“My wife had her odories taken out.”

I recently visited my neighbor, Chester, who has plenty of common sense but is short on the other kind, and learned MUCH more than I expected or cared to know and some things I still don’t understand.

I began by asking, “How’s your wife, Punkin’, doing?”

He replied, “They performed a mammy-o-gram and told her they were going to have to take her odories out because of her enthomesiosos.”

Chester does have a way with words.

“She’s also got that degeneres disc disease.”

Perhaps this is a new disease that was named after Ellen DeGeneres.

“Tell how your health is, Chester.”

His face drooped, and he said, “I’ve got that ‘sleep acne’ and am supposed to start sleeping with a machine.”

I have to say that I saw no evidence of facial blemishes on Chester’s face. Well, actually, there is very little of Chester’s face that you can see underneath his full beard, so I can’t be certain.

He launched into a rather graphic, R-rated, description of the doctor examining his “prostrate” gland and said he was going to go to the liberry to read if the doctor was making it all up or if that’s truly where his “prostrate” is. “And then, the other night,” he said, “I got up in the middle of the night and broke my little toe on the chester drawers in our bedroom. It hurt worse than when I tripped over the rot iron table in the living room last month!”

I’m not saying that Chester stumbles a lot; it’s only when he’s been drinking. Okay, so he does stumble a lot.

I tried to shift the conversation away from the medical field by asking, “How’s your grandmother doing?”

“Not too good,” he replied. “She was in tensive care and bleeding eternally the other night, but she didn’t know it because she’s got that “All-timers” disease.”

Then suddenly he turned the tables on me by asking, “Do you ever get flustrated with your wife?”

I started to tell him, “not so much as people who use malapropisms,” but knew all he would do with that is give me a blank stare. It really didn’t matter that I didn’t reply, because he had something on his mind.

“Punkin’ got mad at me because I forgot her birfday. So I drove to the Wal-Marts, nearly running off in the medium of the highway because I was driving so fast, and bought her an African that she could lay across her lap while watching TV. But that made her madder. She said the only thing that would make her happy would be if I’d buy her one of them Datsun puppies she’s so fond of.”

Between picturing an African American lying across Punkin’s lap and an old Datsun pickup sitting in their living room, I was having trouble keeping focused on Chester’s conversation. I tried again to give some direction, and asked, “How’s your kids?” (I should have asked a question that could not have been turned back toward the medical arena.)

“Supposably the boy’s got strap throat and chicken pops, which Punkin’ said was sort of simular. I don’t have any ideal if he does or not.”

“Lord, please deliver me,” was my only thought at that point. One more question came to mind. “How’s your job, Chester?”

“I don’t know the pacifics of everything, but my foreman says it all depends on what the budget looks like in this next physical year. Irregardless, I’m going to have to be off for a while helping take care of Punkin’. She told me to axe you if you could help us out with the rent money this month. We’ve got to replace our chimley.”