Pet Cemetery

I had a few hamsters as a kid. The problem with them is that they have pretty short life spans and you get tired of replacing them after a while. As you become an older kid, the furballs eventually become boring too. Just what can you do with a hamster? (and knock off the homo jokes please!)

Here's what I found out what hamsters can do.

Do They Swim? Yes, they can!

After letting mine roam the carpets, the book cases and tables, I became curious as to whether they can swim as they are naturally a desert animal. I filled up the bathroom sink with tepid water and placed my tan furry friend on the flat portion of the sink and watched him turn the other way in fear. I had to redirect him back to the water as he sought escape. I then motivated him (with a slight push) right over the edge into the water.

Hamsters can swim easily! They have a trick I thought neat when I saw it occur.

Hamsters are hoarders. That's their job. They have pouches on the insides of their mouths where they'll stuff seeds, grasses and whatever food they can find while scampering around to later store in their burrows. When I slid my hamster into the water, I could hear him suck air into his mouth. He filled his cheek pouches with air and inflated them like little balloons. Once he was done filling his cheeks up, he stopped dog paddling and floated like a pontoon raft. Quite contentedly too. That was good for about twenty minutes of kid fun.

Hamsters are race car drivers too. But in my house they drove slick soled slippers. I'd plop one of them into one of my slippers and send him (to his perspective, at 110mph) by pushing the slipper very fast and see him “drive” across the living room carpet. This was good for about another twenty minutes too. By the way, hamsters can get dizzy. Once the slipper came to a stop, mine would get out and walk haphazardly.

I'd let mine out of his cage during the summer months and let him prowl the backyard lawn. I made an interesting discovery about nature doing this. I kept close to him because they will take off on you. I was standing over him and for some reason, by luck, I had moved my arm which caused a shadow to move over him and he did something remarkable, he crouched and balled up. It then hit me. He was trying to not to become prey. He had an automatic reaction to the supposed “hawk” shadow that glided over him.

So, you guessed it, I had my hamster avoiding the 300 hawks that kept flying above him, casting their menacing shadows on him. He'd run, ball up, run some more, ball up again. So many damned hawks!

*****

I haven't had a hamster in over 40 years. What was weird was that around 2002, I had come across my first hamster by accident.

When my first hamster died, my mother and I had a little funeral for him. I found a small box for the casket and found a grave marker, an old brick on which I painted his name and dates. I had buried him in the center of our backyard as that was probably where I wasn't going to be digging up with my Tonka trucks. The play areas that were dirt were the corners of the yard. So, I buried him and then actually buried the brick on top of his sarcophagus as my Dad said he didn't want to run over the brick with his lawnmower. For about 30 years he lay there, resting in peace.

I'm not lover of lawns and my job to keep it pretty is just to cut it when it starts to annoy me at how long it is. But back in 2002, a good part of my backyard lawn had died off. God knows why? Grubs? Mold? Either way, it was dead and I now owned a large dirt patch.

So, being a good homeowner, I turned over the dirt and reseeded it. I was using a digging fork which is great on sod and dirt. I had shoved the fork many times into the dirt when it once made a loud sounding TINK.

“Huh? What the hell did I hit? What's under the ground.” I thought.

So I shoved the fork deeper, to the side of whatever I hit, and leaned on it like lever to discover a buried brick.

It hadn't hit me yet just why it was there. Till I saw and read the faded paint on it...Holy Shit!

“Claude Bartholomew Hamster” was painted on the brick.

“Oh.My.God.” I thought to myself. I had forgotten all about this. I was nine years old when I buried this thing. I was so surprised I had to bring my brother outside to show him this.

“Dig a little deeper...I wonder what else might be down there.” He says.

I dig, but all I come across a few pieces of rotted wood and that's it. I guess Claude was recycled back into nature 100%. The best guess, he was recycled into my lawn.

I don't know where the other hamsters are buried. I had three of them.

 

*****

 

I came across this and found it in bad taste, but I love dark humor too.  This college girl had her own funeral for her hamster and uploaded it.

 

 

"Squib Mesocricetus Auratus passed away Monday, December 17 of causes incident to age (ie NATURAL causes). Abandoned at a young age, she was adopted from the Meijer Pet Store orphanage in January 2006. Acutely aware of her fortunate situation after living in such squalor, she vowed to champion the cause of homeless hamsters everywhere. This never happened, but it was nice of her to care.

