DIARY
Periodontal (Per-idiot?) disease in dogs?
by
Robert LaFrance
I usually write my column on
Saturdays, but this time I would be away in Halifax to watch my son Kinley
receive his Youth Minister diploma from the Atlantic School of Theology. (I’m
rather proud of my boy, but don’t tell him that. I’ve told him for all these
years that I would have preferred if we had acquired a puppy in 1992.)
Therefore, because I would be away I asked my friend
Flug (Richard LaFrance, no relation) if he would mind writing it. No question
of pay though. I knew it wouldn’t be worth much.
“Would I?” he spurted. “I’ve been wanting to replace
you for years!”
“But Flug,” I said. “You’re not – ”
It was too late; he was on his way to his laptop. Brunswick
News was in for a shock.
*************************
Good day, former readers of Bob LaFrance’s alleged
humour column. You finally caught a break. My name is Richard LaFrance, no
relation thank God, former Parliament Hill barber and fork lift driver in
Onion, Saskatchewan. I am here to put a little humour into your lives. You’ve
waited long enough.
Let’s start out with telephone surveys, not to be
confused with telemarketers. I lie to them, every time. Therefore I realize, as
you do, that telephone polls aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. Only an
hour ago, someone from the Conservative Party of Canada called and asked me
what I thought about the Tories’ phoney TV commercials referring to their
so-called Action Plan.
Of course I could recognize Justin Trudeau’s voice
and I quickly told him what I thought of him. “Your father would spin in his
grave if he saw the way you lie every day,” I said. “Sure, he lied too, but in
a different way. And, if you can’t out-lie Stephen Harper you don’t deserve to
be prime minister.”
The caller persisted though, and wanted to know what
I thought about the Tories spending $750 million on political advertising while
denying it was political advertising. I stood pat, although I was sitting at
the time and my name is not Pat.
Now let’s go on to where I got the name Flug. As I
said, my Christian name is Richard, if that’s not too politically incorrect.
Born in Tilley, NB, in 1948, I pretty well had to have a Christian name because
there weren’t a lot of Buddhists living along Churchland Road. There I go
again! Should I have said Synagogue-land or Mosque-land Road?
Back to the origin of the name, Bob LaFrance had
something to do with it – what a surprise. About 1958 a bunch of us boys were
playing baseball across the road from Murray and Minnie Paris’s house and I hit
a ground ball to Mack Paris, who threw the ball to first baseman Clinton St.
Peter. That ball, delivered with lots of speed, took me right in a sensitive
area and I went down face-first to the ground, ploughing up enough topsoil to
plant a bed of green peppers.
Ah, how I could use the language then!
“*&^%$#@*&^%$!” I moaned at a high volume. One of the words I uttered
started with the letter ‘F’, which brought Minnie out to find out who was ‘hors
de combat’ as we used to say in France. “It’s okay, Minnie,” Bob said. “He’s
just saying ‘Flug Flug Flug!’ He thought his face was a plough.”
After I recovered and Minnie had gone back to
prepare a baked bean supper with rolls for all of us, I said to Bob: “Flug indeed.”
Only I didn’t say ‘Flug’. From that day on, I was Flug and no longer Richard
(no relation).
For my penultimate (let Bob top that word!)
paragraph, and I am sure that by this time you agree that I would be a much
better choice to write this column, I want to mention the Royal Bank of Canada
profit in the last quarter of 2014. It was $1.3 BILLION, a record even for
them. Instead of lowering bank fees and charges, they added more, like a $5 fee
for paying your mortgage. There were dozens of them. You want a definition of
the word ‘greed’? It’s spelled B-A-N-K-S. Then there’s Mike Duffy, who is in a
league of his own.
Last, I read on an Internet website that your dog is
in danger of getting gum disease, but you can steer that off by taking giving
your vet $600-plus so he, she or it can clean the dog’s teeth and give it some
free medicine for $200-$300 more. Funny, I’ve had more than a dozen dogs and
not one had gum disease. I let them eat bones and hard dogfood to keep their
teeth in good shape. People sure are sucked in.
-END-
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