My plan was to thoroughly enjoy summer’s final three-day weekend and that’s exactly what I did. But before you start shrieking, howling, and rending garments as result of there being no Tuesday column, it just so happens that you’re in for a real treat. Because “The Diary of a Curmudgeon or How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Pandemic” is just about to hit the desks of a slew of unsuspecting publishers.
As a part of that process, I asked my favorite female curmudgeon and Director of the Elgin Public Museum, Sharry Lynn Blazier, to come up with the kind of foreword that would put Dickens, Twain, and Hemmingway to shame, and she did just that! So, in an effort to entertain you and whet your appetite for my soon-to-be-best-seller, here is that magnificent foreword:
Foreword
Ah, so long ago, but I remember March 2020, when the pandemic hit and scary terms like, “extended home self-quarantine” started being bandied about. I wondered which of my family, friends, and various other acquaintances would survive – not so much survive Covid, as survive the isolation trying to avoid catching it. Some folks I knew heard “quarantine” as draconian government codespeak for “house arrest,” and would go stark raving mad in a matter of … three, maybe four, hours.
But if you’d asked me who I knew that would be the most downright giddy to be ordered to avoid humans by hunkering down for weeks at home and eschew even through-the-window eye contact with the amazon package deliverer, I wouldn’t have had to flip through my mental Rolodex. I’d have immediately said, “Oh, Jeff Ward! Jeff is gonna lovvvvve this!” Covid Quarantine would be a Curmudgeon’s Paradise … right?
For I know Mr. Ward to be a proudly self-declared Curmudgeon. I know that well, even though as I write this six years after becoming Facebook Friends, we’ve never once met in person. We’ve had perhaps a dozen phone conversations, and exchanged about 10,000 Facebook messages, and that’s it. (I take pains to clarify this to still give myself a, “Well, I barely knew him …” excuse, just in case …).
Who “friended” whom? I suppose I could dig through my Facebook archives and maybe figure that out, but perhaps it’s better left a mystery. Would I want to admit I was the one who sent a friend invite to Jeff Ward, the sharp-edged political blogger who regularly pisses off the muckety-mucks of Kane County, Illinois politics, police departments, and courtrooms? The 50-50 odds that it was I seeking out his friendship are just too much to risk.
What I do recall, through the distant mist of 2016, is that in the very first message he ever sent me, Jeff told me he had been suspected of being the Unabomber. Not a typical self-introductory line to a new acquaintance.
There have been times I’ve been taken aback at the political bug jars Jeff Ward has had the cojones to shake. Times I’ve thought he was too harsh; times he’s dissed people I consider friends, and times I’ve thought he might even be … dare I say it in his book? … wrong, wrong, wrongity-WRONG! And that certainly applied to some of his thoughts on pandemic protocols.
But there have also been times I’ve thought, Yesssss! About time somebody called out that crooked, pompous sack o’ crap! And many, many times Jeff Ward has made me laugh until my sides are sore.
I would also tell you about the dark time of my life in which he was among my most fervent supporters, encouraging me not to give up on myself. But that kind of schmaltz is exactly what this book is intended to be an antidote for, so I won’t. Suffice it to say, Jeff Ward can, under just the right circumstances, be a little ray of curmudgeonly sunshine.
Ah, there it is again, the c-word! Jeff Ward is a Curmudgeon. I am a Curmudgeon. Perhaps you are a Curmudgeon and looking to this book for emotional support, desperately feeling misunderstood in this world full of people who thoroughly SUCK. Perhaps you are not a Curmudgeon but wish to study us that you may reach out in understanding and peaceful co-existence. In which case just get that hippy-dippy thought out of your noggin right now because we Curmudgeons don’t care what you think! Because, You SUCK!
Just take this book for what it is: The Curmudgeonist Manifesto. The day-to-day frustrations of someone stuck living on a planet full of dolts who never stop to ask themselves why they are doing the inane things they are doing.
Oddly, though, Jeff was not a wildly happy home camper throughout the pandemic, or even any short stretch within it. And it finally occurred to me why this was turning out to be true for both of us: Curmudgeons gotta Curmudge, y’all! We need those daily encounters with the annoying, the doltish, the just plain nuts. Otherwise, we don’t have anybody to be frustrated with but ourselves. We get curmudgeonly about being Curmudgeons.
During one especially worrisome stretch, Jeff started telling me cute things his son’s pet bunny Puffles was doing. I was horrified. Then, on what I’m just guessing was his 112th day of still being in the same pair of pajamas all day long, Jeff more healthily turned to compiling old and new material into this book. And, here we are!
I would submit to you that we are all born Curmudgeons, and then life does its dirty work on us, barraging us with fairy tales, cartoons, and other assorted lofty nonsense. That doesn’t mean this book is written with the reverse-Pollyanna hope of saving just one impressionable young person from foolishly believing they can grow up to be whatever they dream of being. But it might be intended to make them question whether their great dream is, in fact, totally stupid and only adding to the massive crushing mountain of bullshit that is bringing humankind ever closer to its final doom.
Have a nice day. And, Thank you. Thank you, Jeff Ward!
Sharry Lynn Blazer (Jeff’s favorite female curmudgeon)
