Bull by Bull

•?One of my fondest memories was moving to Portland in the mid-1950s. We were driving north over the Golden Gate Bridge and daddy had the World Series on real loud on the radio: Dodgers 4, Yankees 3. Everything seemed possible to me in that moment.

•?I’m guessing there isn’t a one of us who hasn’t run into themselves over these past many months. I know I have. I lucked out because I’m basically a hermit anyway, but I did not escape unscathed. I’m pretty sure I was getting weirder and weirder some of those months, and I suspect I still am.

•?Never say never: Two things I can’t imagine ever sharing again are my bed and the TV remote. Talking TV remote: I hate to admit this, but over the past 18 months I have developed tennis elbow of the thumb from said remote. And I only have six channels from which to choose.

•?One of the lightbulbs on my stairway burned out last night, 32 years after I first screwed it in. My stairway wall is lined with all of Vernon’s original watercolor paintings for the illustrations in “Where’s Irish?” Those paintings brighten the stairway in a totally different way than the lightbulb ever

could.

•?As anyone who has taken in a rescue dog knows, not knowing what the dog has gone through before coming to you is huge. Slowly but surely my rescue dog, Bingo, is telling me part of her story: She’d never met a TV, or stairs. She’s traumatized riding in the car, and she’s petrified when she hears a man’s voice. She’d never-ever everything.

•?I caught myself using both hands to heft a glass of milk to my lips the other night. Not a good sign. Talking about aging, at my annual wellness visit last week, the only things my doc told me to do differently were to watch my cholesterol and to use a bong.