Tyrades! by Danny Tyree

“This will be the best feast ever!”

When my son Gideon was seven years old, I won a “value meal for two” at the local Taco Bell via a radio trivia contest. All I had to do was add cinnamon twists to the order, and Gideon trumpeted the “best feast ever” review.

(I can’t quite recall, but he possibly also shouted, “This is the best bathroom ever!” 15 minutes later.)

Facebook Memories informs me this incident was almost exactly one month after the occasion Gideon visited me at work and I pushed him around the warehouse on a two-wheeled dolly as he beamed, “This is the life!”

And Gideon and I share an “inside joke” about an even earlier incident. My workplace conducted a “customer appreciation” event and a little boy meekly asked if he could have a drink from the water fountain. Mischievously, I replied, “Sure – it’s free,” to which the youngster exclaimed, “Free?? Wheeeee!”

So, I have a certain bemused appreciation for people who get excited over life’s simple pleasures.

But occasionally, I go into Shania Twain “That don’t impress me much” mode.

For instance, I don’t get the big deal about open-face sandwiches. My late mother reminisced for 50 years about the open-face roast beef sandwiches at a local restaurant and my wife still has a fascination for “topless” servings of barbecue or luncheon meat, but I tend to channel my inner Clara Peller and grumble, “Wheeeere’s the CARBS?”

Are chefs trying to do a little shaming? (“Get a load of Diamond Jim here. He expects Kraft macaroni AND Kraft cheese in the same meal!”)

What’s the big deal about open-face sandwiches? Are they for people with limited imagination? Are they for semi-suspicious people? (“Good! No used Band-Aid – unless it’s UNDER the meat.”)

Or maybe they’re meant to appeal to people who enjoy eyeballing their meat just a little too intently. Watch out when those folks go downright stalker-ish during a ride in the country. (“Just you wait, Mr. Angus. We’ll meet again. Oh, yes, we will…”)

On a related note, I’m not sure what’s so cool about “thin-sliced” luncheon meat. It tends to crumble all to pieces when I’m trying to count my allotment of slices. But some connoisseurs think it’s the bee’s knees, and it probably contains some bee’s knees in there, too.

Don’t get me started on the people whose whole lives were changed because a parent, teacher, mentor, clergyman, meme, fortune cookie or misheard drive-through conversation convinced them to “live in the moment.”

I’ll admit I let my mind drift while in the motel pool on my summer vacation, but I remain leery. Is living in “the moment” anything like following “the science”? (“We know it seems like an eternity, but it’s really just a moment. Here come your next six jabs.”)

“Living in the moment” is self-contradictory, if you really think about it. (“What was it my therapist told me last week? Oh, yeah: live in the moment. Why? Because I will feel better about it tomorrow. Wait – I’m currently dredging up the past to live in the future! Forget about living in the moment; I need to be living in the booby hatch!”)

*Sigh* Enough of my trivial ramblings. Let’s return to the world of international shooting matches.

Throw in some cinnamon twists, and they’ll be the best international shooting matches ever!

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Copyright 2026 Danny Tyree, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Danny Tyree welcomes email responses at [email protected] and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades.”