He’s always trying to teach me things and tell me a little bit about culture, the world, and its ways; but I’m so brain-damaged and hard-of-hearing that only 1% of anything he tells me sinks in, and it’s a wonder that the 1% even makes it in at all.

For instance, a famous photographer/portraitist recently died—Yousuf Karsh of Ottawa, Canada, who took the definitive portraits of a lot of great and famous people of the age. Albert Einstein. Winston Churchill. Ernest Hemingway.

And here he is, trying to tell me just how truly great and respected Karsh was, how his photos were always the ones chosen for the cover of Life magazine whenever a truly important person was featured, and how Karsh was the go-to guy if you wanted THE portrait. In other words, if you had a portrait done by Yousuf Karsh, you were free to die… because your portrait was took.

In the meantime, I’m staring blankly at him with my jaw slightly slack, wondering what the hell he’s saying and what it all means.

Karshavaddawa?

What the hell is Karshavaddawa?

I start to ask him this, but he doesn’t understand that the mere words are passing me by. It’s like a whole other language, and I can’t process all that he’s saying to me until I can conquer that incomprehensible Karshavaddawa.

So I’m thinking of Marcia, Marcia, Marcia in the Brady Bunch sense and saying out loud, “Karsha-wha-wha-wha?”

“Yousuf Karsh,” he enunciates. “He was based in Ottawa, Canada. He signed his pictures Karsh of Ottawa.”

“Well, damn it. Why didn’t you say so?”

“I did say so.”

“Nooo. You were saying Karshavaddawa. All one word. I mean, really.”

“Karsh. Of. Ottawa.”

“Uh-huh,” I say. “Karsha-yada-yada.”

“You’re impossible.”

Sure. Whatever. But I know he said Karshavaddawa.

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