Squib was a tolerant, docile beast with a keen mind as hamsters go and a strong love of stunning acrobatics. Her beady little black eyes would light up at the sight of her bungee-jumping harness.

Other favorite activities included chewing on things, running around the cage, sleeping, and the occasional escape. Her one regret in life was that Ellen never petted her.

Squib was preceded in death by the predecessor hamster Jerome (thanks Carmen). A viewing will be held Tuesday, December 18 at 7:00, followed by a short but moving funeral. Internment will be behind Laura's condo.

In lieu of flowers, Squib requested that cash donations be made to help alleviate the exorbitant costs of burial and the poor fuel economy of Jaclyn's Jeep.

Nothing Amazing, Just a Tuesday...

Conformity? To hell with that!

As you get older you attain some balls finally. You can ditch that fearful need to conform and bray your opinions without fear that you may be...oh Jesus...judged! Ah, I didn't say anything that shocking like, “Let's Kill All the Bankers” but I was opining on music with my friend tonight, rather loudly.

There's a nice little pub in Mansfield called Casey O'Connors and I can feel at home in there. Why? Because the place is stuffed with other prematurely white-haired Irish guys who are bandy legged as well. I go there on my bi-monthly visit to M. to see how he's doing. Our conversations run the gamut while I drink my pisswater Budweiser and he drinks his God awful bitter IPA beers. Tonight the subject was music.

I think we blew a good two hours on the topic. Actually, it was due to his loaning me his book that got me thinking about how music has changed and that the “Kids of today listen to shit.” “Where's the harmonies? Where's the layering? Why are there no great lead guitars anymore?” I went on and on.

There came a point when, I was braying about the fact that there's no longer any real movements in music anymore, I was poking my finger into the bar to make the point. As I was doing this, it made an audible “click, click click” sound as my sort of long fingernail tapped out my disgust.

The bartender comes over with, “Is there a problem?” I say, “Yeah, today's music sucks! When was the last time you heard a band grow and evolve their music? I swear the last great ones were before 1990!”

The bartender then realizes I wasn't pissed off at M. but bitching to hammer down my argument.

Next to us, some 20 somethings just looked away real quick when I shot a look at them.

Wind me up and let me go...

Besides that I heard some nice stories about how a plow team nearly brained a Director of a trauma center up somewhere in Massachusetts with a piece of pipe. During that blizzard we had in early February the team had done 40 hours straight and wanted to crash in the hospital lounge area. The Director said no. The team leader said yes. And you see where that was going to end up. Even guys with plows have tempers that'll blow after you pull a 40 hour shift.

Tomorrow I have to get up on the roof and fix that damned antenna I've left hanging since that blizzard. I also ought to fix the gate that got ripped off it's hinges during the same storm. I'm not too keen on climbing a 45 degree angle roof. It's a great way to excite the fear of heights in me. Odd, as a younger guy, I could tap dance all over that roof. I guess the fear of falling knowing I'll land on my face sort of makes me cautious now. Hell....I'm cautious about everything now.

Luke's

Peer to peer file sharing is great. I can nearly find every song that I've ever heard and ones I've forgotten all about. What the internet doesn't do is give the the experience of pawing through stacks of vinyl records. True, the songs I can get off the internet are scott free and can rip them onto cds or mp3 players to play them pretty much anywhere. You can't with vinyl.

I've always been upgrading my little stereo system ever since I had my first “real” job to pay for this hobby. The last turntable I owned was a Realistic player that you could adjust the rpm's via an LED strobe. When I bought it, I thought I had the cutting edge of technology. $49.99 spent on a piece of equipment in 1984 was proof, to me at least.

I didn't get into purchasing vinyl in numbers till I was about twenty. Prior to that, I relied on my brother to bring home the newer editions or if I bought any, it was because I had to have it or it was for a gift. Albums were costly to me in my teens as I had little money and crappy part time jobs. I had to be judicious. I can remember buying my brother Zappa's Joe's Garage double album for Christmas. I had to save up $18.00 and that was a huge hit to my meager budget when I was 15.

Today, if I cared to, I can have the entire Grateful Dead discography, studio, live and bootleg recordings for $0.00 (Thanks Internet!).

