Sparks that light my fire

BY BOB BAKER

Just a sampling of odds and ends of shorter stuff I’ve been sorting through as I’ve been thinking about another memoir of my happy-go-very-lucky life.

thoughts

» People ask me where I grew up. Nowhere ... yet.

» I’d rather be over the hill than under it.

» Guns don’t kill people: Animals with guns kill people. Egocentric after sex: “Was it good for me?” If your horse has bad breath when you are talking to it, maybe you are at the wrong end of the horse.

» Success is the persistent pursuit of coincidence. A frightening thing happened to him: He had a near-life experience.

» Sometimes it’s better to have people pushing with you than pulling for you.

» Winter springs, summer falls.

» We take with us only what we’ve given. Quite often, I like being apart of the group. The ultimate life-support system? Humor. Life is not only short, it’s quick.

» The ugliest word in the English language: “but.”

» It still boggles my mind that a bird would fornicate a bee.

» Given that ignorance is bliss, he must be the happiest man alive.

Upon infrequent occasion, I lapse into sanity.

To see a good friend is always an adventure.

» I’d rather be a writer than a wronger.

» Follow-up is one of my strengths ... one of my strengths ... one of my stre

Vignettes

On seeing the crumbling base of my back porch steps, a friend whose family owned a monument company offered me a “recovered” monument stone (name side down) as a base — recovered by the company with a backhoe from the grave site of a stiff who’d stiffed them. I thanked him but declined the offer.

» Story guy told me about time he’s in a bar in Quincy: Drunk staggers in; bartender says no, sends him off. Ten minutes later, same guy staggers back in. Bartender kicks him out. Hour later, same drunk reels in, looks at b’tender, “You gah be kiddin’, you werg here too?”

» Synchronicity (Oct. 14, 1993): The girl in my dream last night ... there she looking right at me is, from her car pulled up as I’m getting into my car at Phil’s Mobil this morning. Brown hair, plain-pretty face, wistful expression, almost-pleading eyes ... sister-same. I stammer-mutter something about the weather ... too dumbfounded to say or do anything other than plunk my dumbfounded ass in my car and drive dumfoundedly, head-punchingly away. Never saw her again.

Overheard Marblehead woman visiting in Palm Beach, when asked if she was from the Neck, replied, “No, actually we’re from the tuchis.”

» My pal Tom, ’96: “Some people go around with a cross up their butt all their life. You know how, if you have a kidney stone, maybe if you drink a lotta water, you can pass it, cuz it’s round? Can’t do that with a damn cross up your butt.”

Son Rich told me this story of when he was working for his buddy Hooper in 2003 when Hooper was creating a feng shui garden for a woman in Swampscott. Hooper