Here, Cymbalta! Sit, Zoloft!

At the end of June, things have calmed down. My father's aneurysm has been taken care of and he has - mirabile dictu-recovered to full health. Well, he wasn't all that spry before the operation, so he is not doing somersaults, but he is amazingly well and has taken a new lease on life by being extra picky about the meals he is served. My brother lost part of his lung, but we can put that down to experience. He says he isn't smoking anymore, but when I visit I see evidence that his friends do smoke, they smoke his old brand, and they have been by rather recently - say 2 minutes ago- and must have ducked into the broom closet when they heard me buzz. My 3 nephews gave me 2 dogs which they have named Zoloft and Cymbalta. What joy. In the early part of March, AnnaMR had chased me around the jungle gym , tripped me, and hit me with her book bag. She yelled "You're IT!" and flew off. I was not sure what being "IT" was, other than it obviously had some connection with cooties and cootie-bearing vectors of infection. It may have been a reference to Stephen King's novel IT. It may have meant that I was the "IT" guy, just as Clara Bow had been the "IT" girl. However, as nice as this illusion was, I did not believe AnnaMR to be Elinor Glynn, and thus not in the habit of bestowing nicknames with the abandon of a small, female child relative whom one traps into the role of flower-girl at some hideous wedding. Well, "IT" succintly was a process by which I contacted 5 other friends at their websites, chased them around the jungle gym, etc., and hollered "You're IT!" Now, there's the fly in the ointment, as it were. "Contact 5 friends"... I don't have 5 friends. Let me be quite clear on this business of friendship or amicitas or Freundschaft...5 representatives of the species are not in my possession. Any friends I may have accumulated through the years, any kindred spirits which attached themselves to me - sort of like conglomerated aggregates or globules of adhesive substances- have gone the way of the Dodo. Not that you can fault them. If the SS didn't shoot them, or the Stasi didn't put them in jail, then I made impossible demands. Most recently I have been shitcanned by a fellow for whom I was best man at one of his weddings. I am quite...impossible. And I have no friends at all with websites. My own family is determinedly anti-technological. They make a good portrayal of benighted savages living in a Benthamistic state of nature. People whose websites I have visited have been grossly offended by me. Sooner or later I make some inappropriate remark. However, in my defense, there is only so much self-aggrandizing crap I can put up with at any given website! I did this at the website of a journeyman philosopher, poor shlub that he was. She-who-must-be-obeyed says that I don't need friends...I need (1) an audience, and (2) a therapist. So I sit here in the library with Zoloft and Cymbalta nestled at my feet. I must teach them to play poker!