Trombones have been known to sneeze.

"Trombones have been known to sneeze" said Crazy Henry to me last winter, while we were trapped inside a hollow glacier.
Since his comment had nothing whatsoever to do with our predicament at the time, I found it easy to ignore. 
After we were rescued and back home safe and sound, though, I brought the subject up again -- right after the banquet in our honor given by the Polar Club; they've got a nice dining hall that they rent out for weddings most of the year down on Central Avenue. 
"What did you mean when you said trombones have been known to sneeze?" I asked him while we rode home in a taxi.
"I never said such a thing, I'm sure" he replied, stifling a belch. There had been barrel-cured sauerkraut, loaded with fennel seed, at the banquet. 
"You most certainly did, you dingbat!" I replied, getting heated. If he was trying to pull that old 'memory lapse due to trauma' monkey business on me I was having none of it. I fought off the ice panthers with my bare hands right next to him back in that hollow glacier, and I remembered everything crystal clear.
"Did I?" was his only reply. Then he lapsed into intolerable silence. Ever since our triumphant return, Crazy Henry had been somewhat withdrawn, not to say gnomic, in his dealings with me. Certainly a man changes after he has lived on nothing but icicles and frozen lichen for weeks at a time; but I always credited Crazy Henry with an unbeatable ebullience that would keep him happy-go-lucky all his life. But nowadays he would smile cryptically and remain quiet like Buddha, instead of caroming around like a Jerry Lewis movie. I missed the old Crazy Henry. 
"You've changed" I told him quietly.
"Have I?" he replied. Then he went back to his silent brooding.

I didn't see him again for several months while I dictated my "as told to" book to a retired journalist from the New York Times. He got the thing edited and to the publisher in record time, and I fully expected to have a bestseller on my hands by Arbor Day. But then the PETA people got wind of the ice panther episode and began agitating against me and the book -- so, as far as I know, it's never going to see the light of day. Thanks a lot, Ethical People. 

And then one day as I was taking a walk in Van Cleve Park I saw Crazy Henry sitting on a bench, feeding popcorn to the birds.
"I don't think that's very healthy for 'em" I said as I sat down next to him. "The popcorn expands inside their guts and they get constipated or something."
"You're thinking of chickens eating grit" he said to me. Then smiled that old silly smile of his at me -- and I knew that my old Crazy Henry was back.

In the following weeks we tried to invent dehydrated dill pickles in Crazy Henry's kitchen -- the market for such an item was bound to be tremendous. Or so Crazy Henry thought, and I was happy to go along with him, since I really like dill pickles. But in the end you really couldn't tell our invention from dill pickle flavored potato chips, so we gave up on it. And then it happened . . . 

"Did you know that trombones have been known to sneeze?" Crazy Henry asked me as we were watching Teen Titans Go on Cartoon Network. 
"Aha!" I jumped up from the couch, waggling my finger triumphantly in his face. "Aha" I repeated, suddenly losing my enthusiasm for the whole subject, deflated and exhausted. "Do they?" I said quietly, then lapsed into a gnomic silence -- wishing with all my soul that we were watching some original Tom and Jerry cartoons instead of Teen Titans Go. The animation today is cretinous, and the humor completely referential and isolating. An idea came to me.

"Hey" I said to Crazy Henry. "I bet you could do a better job at making cartoons than these guys . . ."