Harlan Warde

            On Tuesday morning I translated all but the last verse of "Quand ça balance" (When I'm Off Balance) by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            I weighed 90 kilos before breakfast. 

            I took a siesta from noon to 13:30. 

            I weighed 89.1 before lunch. This was the twelfth day of my fourteen day fruit fast and I had a tomato and two avocados with lime juice. 

            Because the assistant professor had posted the lecture so late on Monday I hadn’t been able to write my blog for that day until this afternoon.

            I took a bike ride after 17:00, much later than usual. At Dufferin and Bloor the old busker with the handlebar moustache had a little kid dancing in front of him as he played, “I Love” by Tom T Hall while the child’s mother stood off to the side and watched. I rode to Ossington and Bloor and stopped at Freshco on the way home to replenish my avocado supply. I bought ten avocados, five tomatoes and two bags of grapes. 

            When I got home Benji and Shankar were chatting in the hall and so I talked with them for more than an hour. I lent Shankar my hammer to knock the pin back into his door hinge. He asked for the address of my Youtube channel and so I got his email and sent him the link. It was after 19:00 when we all finished talking and my day was shot for working on my essay. I weighed myself around that time and I was at 89.3 kilos. 

            I had tomatoes, avocados and a little chopped scotch bonnet pepper with lime juice for dinner while watching Andy Griffith.

            In this story Opie has a new friend named Arnold who tells him that he shouldn’t have to work for his allowance because it's what a kid is "allowed". Arnold gets pretty much whatever he asks for and when he doesn’t he holds his breath or throws a tantrum. When Opie tries those things on his father he's not a natural and so he has to stop and explain to Andy that he is holding his breath. Andy says it's a good lung exercise. When Opie gets down on the floor and kicks and screams Andy asks what he’s doing and Opie says he's throwing a tantrum. Andy says, “Okay but don't get your clothes dirty." Later Barney catches Arnold riding his bike on the sidewalk and gives him a warning. Arnold promises not to do it again and then immediately crosses the street to ride on the other sidewalk. Andy catches him and the law states that if a child has been warned and does it again his bike is impounded for a week. Arnold brings his father Simon who argues that Arnold has done a very small thing and should get his bike back. Andy disagrees. Simon continues to argue and finally Andy tells him that if he’s not going to take responsibility for his child maybe he should be locked up. Suddenly Arnold says for him to go ahead and put his father in jail because that will show them he can’t push him around. Andy asks, “You want your father locked up?” Arnold says “He ain't afraid of you. I don’t want to lose my bike." "You'd rather I put your father in jail?" "I want my bike!" Simon is shocked and tells Andy that there is no need to impound the bike because he is going to sell it. Arnold continues to shout. Andy suggests to Simon that if he wants to continue this father and son discussion in quiet there is a woodshed out back. Simon brightens and asks, "You mean a real old fashioned woodshed?” After Simon takes Arnold out back Opie asks if he’s really going to spank him. Andy asks, “Don’t you think he deserves it?" Opie answers, "I don't wanna say. After all he is one of my own kind.” The culture of corporal punishment was still strong when this show aired in 1963. I was getting it at home and at school. The Andy Griffith Show was well known to have contained a lot of threats of a whipping, but it was never shown to happen to Opie. 

            Simon was played by Harlan Warde, who co-starred in Money Madness. He was hired by a neurology professor in 1969 to play a man with a neurological condition in an instructional video. He played Sheriff Brannon on The Virginian.