One of the better places for records was a place called Luke's Record Exchange. It was great because the costs on second hand records were minimal and they weren't scratched to hell. The lower prices made it possible to buy more and different artists.

My first one I bought was Neil Young's “Everybody Knows this is Nowhere.” I had pawed through the stacks, trying to decide on something and I wanted as an addition that I never heard of before. The mottled picture of Neil leaning against a tree and song titles proved to be interesting.

When I went to the counter to pay for it. I saw this guy who dressed like and acted like, Boy George.

“Ah, this is a great album” he said to me.

“Yeah, I hope I like it. I like Young's stuff but never heard of this one before.” I replied.

As the transaction took place, a younger girl came to the counter and said; “Luke, Do you want anything from D&D? I'm going to get something.”

“This is Luke?” I thought. With all that hair dye, earrings and feathers weaved into his hair? I guess so.

The funny thing was, as the popular music changed and morphed, as the newer genres came, Luke would at times, dress like it. There was another time I saw him as an 80's hair band look-alike rocker.

Luke's is gone but it was great while it lasted.

“Never judge a book by it's cover,” they say. I guess so.

I was watching this younger kid, about 22, scribble diligently on graph paper mathematical formulas. I didn't recognize half of the symbols he wrote down. He had his nose down and didn't look up until he was done. It was a good twenty minutes of focused ciphering.

He reminded me of one of those blue indians in Avatar. No, he wasn't “blue” but he had a similar hair style and he was painfully thin. A malnourished goth with pale, milky skin. He was equipped with a pinched looking face and a wardrobe that said “goofy urban guerrilla.”

“Weirdo.” I thought to myself. Yeah, I, like you, am judgmental.

Being curious...and nosy as other people's business is definitely my business too, I had to ask him what he was working on.

“Uh...I'm writing code for a game I'm designing. I'm using Perl 5.16 language this time. I' m trying to condense the syntax so it flows and can execute as it's fastest rate.”

I immediately think, “Ok, this kid is bullshitting me."  If he was honest, I'd quickly dismiss these efforts at “gaming” as another geek fantasy.

Back to scribbling he goes as I'm not interesting enough for him.

A short time later we're outside and I ask him what he does for a living. He answers “I code for a biotech company out of Boston.” I then start to reevaluate this kid as I get more and more specific information.

“I used to work for JP Morgan, but I quit as they were a bunch of assholes. Never work for bankers!” he advises me. “These corps want the best people, but NEVER want to pay for them.”

I hear “JP Morgan” and I have to ask, “Did you code for high frequency trading?”

“Yep, I did some of their algorithms. The ones I saw a lot were badly written, so I had to condense a lot of them."  

I'm looking at this skinny morose looking kid and can't attach him to JP Morgan and Wall St. I have to give up my stereotypes and inaccurate judgments, once again.

*****

I've just started reading Neil Young's “Waging Heavy Peace.” It's autobiographical and it's full of his experiences as the 60's era bloomed around him. It's a nice bird's eye view of that time from his perch.

I'm not to far into it yet but what is great about reading is that you can at times, relate.

He tells of his early days touring unknown local joints around Canada. The towns he plays are those you've never heard of, neither have I. If you think there's nothing in the prairie lands of Nebraska, you haven't seen “out there” till you've been to the Canadian prairies. The word isolation doesn't do justice to the feeling of isolation you get standing in the frozen nowhere,  60 miles outside of Regina.

Anyway...

He speaks of something I know full well. Envy. He tells of running across other musicians who are touring, trying to make it out there in the barrens of Canada. He came across Don McClean (American Pie) and he thought:

“These were the early days that left such a mark on me. I was always fascinated and impressed by these groups and artists. I was so envious of them for being from the States and on the road.”

Some of the groups he came across were further ahead of him. In comparison, he knew instinctively that he had further to grow as a musician. He wanted to be where they were.

I was never a musician. I tried. I sucked at it. I never had the patience nor the coordination to stick with it long enough to enjoy the fun that would eventually come of it. So, my envy was borne from seeing friends and others grow in leaps and bounds in regular life.

One summer, while I was 15, I never did see much of my new schoolmates at St Rays. We just didn't live close enough to one another. So I ended up sticking around my usual local neighborhood friends. When I returned to school in September, as a junior, I was floored to realized the three people I knew from last year had received their driver's licenses.

