I am sure this is not true for every senior citizen, but it seems to me that when people get old, some things in the world that everyone accepts almost without question begin to baffle them. They run to keep up, but can’t quite do it.
My Dad could take apart almost any farm machine you could find including a tractor and put it back together again. And yet, he never operated a “stereo” and was bewildered by the VCR.
And cars even got beyond him before he left this world in 1984. Things were a bit simpler with cars in his earlier days. One of the ones he owned needed painting so he bought some paint, grabbed a brush and painted it.
I’m still in the stage where I’m running to keep up but I can already feel myself falling behind. And among the things that remind that the future belongs to the next generation are drones. A woman was sunbathing topless on the balcony of her apartment last week when a drone hovered above her, probably shooting pictures and video. And a police force in the United States has been given the go-ahead to outfit its drones with tasers and guns.
Meanwhile a Canadian company has taken out a patent on its sky elevator, a free-standing pneumatic (think bicycle tire) tube that will stretch at least 20 kilometres into the sky and get tourists and astronauts close to outer space.
I doubt I will ever “pilot” a drone and I know I won’t be riding any elevators into space. I might, however, be able to sunbathe topless. If you need to photograph that from the sky, make sure your camera has a wide angle lens.
Borrowing a phrase from a popular ’70s TV sci-fi series, people often say “beam me up Scotty” to indicate the world is getting too complicated for them and they’re ready to go to the next dimension. Now, they might actually be able to achieve their dream if they simply buy a ticket on the sky elevator.
When I go out in the woods, there are a few things I want to see. Let me correct that: a few things I DEMAND to see.
There have to be trees, at the minimum. What is a freakin’ bush without trees? And I expect there to be lots of amazing birds in those trees. And they’d better be chirping their beaks off.
I also want to see snakes in the undergrowth, as well as chipmunks and squirrels. And I think my time has been wasted if I haven’t been able to take a selfie with a fox, a coyote or a wolf. Maybe even a mountain lion.
But I am guaranteed to lose my gosh darn mind if I go for a stroll in a forest and don’t encounter a bear. A grizzly bear to be precise. Just one goddam grizzly bear is all I expect. More than one if they’re handy, but there better at least be one available for viewing.
To walk through a bush and not run into bears is like going golfing after the season has ended and finding there are no pins in the holes on any of the greens.
I could write down a list of big problems in the world but you and I both know what they are. Maybe you haven’t spent much time thinking about it, but bear-free bushes belong on that list. In fact, I am going to guess that you don’t give a hoot about it but your lack of concern should not diminish my anxiety surrounding this issue.
However, there is at least one person in this world who is of like mind and I hope one day to meet that enlightened soul. This week a tourist left some feedback for Yellowstone lodge workers after encountering zero bears during a pricey visit to the U.S. park.
“Please train your bears to be where guests can see them,” read a note shared by a Reddit user on Wednesday. “This was an expensive trip to not get to see bears.”
Finally, someone has had the courage to come out and say it. And to agree with my point of view. After seeing that note, I will bet that there is nothing those Yellowstone lodge workers want more than to have that tourist encounter a few grizzlies on his or her next visit. Maybe they might suggest the tourist forward some of their clothing to the park so the workers can introduce the bears to their scent so their next visit will be more fulfilling. Or at least filling (for the bears).
I wonder if this was the same tourist who wrote to a municipality (true story) complaining that wildlife such as moose and deer were wandering across highways wherever they felt like crossing and not at the sections of the roads where signs showing wildlife crossing points had been erected.
In that case, I think it’s the stupid darned animals that are to be blamed. I think they know right from wrong but just ignore the signs on purpose.
I hope my tourist friend above, when they’re done associating with the grizzlies in Yellowstone, get to meet some good old Canadian moose. Maybe they don’t obey all the signs but goddam it, they’re friendly.
Today is the 28th day of August. On the 28th day of July, I sent a friend a text message. A friendly message, just the kind a friend could be expected to send to a friend.
In the month that has passed since I sent that text, there has been no reply.
Nothing.
Now, I am sure that many of you who are reading this have experienced a similar occurrence and I will guess, some of you might not have known how to handle it. Rest easy. I have had experience with events such as this and have learned how to handle them.
