Iris’ sign o’ the times

ROARCATS TEST: Iris doesn’t write between the lines so
don’t expect to read between them.

On the phone from Ottawa this morning, my daughter Ria asked the question I’m sure she, her sister Ewa, her brother Michel and maybe her mom but nobody else were itching to hear the answer to:

“How’s Iris taking it?”

The “it” of course is the covid-19 virus situation.

“Iris is,” I replied, “indifferent.”

Iris Cat is clearly not fazed by the news of the day. She has no objections to remaining indoors and not running errands. Iris appears very okay with just keeping her own company.

“Maybe,” I added, “Iris could teach us all a lesson.”

Ria: “We’ve known that for years.”  

At least two.

Because that’s how long it’s been since Iris and her sign started appearing in the living room window of our house. Which means now’s as good a time as any for this third instalment of Iris Cat questions and answers. Starting with, “Did you just say that ridiculous sign has been in your window for two years?”

A: “Sure did. It started same time as my job at The Lawyer’s Daily, which I began in March, 2018. Seems like yesterday.”

Q:  “Really? I bet Iris would never default to a cliché like ‘seems like yesterday.’”

A:  “Only if she were making an excellent pun.”

Q: “Such as?”

A:  “In many ways, the Beatles’ song Eleanor Rigby seems like Yesterday.”

Q:  “Have you no shame?”

A: “Depends. Some days, I’d say no but it seems like yes today.”

Q:  “How much of the limited time that you have left on this planet do you intend to busy your brain with those signs?”

A:  “Probably a lot more than Iris does.”

Q:  “How’s the hardware holding up? The sign’s,  I mean.”

A:  “Good question. That equipment  was clearly not built for long-term day-to-day use. The rails that the letters fit into are coming a bit loose so sometimes stuff slips out by mistake.  One might say the sign is, at times, inconsonant.

Q:  “You included the whole hardware story just so you could squeeze out that pun.”

A: “Look who’s talking!”

Q: “Why don’t you just glue the rails back into place?”

A:  “I have a feeling that if I start in with the gorilla glue I’m going to regret it and we could wreck the whole shebang. And have to start from scratch.”

Q:  “When you trip across a word like ‘shebang,’ your brain goes into ‘Iris-sign  mode and you start wondering how you can use that in a sentence and then it just naturally finds its way to ‘start from scratch,’ right?”

A:  “You know what you remind me of? You remind me of that old joke about the guy who goes to the psychiatrist and when the psychiatrist administers the Rorschach test,  the patient says all he sees are naked people in various stages of lovemaking. When the doctor says, ‘I think you have some sex hang-ups,’ the patient is like, ‘whaddaya mean me Doc? You’re the one with the dirty pictures.’”

Q: “Back to Iris and covid-19. Would you say Iris is, um,  non-plussed?”

A: “Thanks. I needed that.”