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Show ' o John Sinor Column Mac Have alarm will travel By JOHN SINOR Copley News Service Bought myself a little toy the other day. A combination combi-nation calculator and travel trav-el alarm. It's driving the lady of the house a little batty. The alarm has two different dif-ferent sounds to choose from. You can set it to go "De-do-de-do-de-do." etc. It sounds just like a European Europe-an police siren. Or you can set it to play "Love in Bloom." that old number that Jack Benny used to struggle with on his violin. Either one of these sounds is guaranteed to wake a person up. But then try to find the blasted little thing and turn it off. Questions in the dark: "Is it on your side or my side?" "I don't know! It sounds all over the room!" We usually hear the whole song or a 12-block police run before we find it and close it down. (Of course we could turn on the light to find it. But that would wake us up. We only set the alarm to start to wake us up.) We woke up the other morning to find the female cat having an old ladv cat fit. Now, this is a cat that ordinarily gives every appearance ap-pearance of being a stuffed toy. Or, perhaps, a dead pet. I doubt if I have seen her awake more than an hour at a time in her life. She was slightly overcome over-come by smoke 13 years ago. I don't think her head has cleared yet. Lately, however, she has started having these short fits. About one a month. ' She will suddenly start doing these backward somersaults som-ersaults like some aging cheerleader. Then she will take to shadow boxing the air. Then she will go over and lick the sliding glass door. I think she is senile. My wife says she reminds her of her aunt who used to rub bananas in her clothing when she "got nervous." While the cat was flipping flip-ping and boxing. I ran upstairs up-stairs and got the musical calculator. They say music hath charms to soothe, so I punched a button and played "Love in Bloom" for her. It seemed to calm her down. Though, she is as far removed from love as the vet could take her. Anyway, she crawled into a small box and went to sleep for the rest of the day. Another animal in the house. Kona the dog, got some special attention the other day. She celebrated her 10th birthday. She also has slowed down a bit since she came into this house and was first named Conan the Barbarian Bar-barian because she had a bit of wild dingo in her. I phoned the son who gave her to us and told him about the name. He said: "Dad, that dog is a female." I said: "How was I to know? I never look under the hoods of gift dogs." This new calculator also has a keyboard on it so I can play songs other than "Love in Bloom." A full octave oc-tave of notes. That's the toy part. I imagine that might come in handy in the future in some lonesome place like Bangkok or Nepal. My guitar is too big to carry when I travel, but with eight notes, I can probably play any cowboy song ever written. |
