Two past columns concerned levity, the idea of finding humor in an otherwise serious situation.
     That theme is fitting, as my mother typified the notion of taking an otherwise somber situation and injecting humor into it.
     Marie M. Trujillo, my mother, who died in October 2002, epitomizes more than motherhood. Seeing my mom in a nursing home, hours before she passed on to another life, affected me profoundly. They say that when death is imminent, people’s lives flash before them. But how about the survivors? In the time I spent watching her breathing become shallower, a torrent of memories came through me.

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     A popular sitcom of the sixties, “Get Smart,” featured Don Adams as Control Agent 86, whose responsibility was to undo evil forces of KAOS.
     Bumbler that he was, Maxwell Smart made life miserable for his long-suffering boss, played by the late Edward Platt. On the many occasions in which Smart committed a faux pas, he’d simply utter, “Sorry about that, Chief.” So popular did that expression become that even the public used those exact words to rub out an error.

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     Is there any way to live decades and decades without getting old? I went to bed just before midnight Tuesday, at age 64. I tossed and turned for a few minutes and arose to take another look in the mirror, now at age 65. Instead of the Brad Pitt-type appearance I imagined, the new, more mature look resembled Mr. Moldy Face, Puffy Eyes and Turkey Neck.

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    A guest at a local hotel was irate the morning after checking in. “What kind of place are you running here?” he asked the hotelier. “I almost got scalded last night in the shower because both of the handles have Oc’ on them.”
     The manager, nonplussed, pointed out that his hotel tries to epitomize the truly bilingual nature of the community. So he replied, “One Oc’ stands for Ocold,'” and the other stands for Ocaliente.'” He left it to the guests to sort it out.

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    A regular reader of Work of Art, who turns out to have been an across-the-street neighbor in my childhood, asked me yesterday whether all I have written about yesteryear in Las Vegas really happened.
     Rather than wait for a reply, he added that it’s extremely convee-eenient that, for example, a friend of mine would have saved us from a beating with a roll of quarters. He also mentioned a column in which we peace-loving teens were about to be attacked by two gangs and were saved by the sirens of the local constabulary.

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     In preparation for a military inspection during my years in the National Guard (in New Mexico, unlike Alabama, they actually took roll, and I attended most of the drills), the officer in charge of my platoon asked me to claim some quite simple military occupational specialty when the inspector general came to me.

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    One of the biggest put-downs people can bestow on another is to label someone childish. We presuppose that being a baby or a child is something to be avoided. The notion that age equals maturity is not always accurate. What’s so undesirable about a baby crying? The infant is merely following a biological urge to get fed. Crying is just testing a theory: the last time I cried I got fed; maybe it’ll work again this time.

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     A romance with an older woman was not out of the question. I panted over a much more mature woman and even started to save up for an engagement ring.
     But that romance was doomed.
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    Thumbs up: To Mother Nature for the much-needed moisture in late February and early March that will allow communities such as Las Vegas to stave off Draconian water-saving measures.
     Thumbs down: The attempt by the New Mexico House of Representatives to require interlock devices on all vehicles to counter drunk driving. It could have been a case of imposing the regulation on all, in order to go after the few violators. Fortunately, the bill never made it to the senate or to the governor’s desk.

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     Las Vegas doesn’t appear on a globe of the world, nor does it often show up on a U.S. map.
     A satellite photo of New Mexico, provided by my former student Martha Johnsen, when she was an intern with NASA, shows Las Vegas as barely discernible.
     Correspondingly, there aren’t many opportunities for the Meadow City to draw attention. Worse, on the few occasions in which there is a chance for favorable exposure, we’re often mistaken for the impostor in Nevada.

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