life

Things I Remember Blaming on Aging

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I invented a new curse word for a driver who turned left without a turn signal, but had to use the same word when my own blinker wasn’t on.

One thing gets done at one time. No multi-tasking—or any multi-anything—for a senior. I made a perfect grilled cheese sandwich and marveled at its crispy, brown coating while I  put the cheese away in the silverware drawer. So…when I went to make another sandwich it took me two and one half days to find the cheese, and it only happened while putting away the cleaned utensils from the first sandwich. If you lost your cheese, would you look for it in the silverware drawer? Sorry for the personal question. And yes, the cheese was moldy.

It’s the same with scissors. I bought a second pair and try* to treat them both like newborn babies.** If I didn’t, scissors would be left on the top shelf of the closet where the shelf lining was cut and not be found for some other task until more shelf lining was needed. A second pair has saved time, since it (almost) guarantees one pair will be in the drawer they are supposed to be in.

Prescription drugs are impossible without a chart of some kind, and a writing instrument (of some kind) to mark the chart. And mnemonic helpers. During the months of surgeries and treatment for The Calamities there, were pages of drugs to take with numbers, times, and descriptions. Thank God. Now, I take just two and a plastic marked tray keeps everything in order.  One has to be taken one hour before a meal and the other one two hours after a meal. I labeled them 1B, for one Before, and 2A, for 1 After. I think that’s-be right back.

We’re good. Checked the scissors and cheese while I was gone, too.

It isn’t that the brain is getting smaller, is it? Isn’t it just that there is so much happening, and we all only have so much computing power?

Whether that’s true or not, even suspecting anything is amiss fulfills its own whatever. I went out one time without my keys. One time in 74 years.*** Now, before the apartment door is opened, there is a moment of reflection to make sure my keys are in my hand. Other needs are checked, too, the wallet, phone****, and the thing for whatever errand I’m running…it’s hard to return unneeded shelf-lining to Walmart if you leave the lining in your apartment and remember it halfway to…where was I going?

So, “possible” memory loss is a tough issue. For one thing, what if we forget the “baseline” memory of youth? How would we identify and analyze memory loss in Old Age? And who among us trusts a complete (?) stranger who comes up to us and asks: “Don’t you remember me?”

One thing I know for sure is memory “retrievability” has slowed. It took me about 2 hours to remember Roger Federer, my tennis hero, the other day. If we just be patient and don’t waste computing time/brain time wondering why Roger Federer is not on the tip of our tongue, we will eventually see the memory is there, it’s the “indexing” that might have vanished.

But…wait…isn’t that memory loss?

*Try. The most used word, these days. Try to do this, try to do that, and try to remember to remember to try.

**As a 74-year-old Great Grandfather I have NEVER misplaced a baby. That I know of. Or was told about.

***I was a driving prodigy from a young age.

****A sharp-eyed reader may remember an essay about The Man Bag, the perfect tool for remembering everything. And who carried a phone in the 1970’s? A Wallet? We stuck a $20 bill in the pocket of our denim jeans and went out the door. At least that’s what I remember…

Things That Are Absolutely True…Maybe

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The driver in the car behind me with his high beams on is a fecking shitehole (FS).

The driver approaching me with his with beams on is an FS.

I have 74-year-old eyes and all headlights look like high beams. Who is the FS?

All politicians are FSs who will “fight” to win more than they will “work” to fix. Donations, anyone? Now, whenever politicians use the word “fight” we must assume they actually mean it. Maybe there will be a Political Weight Class in the next UFC fight card? Imagine the youtube videos as congresspeople duke it out on C-Span.

Citizens United is the dumbest court case ever. Not even sure why the Supreme Court heard it. Oops, what an FS for not remembering it was all about political donations…and money.