I didn't have one. It never crossed my mind to attain one during the summer vacation.

I was seized by jealousy. I felt I was 1,000 miles behind these guys. By the time I got home after school, I was bugging my brother to teach me to drive and filed away for the paperwork at RI DMV.

Within three months I could proudly show my license.

It is a big deal, for 16 year old guys anyway. It's a mile marker. I had to have it once I found out some of my peers were advancing ahead of me.

There was the time when some of guys actually started having real girlfriends. Not the hit or miss variety but long term. I'd watch a couple, lost in their own world, having this unspoken conversation with one another via touch and looks and it was new to me. I had no way to translate what was being “said.” Though I knew of it somehow, understood it enough to know I wanted that too.

I then became motivated to get that as well. I had to learn the ropes to get there and the desire was my energy.

I like the word motivate. It means “to move.” Simple really. Want something, start moving to get it.

I speak of youth, where you compare your progress in life to those around you and it's pretty easy to tell where you stand. Not that “keeping up” for it's own sake is a reason to live but that the comparison can motivate you towards what you want and not necessarily what others are aiming at.

What am I envious of today, at 49 years of age? I had to actually sit here and brainstorm a bit. At 11AM this Sunday, I can say this, nothing.

Ah sure, I can be envious of smaller things, a car, a boat, a bigger boat or a house on Mount Desert Island in Maine. But those are tangibles. They're not, what I call, “paths for growth.” I've always believed that the chase is better than bagging the elk (goal) your after. Sure, I want to achieve the goal but for some reason, once I have it, I'm left without direction or purpose. So, I start another chase.

Endlessly becoming.

When young, chasing is what you do best as you need to attain certain skills in order to live. The first and foremost is to stand on your own two feet economically. This isn't always easy as outside forces can screw up your plans, like hedge fund oil speculation that rockets your heating bill past Mars. But if you get the jist of this particular game, you'll survive and perhaps even enjoy parts of life as well.

Or raising a family, that's another chase, if you want it.

Most people, work paycheck to paycheck surviving and the questions of making your life meaningful rarely come up. That doesn't mean that they never think about it, it's just that they have other pressures that occupy their minds. But I can tell you this, they do think of it. Not all blue collar life is about getting to the next paystub. They do eventually think of what they have done with their lives and wonder what to do next.

But once you attain nearly some or all of these very long term goals, then what? Do you sit on your ass? I see many retirees going bonkers trying to do that. Not only that, most of your retirees aren't rich enough to travel and vacation on the Rhone river. There are tons of financial commercials showing well off, graying couples living in their Golden Years, walking a beach in loose white clothing, but chances are that ain't going to be you.

So do what? Become a greeter? “Welcome to Walmart!” That doesn't cut it.

Nearing 50 is strange ground to me. Since there is no reason to train for a long life ahead of me, to buy a car, a house, raise a family or build a corporate empire...what now? And for those of you who have families, your goal is to empty your nest and make your fledglings fly away. What then?

Getting fat from Early Bird specials at McD's and going to Foxwoods might be fun for a week, but I figure it would bore me to tears eventually, probably you too.

Actually, I do know the answer. It's the same answer nature has had for humanity for every age range. Nature tells 20 somethings to build a life, start a family. 30 somethings to continue it and retool. 40 somethings to get ready to kick your young out of the nest and learn to love predictability. And...for those of us over...the answer is...to mentor the young, any young; for those that will listen. That's the meaning then.

Jesus, I go from a few sentences from Neil Young to this. You see, I've adopted my brother's real reason to write. His was called “Throwing ideas at a wall to see what sticks.”

 

 

 

 

 

Neil at 65 Years Old

More Written than Read

When I write here, it's usually because I was motivated enough about the subject. There have been numerous other ideas I chugged away at, only to become bored with them and deleted forever. Or, the motivation ran out to do the necessary tightening and clean up of my horrid grammar. Or, the subject just entertains me and only me and I know it'll bore everyone out there. So, those little stories never see the light of day.

Here were some titles:

“More on the 'Our House' Commune in Berkley, with Anna, the 17 year old Whore of Marin County Businessmen.”

“Anything About My Mom.” (If you've noticed, there's a complete dearth about her in this blog)

“Really Detailed Descriptions of Failing Marriages I Know About.”