So here we go.
Step 1
The first thing that a person should do in a situation such as this, is to begin the process of jumping to conclusions. This is very helpful. So, when a few hours pass or maybe a whole day and there is no reply, these are the words that are very important to say to yourself.
“She hates me.”
Step 2
This involves examining in detail your relationship with this friend, to see if you really screwed up somehow. It would not surprise you to conclude that you probably did something wrong to earn this month-long cold shoulder. If you are kind of a blabby sort of person some days, did you say some unflattering things about your friend which have since gotten back to her? This is a worthwhile avenue to stroll down for a few days. Try to recall every word you spoke to anyone in the past 30 days. If all that figuring does not produce an answer, you are ready to move on.
Step 3
Did I borrow money from my friend and not pay it back? That theory doesn’t work for me as, at 73, no one I know will lend me any money any more as I never get around to repaying the loan.
Step 4
Cycle back to Step 1 and try once more to figure out what you might have done to make your friend hate you so much as to end all communication. You’re a sensitive type and you hate being hated. In fact, your life’s goal has been to be loved by everyone you know and all those you don’t know.
Step 5
Your phone rings.
“Hi Jim. Sorry I missed your text but I lost my phone.”
I sat in my car yesterday in front of a fast food burger joint. It wasn’t busy but a couple of cars went through the drivethrough and a few people walked in and out of the place.
I thought this was odd as the place closed – permanently – a few months ago. I had been spreading that word to people I met and was more sure of that fact than I am the spelling of my own name.
My neighbour is a regular local news fiend and as he is always out and about and has a real lust for the latest information about our town, he always has lots to tell me after his regular coffee sessions with his buddies. As for me, I am always in and within and have …
Nothing.
He is like that person who sends you a Christmas card every year even though you never send one back.
But I try. I offer this bit of news and that bit of gossip (although hermits never have news of any kind or not the least bit of gossip) and unfortunately, my breaking stories are very rarely true.
“I don’t think that’s right,” my neighbour will say, his face covered in skepticism. “I’ve never heard that.” And if he hasn’t heard that in all his travels, the chance that your little bit of startling info might be true are very slim.
But this time I was definitely right and I proclaimed my information with all the confidence of Moses reading the Commandments.
“So CowNow is all closed up, eh,” I said one day this week. “It has been for months. They couldn’t get enough staff.”
“Really?” said my Regular Informant. “I never heard that.”
“Oh ya,” I said. “The business logo is gone from the main marquee and everything. It’s too bad.”
“Who did you hear that from?” asked the ever nosy neighbourhood reporter.
“Ah, I can’t remember,” I replied. “But it was someone who is almost always right.”
“Hmmm,” was all my neighbour had left to say about that.
So yesterday, there I sat in my car watching hungry citizens of my town make good use of the closed and boarded up CowNow. It was like discovering that William Shakespeare is alive and well and still writing plays.
I’ll be seeing my neighour this week at which time I will have a heapin’ helpin’ serving of humble pie.
I hate that stuff. Seems like I’m always chowing down on it.
My doctor wants me to quit drinking coffee. To be more precise, it isn’t the coffee that bothers him but the cream and sugar I put in the two cups I get at McDonald’s every day. He has dedicated himself to keeping me out of Avondale Cemetery for as long as possible and I am in no rush to go there myself, but we differ on our approaches to putting off the inevitable.
“Could you drink it without the cream and sugar?” he asked me during a recent visit.
“No,” was my answer after I carefully considered the prospect for 2.2 seconds.
Coffee without cream and sugar. Hmmm. May as well eat my breakfast cereal straight out of the box and forget the milk. Or bread right out of the bag, skip the margarine. Or the popsicles I ingest during heat waves. I’ll just scrape all that frozen flavoured water into the sink and lick the stick. Yum!
My doctor and I seem to agree, when we get together, that I need to do a better job of looking after my health. However, he appears mostly concerned with improving my physical well-being while I am practically obsessed with maintaining my mental health.
And here is what I get for the $1.35 I spend a day for a senior’s coffee at Mickey Dees. I go through the drivethrough each morning and joke with the servers at the windows. They all know me now and tolerate my ridiculous attempts at humour. But we have a brief connection and I like it.