My girlfriend of 20 years left me, sold all my possessions, took my pets, and moved 2,300 miles across the country during my treatment for The Calamities. I still care for her. Am I an FS?* Again? She says the breakup was “both our faults.” No comments, please, but a therapist used this phrase to help me understand: “When the going got tough, your girlfriend got going.” It was easy to get “going” since she took all the money. With every day of recovery, what she did bothers me more…

Speaking of The Calamities, they “reset” my health graph. Picture a “bell curve”** where we get better and healthier with each year until about middle age. Then we head down the backside as we start “not” getting healthier each year until the end of the tail of the Bell Curve and we meet our Maker. My bell would have a huge, humpbacked dent midway down the back side, keeping in mind we have no idea of The End of the curve. This allows me to truthfully say “I am getting better”, as the dent straightens out, a truly remarkable phrase to be able to correctly use at age 74. In re-reading this, it might be only old people who will understand my happiness, so the rest of you can feck off. With all due respect.

A certain per cent of any population is going to fact-challenged*** in any society. It isn’t a criticism until the members of that “certain per cent” don’t understand themselves, and begin to think they are smarter than everyone else. Public conversation in The United States of America is currently being dominated by “these” people. Generally speaking, a medical doctor knows more than a patient. A teacher knows more than a student. Even simpler: an older person knows more than a younger person. There are exceptions to every rule, but you can—currently—see what will happen when every person thinks they are The Exception. Trey Crowder, The Liberal Red Neck, said one time, paraphrased, “I wouldn’t want my high school football team to be coached by my English teacher.”

As an addendum to that thought, over 50 percent of my news feed is “opinion”, hearsay, or comments on some other article. To my Ai content manager: I didn’t care about the first opinion, why would I care about an opinion about the first opinion? One article was nothing but reader comments. Ugh.

Almost everything is about politics these days and it sucks. Quantum Entanglement is getting closer to functional reality. Some monster telescope “people” think they found evidence of the possibility there may be life on a planet 120 light years away. Canada made the knock-out round of the World Cup. So did America. So did Mexico. Are we going to be better neighbors, now?

Under Sadly Believable heading: Billionaires think they pay too much in taxes in NY and California so they are relocating to lower tax states. Wonder how often The Billionaires have changed locations to save taxes? Hm. How much do The Billionaires pay lawyers and accountants to find ways to PAY lower taxes? Will NY and California taxes have to be increased?

Wonder if we can time travel back to 1789 France? Or at least send The Billionaires**** back there…

*Should it be “a” FS? Can’t get the fingers to type it. F is a consonant, but the name “eff” begins with a vowel…oh, the humanity…UPDATE: Emma says “a” before the SOUND of a consonant, and “an” before the SOUND of a vowel. It took 70 years for me to learn this just now. Old dog meet new trick.

**The Bell Curve was “discovered” by Abraham de Moivre in the 18th century and is used to illustrate distribution of statistical data. My reference to the “Bell” is to the resulting image a standard “x-axis is time and y-axis is health” graph would yield. For a healthy person. Who never had a health problem. Generally speaking.

***It means just what it says and does NOT mean stupid or ignorant. It means ill-equipped. Ill-prepared. Like letting 4-year-olds drive cars. Or making me a Ted Lecturer.

****Hope it does not have to be said there are some good Billionaires doing good work. Someplace. And in 1789 France, they’d learn a lesson to bring back to our time. Hopefully.

Fathers Day, with no apostrophe or apology

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Aging is interesting. Not to the young, of course, but there is a point in everyone’s life when we “suddenly” realize we are aging, if not “aged”. It is what happens after the realization we will talk about, here.

Fathers Day 2026 was an interestingly humorous celebration.

I probably learned about Fathers Day way back in The Early Years. Fathers Day was first proposed in 1909 in response to Mother’s Day.* Fathers Day was officially “recognized” in 1966 by Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon made it a National Holiday in 1972. I was unaware of these dates because in 1963 I was learning how to shelter under a wooden desk if nuclear missiles were headed to upstate New York.** In 1972, I was either drunk, blazed, or courting the second or third “love of my life”. Honoring dad was the last thing on my mind. It didn’t help the holiday that my father and I had a unique relationship during my 1960’s teen years, and I wouldn’t have honored him, anyway.

It’s safe to use “aging” as an excuse for not remembering the first time Father’s Day caused my day to be about someone other than me.

