By Don Rush

Come with me.
Let me take you by the hand and lead down the path of righteousness. Let me walk you through the week that was — a journey, if you will — through an average week in the life of your hero (Oh, you didn’t know, that would be me).
*  *  *
As far as birthdays go, this year my house turned 100. The celebration of a century of standing tall and proud sounds good in theory. Went to bed Sunday night (Easter Sunday) to the sounds of water drip, drip, dripping  about 15 feet from my head.
Hot damn! I started thinking the leakage in the solarium part of my home (once a birthing center) may be due to some stucco “home improvement” I attempted in the fall. Rats.
*  *  *
Walking around the yard, early Sunday evening, I found all (okay, only 98 percent of) my leafy green tulip plants that were about 12 inches tall on Saturday, were chewed down to about three-quarters of the way to the ground. I’d like to thank the deer who came to visit my back yard, but I can’t. I won’t thank them.
Stupid deer.
*  *  *
Okay, Easter Sunday was a stupendously warm and sunny day, especially if you factor in the holiday was early in the Christian faith’s rotation. By a show of hands out there, how many of you now have a sunburned face?
My hand is raised (which makes typing this part of my column, kinda’ hard to accomplish). My mug is very pinkish as I got my fill of Vitamin D. I think I am gonna’ start supporting the American Skin Cancer Society soonerer rather than laterer. My fair, pale-faced genetics makes me ripe for something not good.
According to WebMD.com, “There are three major types of skin cancers: basal cell carcinoma (BCC), squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), and melanoma. The first two skin cancers are grouped together as non-melanoma skin cancers. Other unusual types of skin cancer include Merkel cell tumors and dermatofibrosarcoma protruberans.”
Whatever that means, I’m sure I’m in there somewhere.
So, I got that going for me . . .
*  *  *
Last week started out with a bang, and a good one at that! On Monday, March 21, I tooled on down to Clarkstontown to take some pictures of a class of Japanese students visiting locally. There was a party going on, all sorts of kids, American and Japanese; parents, siblings, chaperones and me. Wall-to-wall people.
So, what did I do? I asked the host family (Pinter is their name) if I could help out. For the next two hours I grilled hotdogs. Scores and scores of wieners went on and off the grill. The foreign exchange students loved them! I didn’t have the heart to tell them what sort of “meat” they were ingesting.
For the record, I did not try to get into the merrits of Godzilla over any other monster; only used the word “ah-so” a couple of times; refrained from saying “sayonara” until I left for the evening; and just used the words, “Wang Jung” when appropriate.
Thank you Wendy, Lucas and Maya Pinter for letting me embarrass Americans everywhere.

  deer, don rush, don’t rush me, tulips