Coffee in the holder, I then go sit in my car under one of the many shade trees in the restaurant parking lot and read on my phone all about the maniac American president.
In the afternoon, I take my empty cup back for a free refill but am forced to actually enter the restaurant to get it. No refills at the drivethrough. So I have gotten to know the inside staff as well.
“You’re working a lot of hours,” I said to one young woman behind the counter yesterday.
“Yes, I am here till 11 tonight,” she answered.
“Wow. Look at all the money you’re making,” I replied.
She smiled.
“Have a nice day,” she said.
Then just today, when I went for my second cup, the owner of McDonald’s, whom I have known for years, saw me come in and get into an unusually long lineup. She came right over.
“Just a refill?” she asked, and she took my cup over to the coffee maker.
“It’s great to have friends in high places,” I said to her when she returned with my coffee.
She smiled.
When I was still employed in my career, I had encounters with people all day long – fellow workers and the general public. But retired, I spend a lot of time alone. I don’t mind that but chatting up the McDonald’s staff a couple times a day is a big help.
I could save myself almost $500 a year on my coffee runs (not to mention the gas for my car) by making my own at home. But over the last almost 30 years now, we have had every style and brand of home coffee machine and I believe in all that time I have had the sum total of about a cup and half for all that investment. And that was about one cup too many. Other family members rely on the coffee makers and love what they produce but they all have jobs and are around people all the time.
When I left the doctor’s office the last time, I went up to the reception station and said to the several women busily working there, “The doctor says he has never seen such a perfect human specimen.” They laughed and one of them said, “You must get sick of your wife telling you how perfect you are.” I confirmed her assessment.
So, God bless my doctor. He is definitely on my side and I like him. But getting me to give up my coffees will be about as successful as I have been at getting my dog to quit barking at the poodle across the street.
When Avondale calls, that is one appointment I don’t expect to miss. And on my stone I want engraved: “Finally Quit Coffee!”
Many years ago, I started writing little stories which were published in newspapers I worked for. I didn’t get much reaction to them from readers until one day a friend told me I have a great sense of humour and I should inject that into my writing. I did as he said and suddenly, I started hearing from readers.
I write a lot and some of what I write is lame, some is funny and some is very funny. I post most of it on Facebook, where I have a small following. But I might have to close up shop for the physical safety of my readers. They leave me little notes and describe what happens to them when they read my stuff. It is shocking.
For some reason, some of my women readers end up “rolling on the floor” laughing. I don’t mind if they roll on the floor, but I worry they might roll through an open door to the basement and go flying down the steps or bump into the stove and spill a pot of hot spaghetti on themselves.
Other people tell me they “laughed my ass off” at something I wrote. I don’t even want to picture that and I can’t begin to imagine how that would even be possible to laugh your ass off.
Others tell me they “laughed my head off” and this is similarly disturbing. But a compliment, in a way. How hard would a reader have to laugh to have his head fly off his shoulders?
Then there are a few people who “almost wet myself” and I am going to suggest they are holding back. Some of them actually did the deed and it might be necessary for me to post a warning to folks that they should don a set of adult diapers before they read one of my pieces.
Also disturbing are those who laugh so hard their coffee shoots out their nose. I imagine some pretty messed up computer screens and hope I am never held responsible for repairs.
But what I don’t like to hear is that “I laughed so hard, I cried.” I have never wanted anyone to start crying after they read a story of mine and I am sorry if it is happening.
The worst-case scenario, however, are the ones who say they “laughed so hard I almost died.” Now this is where I draw the line. If readers are going to start dying because of words I write, then I will have to give it up.
So far, I hear from readers who “almost died” but somewhere there might actually be someone whose coffee flew through his nose, he fell down and rolled on the floor, his ass fell off, then his head disappeared and at that point, he died.
I guess there are worse ways to go than to die laughing and maybe it will never come to that at all because laughter is supposed to be the best medicine.
I really hope that is true because then I could start charging dispensing fees.
I watched the kids dive into the water off the dock for almost an hour. And the big black old shepherd-border collie cross had a great time jumping in after them. Koda (short for Killer Old Dog Attack) loves the water, especially the splash created by the swimmers. From my vantage point, it appeared as though the dog was jumping beside the divers when they left the dock.