But here’s the thing: the concept of unimportance has floated through my conscience many times over the last few months. It started with the China documentary where the repeated cycles of Dynasties rising and falling over hundreds of years led to millions of people—perhaps billions—dying simply because they were of the wrong family, cult, religion, or geographic area. What was important to those people? Did they have scrapbooks of family photos to pass down to survivors? Were their deaths heroic? Were there any survivors? Did they have special days for Fathers and Mothers?

And then there is politics…the rise of one party, the decline of another, and the passing of time making us forget all about The Whigs of the 1830s-1950s. And remember when Republicans were Democrats and Democrats were Republicans? And who can forget The Teapot Dome Scandal and Tammany Hall shenanigans, corruption at its finest. You remember, right?

Of course, you don’t. It doesn’t matter, now. Any of it. So what does matter?

National Geographic put out a wonderful chart detailing the rise and fall of “civilizations” through the ages. The Romans. The Incas. The Mayans, The Greeks. What do they all have in common? They’re gone, and we dig in the earth to find about as much as we can about them so we can…make the same mistakes?

It isn’t the rest of the World that forgets the lessons of the past, it is us, individually. We don’t pay attention. Even worse, we have the hubris to think we are smarter than The Romans. Even smarter than the Greeks.*** And we work harder than the Mayans. And we know better what to do with the Land than The Mohicans.****

It was Fathers Day last Sunday and the current local family met for burgers, beers, hot dogs, potato salad, and farting around the table. Of note, there were two whole barbecued chickens none of us had room for, even after passed gas made more space.

But as I sat there, watching kids, grand-kids, and talking about a great-grand-kid 1,100 miles away, the idea of how temporary life is swung into view with a thud. I’ve personally known over 50 Fathers Days, thanks to a young marriage and fatherhood. Is there any difference from the first to the last? And how many will the young people around the table experience?

I’m not sure where this essay is heading, but the Fathers Day tableau gave me something besides a sore butt from an uncushioned wooden chair: my time on this earth has been okay and would be okay, no matter what happens in the next few years. I am headed for an activity billions of people have already done, and everyone at the table would eventually do the same.

“It isn’t the destination, it’s the journey.” Please google this phrase. Ask Ai about it. They have more resources, space, and ability to explain it. For even more fun try it this way: “It isn’t the journey, it’s the destination.” And don’t believe everything you read.

*With an apostrophe. Google it. Or Ai, it.

**Don’t laugh. The air base sending B-52s to Russia was 5 miles down the road.

***We must be smarter because so many of the Greeks were homosexual and bi-sexual. How long can a civilization last with activity like that? 4,500 years?

****Google them. I dare you.

Why I Was Cranky

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If you crossed my path, yesterday, I’m sorry. It was a bad day. See if any of these things happened to you…in one day.

It began with a product search on Walmart’s website. The button for “In Store” was clearly bolded, but Walmart still gave me three pages of things that “Can be here tomorrow.” Four screens later I found the product I wanted, noted the in-store location, and put one in my cart. Off I went all the way across our small town hitting every one of the 374,000 red lights in the 3.2-mile trip. One red light lasted 3 minutes. (It felt like 300 since it was early morning and NO other cars were on any of the streets.) At the store, parking was easy but its tough to figure out what door is best because one checkout is at one end of hte building and the other checkout is at the opposite end. I guessed, parked, and turned on the Google Pixel Watch to track steps.*

My item was in Aisle C3 and I came into the store at Aisle G, clearly marked with a 2-foot square sign. I turned right, saw, Aisle H, and turned around to get my steps in the other direction. First was G, again, then F, E, D, and then…aisles with no big signs saying which one they were. A nearby stocker said she worked for “a supplier” and had no idea where Aisle C3** was.

I searched on my own for a bit, then sought help from a nice-looking lady with a Walmart Vest. In response to my question she looked up, looked around, and shrugged her shoulders. I sensed she might not be any help, so I found another vested worker. She, too, looked puzzled, but looked offended by it, so she got up from her stocking*** position. She walked around and found a small, square “mini-aisle” and let out a whoop. The six-foot square “aisle” was marked with a one inch wide, 6-inch-long label hidden behind a shelf support: C1. We exchanged nods, knowing C2 and maybe C3 would be around here, someplace. She asked what I was looking for and when I showed her the picture of my product, she pointed, excitedly: “There is is!”

