Possumblog

Finally, a break.

Although not really--it’s lunchtime, and I’m choking down some Stuff That’s Bad For You, so I have to concentrate really hard on not letting it make me die or anything. Food can do that, you know.

As I have laboriously belabored the point, ad nauseum and ad infinitum, for the past few days I have been up to my armpits in junk to do, and none of it really important in the greater scheme of things. I mean, it’s not like I’m coming up with a cure for cancer or Stuff That’s Bad For You or a way to make lobsters cook themselves--it’s just silly junk. But, by gum, it’s silly junk that MUST BE DONE!

And who better to do it?

Anyway, all sorts of lint has been accumulating in my mind. Such as, buttons. I’m sure out there on the Internets there are plenty of people who’ve opined on this before, but I haven’t thought about it until now, and I don’t really want to go to all the trouble of looking it up.

I have on numerous occasions said one girl or another is “just as cute as a button,” but I got to thinking about it the last few days and I can’t think of a single button I’ve ever seen that I thought, “Boy howdy, that sure is a CUTE button!” In fact, most buttons I’ve seen are utilitarian and plain. And circular. And have four holes punched in them. And are held (barely) to my shirt with thread. I have to say that I can’t think of a single girl who looks like that. Therefore, I intend from now on to never use that phrase again. I shall use “cute as a cute thing.”

Moths. I guess I got ‘em. I noticed several weeks ago that there was a tiny hole in the sleeve of my nearly almost new gray suit coat.

“Hmm,” I thought. “That is a hole.”

Being rather clever, I tried to camouflage what looked like a bit of white lint on the sleeve (the result of the suit lining shining through the tiny hole) with a dot of black ink. That did not work. Poop.

Whatever.

Then Sunday, I pulled it out and noticed that there were TWO holes, and this time they were in the SHOULDER of the coat.

“Hey,” I thought. “Those are TWO holes, and they’re in the SHOULDER.” As I have often said, I am quite smart like that there.

I had to go ahead and wear it to church because we were ready to leave and there was no changing, but I decided to take it to the dry cleaners and see if they could fix it. All along, I thought these mysterious holes were being caused by careless snags or something. Moths!? Oh, please. Not MY suits! (Which are made of sheepy stuff.)

“I’ve got a couple of small holes here, and they almost look like scissor nips or something--can y’all reweave this?”

“Uh, sir, I think--hmm, yes sir, this is moth damage, not a cut. And no, we don’t have any way to reweave them here. We send them to a lady who has a small shop over in East Lake. She’s, probably, oh, gosh, about ninety by now, but she does good work, and as far as we’ve found, she’s the only one in town who still does it.”

I HAVE MOTHS! AIEEEEEE! Now I know why Mothra is so scary.

Anyway, I stopped on the way home to pick up some cedar planks or balls or cones or hangers or something to hang in the armoire so moths would go somewhere else in the house and quit eating up all my two suits. Except they didn’t have anything with cedar.

Just those plain old stinkin’ naphtha cakes. With either lemon or cedar scent!

Let me say this RIGHT now. There is no way to make naphtha smell like lemon. Or cedar. I put the thing in the wardrobe, but only so long as it will take to kill the little buggers, and until I can find something actually made from a cedar tree to go in there.

The downside is that I smell even more like an old man.

Just need me a splash of Old Spice to go with the naphtha, maybe a touch of Brylcreem, hitch my pants under my armpits, and I’m all set.

Stupid moths.

By the way--did the Japanese ever figure out how to shoot Mothra with great big moth cannonballs? I bet that would have worked good.

Let’s see, what else was there? I’ll get back to you in a minute or two.

Posted by Terry Oglesby at March 2, 2006 12:24 PM