Below is a rough draft of humble's rants for your Maine Private Radio show for September 25, 2016

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This is perhaps the only thing I have ever said on the radio in over 38 years that not one person could disagree with. It is my answer to a question I read in the newspaper that said, “Why are teenage girls becoming pregnant?" Are you ready for the answer? Teenage girls are becoming pregnant today for the same reason teenage girls were becoming pregnant 4000 years ago.

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2. One of my pills at my usual pill provider has suddenly gone from 90 dollars to $400. I'm calling the VA in Togus and will ask to get my pills thru the VA. It is my understanding that I get my doctors to send the pill order to my doctor at Togus. The pills should cost me nothing and the VA will ship the pills to me. I've been paying for all of my medication for years. So getting my pills from the VA should save us a pile. There are benefits to being a battle-scarred defender of my country, even if I had wait 60 years to get them. First hearing aids. Today pills. Where will it end?

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3. One morning our Bed and Breakfast guest mentioned that there is a maze in a nearby cornfield. It would not have surprised me had she said that there was maize in a nearby cornfield. She is a librarian, so I thought she'd remember a story that came to my mind about a young girl who meets a man with a disfigured face in a cornfield. I couldn't remember the name of the story or the author, but it quickly revealed itself when I Goggled. The name of the story is Sex Education. I don't remember of ever hearing of Dorothy Canfield Fisher, who wrote it, but the story, which I read many years ago, stuck with me as it was an example of how one incident might be seen differently as a person matures. She tells the same story at three different times in her life. At 20, at 40 and then at 60. Each time the story changed to reflect her maturity and understanding of life. Education or lack of education also determines how people see any given incident. This is why some political candidates can boast that they won a debate, even though most everyone agrees that the candidate said nothing.

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4. .A friend writes on my Facebook page: “As long as the sun shines, I do not find a use for my dryer and I smile when my clothes dry outdoors knowing that I've deprived the utility company of the need to burn fossil fuels.” I write: “As long as the sun shines I can use my dryer and I smile when my clothes dry in the cellar, knowing that it costs me nothing because I have 30 solar panels on my henhouse and that I've deprived some naughty birds of the pleasure of messing on my newly washed sheets.

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5. If you have ever been by my house you know that I have rhubarb out on a stand in front of my house all summer. I take in the sign around October first because I want to save what is left for my own greedy needs. I’ll freeze up 10 or 15 pounds of rhubarb and have rhubarb pie all winter. No. We don’t spoil good rhubarb by mixing it with strawberries. Don’t come around here and tell me about your strawberry-rhubarb pie. We only have plain old unadulterated rhubarb pie at our house. Nor do we ruin apple pie by putting vanilla ice cream on it. We don’t put onions in our fish chowder, either. The only thing in our fish chowder is fish and milk and potatoes. At our house it’s right back to basics. Heard enough? Or should I go on?

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6. Do you know how many teeth are in your mouth? One day I felt something give on the top right tooth way in back so I checked it out and discovered that particular tooth is called the second molar. I read that an adult has 32 permanent teeth. Think about this. Every time any one of those 32 teeth gets a weak spot in it, it’s going to cost you a couple of hundred dollars to get it fixed. Since I started having questions about that second molar I’ve been chewing on the other side and discovered that I could probably get along right well with 16 teeth. Did you ever wonder why we have 32 teeth instead of 16? Could it have something to do with an inordinately powerful dental lobby?

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7. We hear a lot about togetherness. Families should do things together. One winter day my wife’s oldest kid drove from Maine to Vermont with dog, kid and husband. Can you think of anything that will bond a little family quicker than riding 200 miles on icy roads in a Volvo with a large wet dog? At my age, such outings, although they sound delicious, are beyond me. In other seasons one might bundle up the little family and pass from lip to lip a hot thermos while watching a football game through lightly falling sleet and snow. --- Not my thing. Then there are the eagerly awaited four days in Orlando, where one finds unidentifiable items behind the bed, the smell of chemicals in the corridor, questionable bedding and a shower that doesn’t work. --- Been there done that. So what can an old man, with a glint in his eye, and his beautiful adventurous wife do to continue this essential, never ending bonding process? It might surprise you to hear, that every morning, the first thing my wife and I do when we wake up is take our pills together.

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8. Did I tell you that while fishing with her husband a woman in her 80s kicked a fish off the dock. A spine on the fish infected her toe and the doctor said if she had waited another day for treatment she would have been dead. That’s all I’m going to say about sports today but next week our topic will be baseball.

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9. How do you know when you’ve got a marriage that really works? How do you know when you and your spouse are 100 percent compatible? That your thinking is along exactly the same lines? I suppose it differs from family to family but here’s how I know I married the woman who was made to be married to me. There are two doors that lead into our bathroom. No matter which door I open to step into the bathroom, at the exact same moment my wife opens the other door and we both step into the bath room with exactly the same thing in mind.

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10. What do you think of DNA testing? Many Maine people in high places are against this DNA testing thing. To begin with, if DNA testing were required retroactively, at least one man who has been in the Maine state prison for many years might be found innocent. And then the system would have to go out and match up the DNA with any known predators who happened to be in the neighborhood at the time the crime was committed to find the real criminal. What a bother that would be. What do you think? Isn’t it better to let a man rot in jail for a crime he didn't commit than smear egg on many respectable faces? v 11. For the first time in memory, the clothes drier wouldn't start. One suspects that one was careless. One lets Bed and Breakfast guests or friends twist the knobs on one’s appliances. Friends or guests fiddling with the knobs on any machine might or might not be the problem, but one has to harbor and nurture one's suspicions. What would you do if your clothes drier wouldn't start? Call a service repair man? Take it apart? I pounded on the top of it with my fist. And it started.

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12. If there’s anything that drives my wife wild, it is seeing me twiddle with my hair. When my hair gets long over my ears, I sometimes absent-mindedly twirl it around between my fingers. The other day she said, “If you play with your hair any more, I’ll cut it off.” Don’t you think that was a terrible thing to say? It made me so nervous I’m even being careful of where I scratch.

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