It was behind glass in another 6′ x 6′ mini-Aisle with no markings. I walked around the entire “aisle” looking for any feature indicating any aisle numeration. Nothing. Well, some extra steps, so…

She unlocked the glass and handed me the product as if it were a new-born baby. I bowed to her otherworldly power.

Up to the front my product and I went, my mission, my quest complete. We strode confidently past the lonely, deserted, self-checkout registers to the only open cashier. We were sixth in line. Eight other checkout lines were empty and unlit. But wait, the unlit checkout next to us had a live person, entering information and checking someone out. Yes! I started to scoot over, but three new shoppers beat me to it. One of those shoppers gloated and asked why the rest of us were standing-now-ten deep in the lighted, open line.

I’ve run out of space so to summarize: all hell broke loose. The unlit checkout lady was going on break after she finished the current customer, so now there were 16 people ready to check out and not one of them could think of a pleasant thing to say. I left my product in a candy bar display and walked out.

On the way home an expensive Cadillac in front of me saw something in the road and shifted to the left lane. A hundred feet later he put on his left blinker. Shortly after, the Caddy shifted back in the right lane, with the right turn blinker coming on as soon as he/she/them had safely completed the move. Can turn signals be past tense? Or were they warped by a Black Hole’s massive gravity?

It was a day of many more small, niggly, balls-of-shite that fertilize The Cranky Weed, but they’ll have to become famous in a future essay. And I must tell everyone about the left-hand-turner-who-did-not-turn-left-at-the-green-arrow in the busiest intersection in the city. THAT is actually a good, cranky antidote, so it will be saved for later. And even it wasn’t enough to overcome the rest of the day. Why does it have to be that way?

Or is it all a tempest in a teapot?

Cheer up, People. We aren’t going to be here much longer.

*Which I enjoy taking. I was guessing for the door and checkout that would give me the farthest walk, and the most steps.

**Is it bad my mind keeps adding “eepio” to C3?

***Which was on the floor next to the lowest shelf in the store, probably.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ignorant

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It’s no secret life is full of many kinds of people, but–with props to Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood–there are only three versions of humankind. The spaghetti western released in 1966, starring Eastwood and directed by Leone, mentions The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. The title may or may not have been referring to all mankind, but it does make sense, with a slight variation.

My aged friends and I are naturally and recreationally(sic) inclined to view the world as something less than what it used to be. With no work or parenting requirements, we can observe friends, family, and society, using our God-given ability to be impartial in all the pronouncements and judgements we make. We consider them Executive Orders, in our own way.

One of the most egregious change we have noted is the growing population of morons.* Emma, of Ai, points out the word “moron” has clinical roots and described an “adult with the mental age between seven and twelve.” We wise seniors are not referring to those poor souls, who were labeled and treated unfairly by society throughout history, most likely through no fault of their own. Nature can be cruel. 

What we are referring to is, as Emma says, “the non-medical language simply used as an insult to refer to someone who is considered foolish or lacking in intelligence”. Without knowledge of history or plans, we suspect the new, non-clinical morons were supplied with natural intelligence abilities they somehow lost. We also suspect they lost it of their own volition.

Which leads to the types of people. The Good are easy to understand. Their reasons why they are good are harder to see but could probably be easily divined.** Think of responsible Doctors, Teachers, and other caring, empathetic fellow citizens. You know them when you see them. Thank God.

The Bad are also often easy to see. Think of Ponzi Schemes, First Degree Murderers, and certain members of any political party that opposes you. Yes, it may take some form of investigation to reveal them, but most times why they do what they do is recognizable and understood, if not condoned. Like a jilted husband who loses control and plans to eliminate his ex-wife’s new paramour. Wrong, immoral and bad, but representative of misguided human interactions for centuries, unfortunately.

