Onward I Mutter - A Ramble

I have a new mantra. It popped into my head as I made my way to a downtown train. I hadn’t been in a subway since before the pandemic hit and was concerned there’d be nothing but trouble after making my way down the stairs.

There’d be no human at the booth. The ticket machine won’t make sense of my card; spitting it out and asking for another as the train pulls into the station. A friendly passerby will offer to assist. I will naturally assume she’s about to scam me out of my life savings. She senses my apprehension and assures me that all I have to do is go over to the turnstile and tap my card.

Oh, I see. She thinks I’m senile and can’t make sense of the simple process of getting my sorry ass on a train. This is where the new mantra kicks in. (It’s actually an old mantra of mine from childhood—which has been patiently waiting to make itself useful in my latter day life.) So I stand tall and look her straight in the eye and say—under my breath of course, My name is Elmer J. Fudd. I’m a millionaire. I own a mansion and a yacht. I repeat this thrice more as a line of impatient commuters form behind me shouting, Hey, boomer! Tap! Tap! Tap!

I eventually board a train heading to Grand Central and suddenly realize that—when most anxious—I lean on Looney Tunes.

Before self-help books, and phone apps with meditative ramblings designed to calm me down, there was Bugs; Daffy; Elmer; and the rest. (I was fortunate not to have hooked onto the annoying Woody Woodpecker—the one cartoon character I had hoped would one day come eye to eye with a 20 gauge. Heh-heh-heh-HEHHHH-heh! Heh-heh-heh-HEHHHH-heh! BAM!

I was partial to Daffy. Daffy was a mutterer. I’m a mutterer, as well. Instead of dealing with things head on, I mutter my way through life. Muttering has a soothing effect on my psyche:       I oughta give ‘em a good piece of my mind . . . Can’t tell me what to do . . . If you think . . . Ah, why do I even bother . . . If I had a nickel for every . . . Why, I oughta . . .

“What’s he saying?”

“Beats me. He’s muttering again.”

Maybe I’m mis-remembering things (I could have said, Maybe I’m forgetting things. But why be correct when I could be like, so modern?) But I do remember feeling better about myself after a Saturday morning with Mel Blanc and company. Daffy got me, and I got him. Long live the mutterers!  May they inherit the earth—kicking and muttering about what a mess they were left. What’s that? Yeah, of course I’m gonna say it. That’s all folks!

Photo courtesy of Wiki Commons:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/Bilbao_-_Ribera_de_D...