{"id":77401,"date":"2019-07-03T13:17:09","date_gmt":"2019-07-03T18:17:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=77401"},"modified":"2019-07-03T13:17:16","modified_gmt":"2019-07-03T18:17:16","slug":"the-view-from-the-balcony-deep-thoughts-by-randy-not-jack-handy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/the-view-from-the-balcony-deep-thoughts-by-randy-not-jack-handy\/","title":{"rendered":"The View from the Balcony: Deep Thoughts by Randy (Not Jack Handy)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I grew\nup as an only child with two older sisters and one older brother. I spent a lot\nof time alone with television and my own thoughts as my dearest friends. Mama\nrocked me a lot when I was a baby. One day she used a big rock. I hope that\nexplains it all for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was changing my contact lenses last week and threw the old ones in the toilet. I stood there looking at them floating on the surface of the water. I thought they were looking back at me, and wondered, \u201cCan see me when I . . .” Think about it. If snakes can come up through your toilet, what else might be going on there? So, I flushed the lenses and waved goodbye to them. I swear one of them winked at me before going down the vortex.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When\nyou’re in a hospital parking lot, usually there are signs at the parking spaces\nclosest to the door that say, “Patient Parking”.  You would\nthink they’d want the patient folks to park farther away and have\n“Impatient Parking” closer. Maybe they’re trying to teach patience to\nthe impatient. Maybe it’s just a cruel joke. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why are some shoes for women called “pumps”? I had a flat tire once. Borrowed one of my date’s pumps. I never did figure out how to use it to inflate my tire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Isn’t a “bad comb-over” redundant? Have you ever heard someone say, “Hey, Fred! That’s a great comb-over ya got there!”?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\nhad a friend in high school who had a terrible case of acne. He developed an\ninferiority complexion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When\nmy son was a toddler he had a favorite rattler that he played with a lot. One\nday the rattler bit him. Thankfully the emergency room had an anecdote for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I saw a big sign in an open field the other day. It read, \u201cLots for Sale.\u201d I called the number on the sign and said to the person who answered, \u201cI saw your Lots for Sale sign. Can you please tell me what you\u2019re selling lots of?\u201d They hung up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If\nJimmy the Greek had been a computer nerd would they have called him “Jimmy\nthe Geek”?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Flora, Mississippi, has one of the two petrified forests in the USA. I used to go there on field trips in my elementary school years. I always wondered who or what scared the trees so badly. (I owe that line to my dear friend and fellow Balcony dweller, No Account Addie.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Image source<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Why\naren’t black lights really black?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once when I was on a beach vacation, I thought I saw a ship sinking in the Gulf of Mexico. I learned later that it was really a nautical allusion and a pigment of my imagination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Ole Miss library has a huge collection of historical books, but very few hysterical ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I was a child my dad and I were on our way to a lake to fish. We passed a silo. My dad said a man had died in it the past week. I asked how. Dad said that the guy ran himself to death trying to find a corner to pee in. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shouldn’t “Oversize Load” be “Over-sized Load”? I\u2019d opt for “Big-Ass Load” myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Have you ever heard anyone say, \u201cMan, that rain\u2019s really falling up,\u201d?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is\na “low grade fever” a fever that couldn’t pass the ACT, or is it when\nkids in the first three grades are all sick?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have a Jewish friend with a sharp tongue who\u2019s a master of sarcasm. He\u2019s an Acidic Jew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why\ndo mental health people say that their patients have a serious mental illness?\nHave you ever heard of a hilarious mental illness?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We Mississippians must make a lot of mistakes. I see cars going up and down I-55 all the time with \u201cDepartment of Corrections\u201d painted on their bumper. We have to have an entire department dedicated to correcting our mistakes? Why don\u2019t we just do it right the first time? No telling how much we spend on liquid paper. We must by it by the trainload. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll\nstop there. But if you decide you want more of these gems, you know where to\nfind me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026and that\u2019s the view from The Balcony.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I grew up as an only child with two older sisters and one older brother. I spent a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":262,"featured_media":39753,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11902],"tags":[31,8851,10286,10878],"class_list":["post-77401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-randy-weeks","tag-city-grocery","tag-column","tag-randy-weeks","tag-the-view-from-the-balcony"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/2017-5-11-View-from-the-Balcony.jpg?fit=600%2C400&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77401\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}