The 5 O’Clock Wake Up Call

There are a number of reasons why you would wake up at 5 a.m. on a Wednesday morning in Stonington:

(1)  It was warmer than normal last night, so you slept with the windows wide open to get some of that cool seaside air;

(2)  At 5 a.m., the pick-up trucks carrying the sternmen are racing to the piers, and some of the early moving captains have their lobster boats revved up and moving out to the open water;

(3)  With the sun peeking over the eastern horizon, the birds decide it’s a good time to call out to each other to make sure that all of the other birds in the neighborhood made it through the night okay; and

(4)  When you get up to shut the windows and look outside, you see a sunrise that looks like a painting and you decide the better course would be to enjoy it for a while.  

Catch Phrase Fever

I never liked Happy Days.  In fact, I really despised it.  With its plastic depiction of the 1950s, its leaden and predictable plots, its galling laugh track, and its loads of irritating characters — from the wooden Richie and his bratty kid sister to the consistently unfunny Potzie and Ralph Mouth to the ludicrously chipper “Mrs. C” — Happy Days was like the Generic Sitcom Producers Union’s effort to produce an anti-All in the Family.  For me, at least, the Fonz didn’t change that.

Nevertheless, there was a time during the mid-’70s when you could not talk with a fellow student at Upper Arlington High School without someone sticking up their thumbs and saying “Ayyyyyyy!”  During my lifetime, that catch phrase may have been the one that was most likely to be repeated during normal conversation.  Needless to say, it got to be painfully annoying.