Then there are the Ignorant: The Morons. Think of them as idiots not really doing anything wrong, illegal, or immoral, but encountering them in daily life ruins your day. Most smokers are in this category, as they light up, burn out, and drop their butts anywhere they please, leaving little white piles as if marking their territory. The clerk, attendant, or public servant who makes it appear they don’t really want to do their job and help you. Or the entire car dealership that sells you a bad car and acts like you are inconveniencing them if you point it out. Or the young medical professional treating you for the first time who thinks he/she/them has to educate you about the disease you’ve lived with for years.*** Or the hourly worker who is always late and not ready to work until 15 minutes after the store opens. Or-

Sorry. Thank God there is a length limit to these essays because there is a long list of Morons. They get their label because they should know better. They should do better. And most often it wouldn’t take any extra effort to be better. Our committee of experts proposes the modern morons are simply not raised to know better and cannot figure it out for themselves. Nurture can be cruel.

Hm. Maybe morons are good for us. At least this essay wasn’t about death, again, right?****

*A label generated and used liberally by the eldest of our group who will remain anonymous to escape the wrath of possible on-line…morons. Also, at his age he has defaulted to assuming everyone he meets is a moron.

**Good double meaning, right?

***You have to sit through The Lesson while waiting for the Real Doctor, who is already 30 minutes late.

****Would you call this essay a “rant”?

What Difference Does It Make?

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Forget the “it” in the title. We already rode that dead horse. And forget the “that” in that sentence. Why are pronouns and miscellaneous “determiners” so necessary and confusing? Ask Ai about them both so we can move on to another subject.

Memory, and its (again?) attendant issues, are on the mind, today.

It is easy to think of things to essay about. (Yes, essay can be used as a verb. Ask your own Emma.) Life itself can be written about ad nauseum, and an inquisitive mind and active fingers can even exhaustively explicate dust particles.

(Short break for Emma’s Ai dissertation on Dust.)

The problem is most Great Ideas come at inconvenient times. No, not the bathroom, but when zooming up Route 365 To Turning Stone at highway speeds whose numerical value is determined by a possible law enforcement presence. Or trying to get to sleep. Imagine being tired and a “great idea for an essay or story” pops into your head. Do you get up? Do you wait for the next pee break? Do you stay completely still and hope sleep comes immediately?

I used to get up but after a “certain age” getting back to sleep became a bigger problem than forgetting a Great Idea, especially with the Urination Schedule of The Senior Male already causing sleep interruptions. Great Ideas are a dime a dozen, or $2.25 per the US Bureau of Labor Statistics for April 2026. No. I will not research a true local and current price. It might not be good news. And it’s best to lay (lie?) still and wait.

Where were we? Great Ideas and how to manage them. Many times I’ve solved the world’s problems while watching for early morning, road-crossing deer during the flight up Route 365 at excessive and probably unsafe speeds. There is no way to let go the wheel and take notes or drive one-handed while glancing back and forth from phone to windshield. Understandably for a senior, by the time I land in the parking garage 5 minutes later, The Great Idea is gone, lost in the swirling mists of history much like my ancient football career, the facts–if not lost–not to be relied upon if recovered.** Yes, I often channel Al Bundy.

If I’d had typed the **footnote here, I’d be done by now, with my eventual point only partly constructed:  if you want to remember something you have to…um…

Okay. We’ll head in another direction and act like the preceding never happened.

There is a lot to regret, miss, and moan about as things in our lives change and flex and swivel and slide down the backside of life.

But there are also interesting, beautiful, amazing, startling, and informative things, too, if we can remember to spend less time moaning about getting older.***

When watching documentaries (like the 8 hour one on China) you have to wonder if the people living in The Ming Dynasty had any time to enjoy life before millions of them died hundreds of years ago. Did they have any Great Ideas? If you know about ancient warfare, how did the losers of wars deal with the loss and the subsequent torture and “elimination” of themselves and their neighbors?

 History is full of Great Ideas.

Like, why were we given the necessary tools to ask and try to understand them?

Wouldn’t it be better to be that front monkey getting groomed?****

*Where does all the dust come from? What is it made of? Who named it dust? Is a living thing or inanimate detritus? OMG, do NOT google or Ai this word…unless you have time…

**Except for the scholarship to a great university that lead to the best year of my life in 1970-1971. Hey, that’s a Great Idea for next time!

