There are times when you know you are too connected. This began that way and would up being an emotional trauma.
I was sitting in my room one night sleepless as I often am fiddling with the computer that was next to my bed in those days. My ICQ popped up (that's a piece of software for sending messages between computer users). Joe had sent me a message. My son Joe lived with me in those days and he was messaging from his bedroom about forty feet away. Oddly enough, our conversation continued via ICQ chat for about twenty minutes. I suddenly felt silly, and said in a normal tone "Why don't we just continue this in the living room?" It was the dead of night, two or three in the morning, and Joe heard me clearly. We adjourned to the living room and sat around chatting and flipping through cable channels.
Real Sex was on. I think that was the name of the show. It turned out to be a bizarre tour of a factory that manufactured Dildos. This, of itself, was neither interesting nor in any upsetting. I was a bit weirded out when I noticed that nearly every worker in the factory was a woman. They were all middle-aged, heavy, sagging-skin, neck-and-arm-wattled, women. I was a little disconcerted to learn that this is where dildo's come from. I had always assumed that such things were born of a more testosterone rich environment, but "C'est la vie, n'est pas?"
We were chatting away, largely ignoring the dildo factory and its denizens when we were both snapped out of our conversation by familiar music. There, on the screen, was a wattled woman, waggling at us a dildo that would cause a donkey an inferiority complex. As it wagged back and forth, so did the wattles under her arms and she was singing... to the Oompa Loompah song from Willy Wonka. "Oompa Loompah Doopidy Doo we've got enormous dildos for you … "
I've seen joe cringe on hearing the Oompa Loompa music. I, myself, have never been able to watch Willy Wonka since then. The show has taken on whole new shades of meaning. Just the name Willy …