Straighten up and fly right

Welcome to the first week of June, the unofficial start of Fly-Swatting Season.

Successful fly-swatting takes years of practice, primarily because most flies find the sport distasteful and refuse to sit still for it. I can’t say I’m particularly adept at the practice, but with the right swatter and deducing windage and elevation, the odds of sending one to fly Heaven are no better than one out of ten, about the same as my batting average in Little League baseball. OK, that’s not a great average, but overall, I did have fun playing left field when I wasn’t striking out.

Anyway, here it is the first week of June and I don’t know why I keep bringing this up every year, but tomorrow marks the 81st anniversary of D-Day, the invasion of Normandy in World War II, and the beginning of the liberation of Europe.

Even after all these years, it’s still talked about. It was, in fact, the largest amphibious assault in all of history, and that’s not including the hundreds of gliders and the thousands of airborne troops who parachuted in. Up until then, as far as I know, most people didn’t know where Normandy was, much less find France on a map, and I guess Mark Twain had it right: “God created war so that Americans would learn geography.”

Memorial Day last week got me thinking about war stuff again, and I guess WWII is the first one that comes to mind with many people, except for maybe the Z-Gens or Millennials, for whom it’s something that only exists in the great-grandparent generation of black and white movies. I suppose they still touch upon it in school.

Here it is 80-some odd years later, and the world is still trying to straighten itself out from its aftereffects, from nuclear weapons to the Middle East conflict; they’re still in the news.

When I learned that D-Day is short for “Day-Day,” and H-Hour is short for “Hour-Hour,” it came as no surprise, having served in the military. The military has traditionally employed utilitarian designations for everyday items. For example, a shovel is not a shovel; it’s an entrenching tool. A bed is a rack. The men’s room is a latrine. A shirt is a blouse. And you don’t need duct tape; you need adhesive cloth, 2 inches.

I’m not sure how the terms SNAFU or FUBAR translate into the civilian world, but they have popped into my head on more than one occasion.

One thing: In the military, we learned to do our own laundry, shine shoes, make beds with hospital corners, clean the latrine, mop the floor, strip and wax the floor, buff the floor, you name it.

With that in mind, I have to force myself to tackle the spring cleaning I’ve been putting off. And paring down. Getting rid of things that have lost their appeal, as they may be, but separating the baby from the bathwater can be a formidable task, so it takes some serious knuckling down.

Once I finish bingeing on Season 2 of Poker Face, that is. I’ve gotta see how that wise-cracking, human lie detector is going to solve the next crime.

But I’m getting off track.

The deal is: If I haven’t used it in the last three years or if it has gathered at least a quarter-inch of dust, I tell myself, “Throw it out, mister.” Except, perhaps, for that box of random computer cables that I may need. Someday. Maybe. Or not.

So, with only two weeks until the last day of Spring there’s still time for clearing out and getting various ducks in various rows. I’m sure there’s an app for that. And why not? I mean, what’s the use of AI if it can’t help you avoid disagreeable bending and lifting?

I am not an app person, as it were, preferring to navigate through life in a semi-Luddite fog, but it seems each week somebody is coming out with a new app you never thought you needed.

Take the Excuse Generator app, which lets you create believable excuses for getting out of a social gathering or awkward moments, like being late for supper or missing an appointment.

You can also get, believe it or not, an app called RunPee, which will tell you the best times to take a bathroom break at the movie theater without missing key scenes and offers a summary of what you missed.

And for those who conduct lengthy conversations with your resident feline, the Cat Translator app claims to interpret your cat’s meows into human language. Use at your own risk.

But I digress.

As far as Spring cleaning goes, I tend to identify with the Neil Young song “A Man Needs A Maid.”

Or a Roomba. At the very least.