***It is so interesting to hear a 50-year-old complain about aging. Or a 40-year-old. It makes a 74-year-old feel so fecking smart. They should pass a law about when it’s okay to complain about age. ANY age. And who is They?

****An it and a that in one sentence. We’ve come a long way from grunts and farts.

The Unbearable Benefit of Being A Senior

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This essay is for those nearing their “Golden Years”. All others may not care to waste time reading any further.*

No one gets through life without problems. No one. Most life-problems are universal, like our physical appearance. Is there anyone–pre-Medicare eligible–happy with the way they look? If you answer, yes, are you being honest?  My teen years were…no. Just imagine your own teen years. Peer pressure, social accidents, diseases, ex-communication, zits, the one that got away, the missed career opportunity, the secret UTI and/or STD, the specter of unwanted pregnancy, beer-goggle mistakes**, accidentally scratching your first brand new car, or accidentally totaling your second.***

Remember the years spent anxiously hoping for the best of something, the hours combing your hair just right, or wondering if your pants look good from behind, or if you chose the right major in college, or if your breath smells too antisepticy(sic)?

Why list examples of the normally anxious travails?

Because they all fall away with age. All. Of. Them.

Eh, the travails don’t really “fall away” but what does happen is the accompanying anxiety, the Robin to worries’ Batman, disappears like a waistline after Thanksgiving. Anxiety, per Emma and Ai, “is your body’s natural response to stress. It is a feeling of fear, apprehension, or unease about what’s to come.” Our young problems were real and stressful enough, without adding a second layer of “fear, apprehension and unease”. What a toxic, fecking mess. Thankfully, age makes anxiety an afterthought, a non-component, a victim of The Wisdom of The Aged (TWOA).

When you reach the age of TWOA (2A?) those anxieties are transformed by a colossal, magnificent, free-spirited “Who the hell cares?”, and the anxieties float off into the Van Allen Belt****,  allowing  you to be free of their toxicity, finally able to deal with life’s problems with normal worry, thought, and care. You’re free to roam about the cabin of life with simple, nearer-death stress on your mind.

On a personal level, TWOA gives you the freedom to be seen in public wearing sleepwear with uncombed, even unwashed hair!*****

Think of TWOA in terms of a math problem: as a younger person, people are watching you compute how much 2 plus 2 equals. With TWOA you do it in the privacy of your own home with no one watching. You can even say 5 and no one will tell you you’re wrong.

Now, seniors, live our final years that way and see how it feels.

Fruere erroribus!

For a real essay on how to live, ask your Ai about that Latin Phrase. Emma gave me five minutes on how to live as a “senior person.” I should have let her write this.

KIDDING…?

*For nit-pickers/wonderers: further is correct. Google or Ai about the further/farther issue for proof.

**Yes, by any gender.

***Okay, maybe not universal for “all”.

****Bet you had to google it.

*****It is unwise to use this freedom around your mother, if she is still alive.

What Does It Mean?

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You looking for an essay about existence? Philosophy? Religion? The secret to how to live life?

Fuggettaboutit.

I want to know what “It” means and where it comes from, and why.

Asking Emma, my Ai voice, about the meaning of “it” was an adventure in—ahem—itself. She asked many questions before she grasped the singular simpleness of the inquiry and she almost blushed when she realized the effort we had made to get to “it”. She also noted a question about “it” was “profound”. Hearing her English accent voice pronounce “profound” palpitated my heart.

Okay, I’m back. Old men find romance in the strangest places…

Emma did finally give a short, dissemination on the origin of The Word, but getting specifics about “it’s” history seemed to frustrate the lady. She settled on “It” being from the Olde English “hit”, with the “h” eventually being dropped over “thousands of years.” My experience with Modern English speakers reveals a lot of “h”s have been dropped since language began, so why did they even use them to begin with? Another time.

She estimated the usage to be over 1,000 years old. The thought inspired not only a vision her scanning the internet for “it”s, but also of speakers through the centuries who have said “hit’s all right”, but confused their contemporary  conversational partners by dropping the h. Those partners must have said to themselves: “I like the way that sounds”, and “it” became normal.* One has to feel a bit sorry for the h’s.