So eventually, I thought I’d invite Koda to jump in beside me. I called him over and jumped in. As the water closed over my head, so did something else: a 70-pound dog. Bingo! Right on my wet noggin landed pooch and almost immediately I felt the pain.
But something funny happened as I stumbled my way out of the water. Koda was busy watching the other swimmers but when he saw me leaving the lake he came over for a few seconds to check me out. It was as though he wanted to make sure I was okay.
The nine-hour trip home from our friends’ cottage was a long one as I felt every bump and swerve in the road. I had a mild case of whiplash following a car accident years ago; this is what this felt like.
Today, however, neck and feelings are on the mend. Nevertheless, I am considering a lawsuit against the dog but my family says it was all my fault. Koda wasn’t jumping in beside the divers but right on them. The only reason they got away unharmed was they were diving in and swimming away quickly and not jumping in and staying in one place. I disagree and will say so in my affidavit.
My bucket list isn’t a long and complicated one. A couple of entries involve Sandra Bullock, a Rolls Royce and a credit card with no limit. But nowhere on there is having my head jumped on by a dog in a lake.
I take seven pills a day for various doctor-detected ailments.
One pill is to control my handsomosity as extreme good looks can be dangerous even on an innocent stroll through the mall. I often emerge from my favourite household goods store with my face covered in lipstick, liberally applied by amorous women
Another keeps my geniosity under control. This is necessary to keep my ability to outsmart people, even myself, in check.
A third pill tempers my virtuosity as I am too good to be believed. I’m a Ten Commandments commander.
A fourth pill manages my inventivosity. The others curtail my intelligensity, my profitablosity and my bullshitosity. That last pill, I’m afraid, is not working very well lately.
I need a new pill to counter the effects of my over medicating family physician. That’s right. I am suffering from a very bad case of doctorosity.
I am not talking about political news though that does tend to send me around the bend. Instead, the stories that are doing me in are the ones about people who find incredible things hidden in their homes. Being ever in search of riches beyond imagining as I am well aware that money most certainly can buy happiness, I have practically torn our little blue shack apart, board by board, drywall sheet by ceramic tile, to find something, anything, that would fill up my bank account.
One couple, for example, found a 50-year-old safe hidden in their kitchen wall. What was inside? $51,080, mostly in $100 notes.
A California couple spotted a strange area underneath their bathroom vanity. After pushing on the space, they found tons of pieces of vintage jewelry from Mexico.
An unsigned Van Gogh painting was surprisingly found in the attic of a Norwegian home. I did crawl up in our attic and found some finger paint sketches our kids did in kindergarten and while they are treasures for their parents, they are no Van Goghs.
Construction workers found $500,000 in cash underneath a house and that set off an ugly dispute over who should get the money: Them or the owners of the home. If that happened to me, I would give each of the workers $10 and send them on their way.
An old Action Comics book was found after a wall was demolished in a family’s home. It sold at auction for $175,000.
A Utah man found $45,000 in his house and then he tracked down the rightful owner and returned it. I would, of course, have given the rightful owner $10, maybe 20.
In one home, a figurine of a former Russian czar was found and then auctioned for five million dollars. The best I can do are some figurines of long-retired hockey players but not even the hockey players want them.
One couple found some archaeological treasures buried under their house and the treasures were over 2,000 years old. So far, all I’ve found in our basement is a spider’s nest, and it isn’t that old, and spiders generally sell for a dime a dozen, if you can sell them at all.
It just goes on and on. In a secret room of one person’s home, a box with ammunition, a defused grenade, and thousands of pennies were found.
Another homeowner found an entire servants’ kitchen in the basement of a property that had been in their family for years. I can kind of relate to that. I moved into our house when I was still single and not being a cook, two years went by before I discovered the house had a kitchen.
One couple found a medieval well underneath the floor of their living room. An old briefcase was unearthed inside someone else’s house. It contained money from all over the world, silver, and other treasures. One family discovered an ancient chapel space under their home.
But I think I might just slow down on ripping our house apart after reading that homeowners found thousands of snakes living in the walls of their Idaho house.
Either that, or I will cancel my plans to move to Idaho.
