing you’re in the supermarket,” he added, “maybe you also can pick up a package of mozzarella, some pepperoni, grated cheddar cheese and a pack of ground beef to add to the pizza…you know, to make it taste a little better?”

It ended up costing me about $25.

But now I think I finally do understand my husband's constant craving for pizza and can empathize, mainly because I would be willing to sell one of my kidneys for just one slice right about now.

Of course, after I ate it my stomach would cramp up in protest and seek its revenge by forcing me to camp out in the bathroom for about three days.

But still…I’m seriously considering it.

And while I’m at it, I figure I also might as well treat myself to some ice cream for dessert…with half a can of real whipped cream on top.

After all, if I’m going to suffer, I want to make certain it’s really worth it.


 

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Sally Breslin is an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science-fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net.







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