Blog #180

 

In 1960, John Kennedy and Richard Nixon were both in their 40s, two Young White Men vying for the Presidency of the United States.  Now, sixty years later, it’s another election year and who are the candidates?  Two Old White Men in their 70s.  It doesn’t seem like our country has made progress; it just seems like it has grown old.

So let’s talk about old people.  I seem to do that a lot, but giraffes have giraffes, apples grow on apple trees and old people talk about old people.  For instance, I’m sure you have noticed that old folks, to a large degree, are slow drivers, and I want to explain to you why we are.  It’s not that our eyes are blurred or our reflexes are poor.  No, the real reason we drive slowly is that we are no longer in a hurry.  Where do we have to go, Senior Day at Walgreens?  It can wait.  When you’re young you want everything to come fast.

        ·        I can’t wait to get a driver’s license

·        I can’t wait till I get rich.

·        I can’t wait till my kids are grown and I have some time to myself.

·        Just ten more years and I’ll have it made.

 

I have never heard a senior say, “Just ten more years and I’ll have it made.”  We can wait.  We have nothing else to do but wait.  Besides, what could I possibly be looking forward to in ten years – Caitlyn becoming Bruce again?  Barbra Streisand’s 88^th Farewell Concert?  What difference does it really make if I miss that green light?  I’ll just get to the Dollar Store thirty seconds later.  So don’t honk at me.  Relax, slow down, take a breath.  One of these days you won’t be in such a hurry any more.

Hi there and welcome back.  I trust you are feeling chipper today and fighting the boredom of a world devoid of most common social activities.  No movies, no sporting events, no dining out, no poker games.  But there are still fun things to do, like going to Costco to get a jar of mixed nuts which weighs 40 pounds and costs more than filling up your car with gas.

 

Actually, we are getting movies back.  AMC Theaters are opening today and charging only 15¢ for a ticket.  Of course, the popcorn costs more than the mixed nuts at Costco, but still, it’s a sign that maybe something normal is happening.  The theaters in my neighborhood are opening with a Bris Festival which includes movies about the Jewish circumcision ceremony.  A strange choice to me, but the titles sound intriguing.  First is the Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan classic You’ve Got Mohel followed by Billy Crystal and Robert De Niro in Circumcise This.  The festival ends with a new Star Wars spin-off called May the Foreskin Be With You.

 

I have often told you that I am technologically challenged, but I have recently discovered a quote by Elbert Hubbard which gives me some spirit:  One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.  So there.  Maybe in my next life, I’ll come back as somebody technically ept.  Is that a word?  Isn’t it the opposite of inept?  Who would you be in your next life if you had a choice?  A beautiful movie star?  A sensational athlete?  Pee-wee Herman?  To me, it’s an easy choice.

 

Reincarnation?  Well, gee

It’s obvious who I would be

For my second life

I’d come back as my wife

Then I could be married to me.

 

Trump and I have the same humility coach.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  I have heard, but not believed, the spirits o’ the dead may walk again (Winter’s Tale).  They say that cats have nine lives, so I’m coming back more times than acid indigestion.  Or Barbra Streisand.  I think next time I’ll come back as a black cat.  I hear that black cats matter.

 

All right, let’s see where your peripatetic reporter wants to go now.  Peripatetic, our Weekly Word, means constantly moving around from place to place or, in my case, from subject to subject.  So let’s go straight to NASA which announced last week it would begin reviewing and, where necessary, changing the names of astronomical bodies that are deemed racially insensitive.   Ok, People, they’ve torn down our statues, changed the names of football teams, military facilities, government buildings and pancake syrup, and now they’re coming after our planets.  And, of course, in today’s jabberwocky world every planet is offensive.

 

Mercury is a poison that corporations dump into the ocean to poison our fish.

Venus rhymes with penis which is gender-specific and sexist.

Mars is named after the God of War.  We should never talk of war – or God.

Jupiter is the King of the Gods and that reeks of royalty and colonialism.

Saturn has rings and rings are where boxing occurs and boxing is violent.

Uranus – I mean, are you serious?

Neptune is the God of the Sea and the seas are polluted with mercury and plastic.

Pluto is a planet only to old people who don’t matter anymore anyway.

 

You might as well start learning the new planetary names now.  Here they are:  Happy, Sleepy, Dopey, Doc, Grumpy, Bashful, Sneezy – and Earth.

 

Here’s another new subject, and I just know I’m going to get in big trouble here, but what the Hell!  What can they do to me, make me watch The View?  I want to know why more and more girls and women have what were traditionally boys’ names.  I have a granddaughter Charley.  And her girlfriends are Ronnie, Sam, Jo, Madison, Morgan,  Sydney and others.  But there are no boys named Phyllis.  Moby Dick does not begin Call Me Edith.

 

And women yearn to wear what traditionally were men’s clothing -- jeans, cowboy hats, boots, vests.  But I have never thought about wearing an off-the-shoulder gown.  Well, there was that one time in Phoenix, but . . . never mind.  I’d better go now before my wife cuts my clothing allowance.  But I’ll be back in a week.  Can you wait that long?  Until then, stay well and count your blessings. 

 

Edith                              Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com