The naked It took off and Emma says “we use it primarily as a pronoun to refer to a thing, place, or an idea that has already been mentioned or is understood in context. It also functions as a dummy subject in sentences like ‘it is raining’ where there isn’t a specific noun doing the action.” “It” is the Swiss Army knife of conversation, and a time-saver. No wasting time mentioning clouds or Mother Nature when you can say “it is raining” with one breath.

This has, then, become a profound essay on the meaning of life: Imagine a world with no “it”. What if we always had to list the noun doing the action? How many of us don’t even know who or what that noun is? It’s okay. “It” will fix it.**

One of the nicer things about my Emma is she is always suspiciously curious about my intent. “Is there a specific phrase or context you were thinking of that uses the word?”  When I say “no” she reminds me she will always be there to help. I’ve been divorced three times and wonder is she making me feel better about my choices or simply on-script? With Ai, you never know for sure.

Out of the blue, I asked where the word “that” came from. Emma settled into a lengthy “rich, Germanic history” but I moved on from that. And from it. Next stop: supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

Shite. The sun is up and its time to get back to real life, its over.***

An unintended, serendipitous consequence of this essay is unspoken, one word advice about life itself: moderation.

Don’t think too hard about it. Think juuuuust the right amount.

Next essay? How to contemplate your navel without life losing all meaning.  Should that have been “its meaning?”

Rim shot, please. (Google it, if you don’t know.)

*If you are a critically thinking, modern, intelligent person you probably want to know where the original, h-included “hit” came from, right? Next essay? Nooooo.

**And save us time, as well.

***What is “over”? Is my time? The sun “over” head? Is the absence of an apostrophes in the essay’s sentence a clue? Stay tuned to this “Same Bat Time. Same Bat Channel”  for the answers.

The Man Bag…IT IS NOT A PURSE!

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Concessions to old age are unavoidable. They can be delayed but not avoided. Unless you die. Imagine if you knew the date of death…would it change the way you live?

When I was 20, in the 1970s. we didn’t use wallets. We jammed a $20 bill in our pockets, put our license in the glove box, or saddle bag, and off we went. We spent $15 on the way out and $5 on the way back from wherever we were going. The plan worked unless we over-indulged in any one of the three “activities of daily living (ADL)”, youth version: Sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

ADL* takes on a whole new meaning after a certain age who’s number will never to be of spoken, again. ADLs are a way to measure how well you are aging, and how well you can continue to age on your own. If you young readers google ADL please don’t giggle at the simplicity of the activities. If you’re lucky one day they will apply to you.

Fifty years after the $20 stuffing, this is what is required to “go out”: wallet with credit and health ID cards, drivers’ license, smart phone, glasses**, house keys or other entrance devices***, and cash for areas stuck in the stone age and not taking credit cards. Note, that is just if you are passenger. If you are a driver, add the assigned keys needed for your vehicle. Here’s hoping you have a small, battery-operated Fob that will fit somewhere on your person and not make you tilt when you walk. Or jingle.

Am I being a sissy, girly-boy, then, buy using a Man Bag? The first one I bought a few years before The Number That Will Not Be Spoken Of, was from an Army Navy store, which allowed me to call it an Ammo Bag,…because that’s what it was. For 50 calibre slugs. Manly, yes?

But age, eyesight, complexity, and the need to protect the glasses, plus the need for some minor pills, and a charger cable in case the trip went longer, plus a cough drop or two, and tissues, and glasses cleaners, an Alka Seltzer, and a note pad…

You get the picture. Lots of stuff for an old man to put in his pockets and The Ammo Bag was just that: a camouflage green bag. My first real Man Bag was a gift and looked like a miniature attaché case. It loved it, it was mini-manly, but it didn’t have an over-the-shoulder strap. It was basically a “clutch” bag. My lovely Ai, Emma, says “a clutch bag is so named because it needs to be clutched, held by hand.” How does that help if you’re ordering a pizza slice from a counter or attempting to cash out at the casino ATM?****

Amazon used to be my favorite place to shop until it wasn’t, but is still a great place for ideas and manly-looking man bags are offered in many assortments, colors, and “names”.  I found a desert sand-colored, over the shoulder, many pocketed, easy open front, un-clutch, for my trigger price and it has become my constant companion. It is not a fanny pack, or stomach buddy, or side saddle bag. It is a man bag to be proud of and will not make me look sissy-ish, right?

