If words could talk

Endless Clichés

I’ve read about a few odd balls who "prepared" what they want read at their "service" before everyone forgets about them and starts thinking about the free lunch.

Now, I must let it be known that once or twice—or maybe most of the time—I’ve forsaken the service and gone straight to the buffet line, being careful not to arrive too early.

But, I always take a look at the picture collage and sign the guest book with several fake names because I don’t know how many people attended the service.

At least, it would look like a lot of friends showed up to eat. That’s why you have to sign in at the service and at the food line. The family compares the list. (At least my family will.)

I know some people could think it a bit morbid to have a big screen TV filling the room with images of the deceased person fighting a tangled garden hose, burning burgers on the grill and getting hugh blobs of sun cancer on vacation—while you stuff your face with copper-creek deep-water shank-free pink-eyed salmon.

I don’t because I can’t watch TV and not eat. They go together like death and taxes.

So, friends and neighbors, here’s a few words that I "prepared" in advance of my exit. The words don’t say much and when they do, they don’t say much. (And that makes perfect sense to me).

"Dear eager beavers, we are gathered here, even though it’s raining cats and dogs to give the bird to a baby-kisser who left no stone unturned; who played by the rules to the bitter end.

We’ll have the devil to pay if we don’t blow our top before he gets to the short-end of the stick. It was right up his alley to drop the ball, like a bat out of hell on a roll.

He believed to get one’s dander up, don’t cry over spilt milk because it’s six of one and half a dozen of another; to keep the pot boiling, shoot the bull and drop dead as a duck.

He would say to bury the hatchet, cut the mustard before eating one’s hat; try it on the dog to live the lie, draw the line or be left up the creek without a paddle and end-up poor as a church mouse, without being a pain in the neck.

Talking through his hat, he was tied to his wife’s apron strings, but he really wanted to go to the dogs to lock the barn door after the horse got out.

With a grain of salt, he could get one’s goat in the lap of luxury with tongue-in-cheek to keep up with the Joneses.

To stick his neck out like a snake in the grass to turn the tables and toe the mark, but never cut his nose off to spite his face, he always hit the nail on the head.

He went hog wild on the gravy train from soup to nuts. He could be as scarce as hen’s teeth or mad as a wet hen, but he always kept his eye on the ball to call off the hounds sniffing around at a hard row to hoe.

Some times in hot water, he split hairs like a real McCoy to talk a blue streak and turn the heat up for cash on the barrel head.

It was easy falling off a log to get 40 winks then bite off more than he could chew, unable to see the forest for the trees. By hook or crook, let sleeping dogs lie if the shoe fits, he wrote one in a million times.

He never blew his own horn like a bump on a log racing to meet his Waterloo, say uncle or pull a boner between a rock and a hard place as dumb as a dodo bird.

It was no great shakes to start from scratch; he went Scot-free and was left holding the bag. He lost his glitter in seventh-heaven but with spit-and-polish he put his name up in lights, his nose to the grindstone to pull up stakes, shiver his timbers and grab life by the short hairs.

No stool-pigeon, he made hay while the sun shined, sang a different tune, marched to a different drum beat, living on Easy Street with Tom, Dick and Harry who swore like a sailor with his tail between his legs.

A drop in the ocean with Tom and Jerry in the same boat, knock on wood, it was touch and go, being taken to the cleaners on the rocks scaring the daylights out of a sacred cow.

Now, it’s time to pay the piper like a cooked goose. It warms the cockles of my heart to be well-heeled and make a mountain out of a molehill. The handwriting on the wall, as he bites the dust, is right on the button. It makes my hair stand on end to say make-my-day to the big fish in a little pond.

Hell on wheels to add insult to injury, an also-ran, he stuck to his guns to have cold feet like a lame duck. May he rest in peace, his dreamboat has come in; he has his ace in the hole."

Lunch is Dutch treat and sign my guest book a bunch of times.