Pine Nuts with McAvoy Layne: How does she do that?
Submitted by Jeff Munson on Sun, 12/17/2023 - 2:21pm
I was delighted recently to receive a video of my 13-year-old granddaughter, Avery, executing a floor routine in a gymnastics meet, culminating in a full layout back-somersault that dropped my jaw.
My father was a gymnast, and I was a springboard diver, yet neither of us could ever have imagined executing a full-layout back-somersault on the ground.
Add to that amazing improvement in family stock the fact that Avery is getting good grades when my father used to give me a dollar for every C that I brought home on my report card. It’s heartening to see family stock improve so. Now we have to wonder why it is that the human family is not improving as quickly as the consanguineal family.
How is it that we still resort to warfare to solve our differences? This month’s Reagan 2023 National Defense Forum is studying, “The Future of Warfare,” and I imagine the delegates emerge from each day’s session with their hair standing straight up on end, because as we all know and dread, our next World War will rid the Earth of everything but cockroaches and a possible return of Beach Blanket Babylon. I guess the picking up of swords has always been, and will always be, easier than the laying down of swords.
Personally, I’m going to take a cue from Mark Twain when the next big war begins, and head for Cincinnati, because Cincinnati always has been, and always will be, twenty years behind the times. Old age has its advantages. Any rage that might be residing within the folds of our ancient brains is gradually replaced by folds of kindness and goodwill. I could no more kill a person for a perceived good reason today than I could tear a New York City phonebook in half. Do they have phonebooks in New York City?
My one claim to fame came to me in New York City while visiting there with a lady friend 20 years ago. I was waiting for an elevator when I overheard the hotel manager instructing a interior designer to change the upholstery on the furniture in that room to a more subtle, quieter blend.
An hour later I found myself waiting for that same elevator with my lady friend and exclaimed to her that I thought the upholstery in that room was too noisy, and that I would suggest to management to change it to a more subtle, quieter motif. She commented that she didn’t know I was so in tune with interior design, and I accepted the compliment.
A few months later we returned to that same hotel, waited for the same elevator, and she was surprised to see that the furniture designs had been toned down.
“Honey, look! They changed the room just like you had suggested.”
She might have some unkind words to say about me now that we are no longer together, but I imagine she might close with, “But boy, he sure does know his interior design!”
— For more than 35 years, in over 4,000 performances, columnist and Chautauquan McAvoy Layne has been dedicated to preserving the wit and wisdom of “The Wild Humorist of the Pacific Slope,” Mark Twain. As Layne puts it: “It’s like being a Monday through Friday preacher, whose sermon, though not reverently pious, is fervently American."
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