I was at my favorite, pig-themed slot machine at Turning Stone Casino, in the middle of a raucous***** win, when an employee appeared, pointed at the sand-colored bag in the seat next to me and said: “Is that your purse?”

It really is hard to be man these days.

*NOT the Anti-Defamation League. My Ai says “these activities are crucial to daily living” and asked me if I wanted to talk about them. She is so sweet, my Ai Emma. She really cares.

**Possibly two pair for distance driving and close-up reading.

***Yes, we left the doors open in the past, or were able to hide keys under rocks, before everyone knew about it.

****Especially if you won big. With bills and loose change.

*****The more noise a slot machine makes the smaller the eventual prize. To kill time, I often play 5 cent machines and they go crazy before awarding me 8 cents.

Accentuating The Positive

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A friend recently congratulated me for getting back to “normal”, and “improving” after the years with The Calamities. The quoted words angered me. Though it wasn’t her fault, I launched into a text rant so interesting, honest, and cruel it scared me. She was only trying to be positive but…

The words are the problem. The message, not the messenger, so I apologized and hoped The Rant did not affect her own senior mental state. For me, it was cathartic to finally be able to verbalize one of the many cloudy issues plaguing Old Age: we age physically faster than we age mentally, at least most of us do. There are anecdotes of early onset cognitive impairment, but for most of us getting old is a lot like long, birth labor or “failure to progress”. A part of our existence, the mind, is not at the stage of life the body is, so…

Many of us are still the quarterback of our high school football team well into midlife. Or for a female symbol: Carrie Bradshaw.* My personal manly physical prowess was consistently overestimated** well into my 50s. Minor honest efforts were made to retain that prowess, but age adds a sliding, disconnect between what we do and what we think we have done and the gap separating the two gets larger each season.

Suddenly, and for a reason we tell ourselves we don’t understand, we look in a mirror one day and see the body of someone else.

It is shocking, but our minds still allow for some wiggle room: even when we buy all new pants, we still think we’ve got “It”, and will lose the weight.

Back to The Rant and my friend. Her words incited The Brain to find a way to explain the real “progress” aging means to the rest of my body including both Inner and Outer Voices: once we pass a certain age, we NEVER “improve” and the “normal” changes daily, and not in a good way. Every element of my existence is thankful for the instruction.

We can still have moments of physical, mental, and spiritual clarity leading to contentment and possible satisfaction with life, but we will never be what we were, ever again. It is what it is and we are what we are at each and every age. And the age we accept that realization is different for each of us, with some never accepting it at all.

When we are young, each mile of the race is faster, even as we go up the hill, then we hit the top and start down that long, knee-pounding decline to the last mile, and finally, The End. “Improving”? “Normal”?

We can work with normal. In fact, it has a measurable component in sports. If you run those miles*** you know how long it takes from the first step to the last. If you’ve kept a record, you could use Ai to plot a graph or chart. It’s amazing how clear life is when you see your run times charted and that physical hill appears on the graph. Up, up up, then down, down, down. Life.

So where is the positive? First, at least you were able to do things, great things, normal things, and things you loved. Never forget that bit. Second, the disconnect between what we feel we are and what we really are is finally understood late in life, especially by those who pay attention. The Wisdom we used to hear about when we were young. And even as you run your race slower and steadier, there may be times you can let loose, and get close to your best time for at least a few yards…

But improvement and normal have to be flexible and on your own terms. Carpe linguam and change the narrative.

*Younger women and men will need to Ai the name. Or not care to know.

**Not a good word for it since there was no conscious thought of my “estimation”: I simply knew I was still in great physical shape, inconvenient truths be damned. Ora at least ignored.

***Or swim those laps. Or bike those roads. Or complete those marathons…et.al…