“Every Little Practical Joke I've Committed”

“Pot Plants I may have Grown as a Teen”

There are others that I diligently worked on. I've probably tossed more away than I can truly remember.

The point is, I like hearing myself talk. Whether you like it is another story and that has to come into play as I jot down memories or opinions.

 

 

 

“I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.”

--Jack Kerouac, Big Sur

Big Sur was Kerouac's autobiography of “getting tired of it all” and turning again into a drunk. He had run into fame and some fortune with On The Road and found the success annoying and intrusive. So, off to a small shack hidden in the woods on the coastline of California he went to restore himself. Nature and Buddhism weren't enough as he returned to the bottle, and hard too.

I've read On The Road by Kerouac a thousand years ago and I thought, “Ah, so what.” I thought The Dharma Bums or Desolation Angels were better. In honesty, it was probably because I could grasp them with the life experience I had gained at that point. As for On The Road, I've never had the balls to throw everything away and just take off on my own, spinning a bottle and taking the direction it pointed to once it stopped. There's no guarantee of happiness down that route. There are plenty of potholes if you don't know what you're doing. Learning curves for me have always been rocky at first. Sometimes so I found it “not worth it” to pursue whatever goal I was aiming at because the payoff was quickly losing against the costs I was incurring.

A teacher in the fifth grade once told me: “The experience of dealing with adversity will help you grow!”

I retorted, “Yeah, but that isn't my goal, I wanted to gain the thing I was aiming for.”

At ten I could understand life's “profit/loss” statement. I was also far too practical to spin any loss into some higher, nobler plain, though it would've eased the sting.

Once, on a lark, my brother, w/o telling me the details, up and shot off for Eastham Cape Cod to see an old friend and wanted me to come along. I went. It had been years since I was that far out on the Cape and thought it would be a nice diversion. I never asked what his plan was in order to get there or where we'd stay. His idea, his itinerary.

Things got off to a bad start when he was driving west on Rt 44, heading to Connecticut. I had him turn around and we wormed our through Providence to pick up 195 east. We brought no extra clothing or food, just the dollars in our wallet. I was told by him we'd be welcomed by his friend and we could crash the night there. On our way there, he began telling me his new wife was a control freak. Her new husband had to be trained to give up his previous lifestyle of being an adolescent at 33. No more keg parties, no more traveling from state to state finding crap jobs. It was time to grow up.

We arrived late in the afternoon. I met his wife who eyed us with some trepidation. My brother stood there with a bottle of Absolut vodka in his hand and I am sure she appraised we two as bad influences. She corralled us to the backyard where we couldn't break any furniture, I swear that was the reason. As the night wore on on that backyard porch, we became buzzed but not drunk and she gently reminded her new husband that they had to visit her relatives down at Chatham the next morning. Time to end the party.

“So, where are you guys staying? The husband asks.

Hearing this, I'm getting worried. I thought we had his place.

“We can't stay here? We'll sleep on your living room floor. We'll be out of here by sunup.” My brother says.

The two then go outside for a private talk. Apparently he wasn't going to buck his wife's authority in any fashion and suggested we find a camping ground instead.

“Great...more impromptu changes.” I think

We find a camping ground at 11pm at night, totally full up. We manage to convince the owner to let us park there, for the same fee as we would have if we did have tents and such.

I never did like sleeping in cars. The next morning my neck is bent in such a strange position that it takes a good two hours to loosen it up before I can twist it comfortably. Not only that, the morning summer sun turns the inside of a car into an oven by 6:30 AM, so I can't really sleep in whatsoever.

We leave, find a Quickie Mart so I can grab a paper on the way back. I ask my brother if we have enough gas to get home. “Yeah, some” he says.

“Get some gas NOW” I tell him. I don't want any more surprises. I didn't want to be stuck on Rt6, further complicating our efforts to return to base.

On the way back, we further talk of his friend's new life. I supposed that a Mom styled wife would straighten him out. I also mentioned that the next trip we take, let's not “wing it.”

I'm not good material for being “On The Road” at all. You can romanticize it all you want but the realities you can't glamorize.

*****

Well, that wasn't the story I wanted to tell. The first quote on the top of the page was to lead you into a conversation I had with a young woman and finding “happiness.” I sort of let her down somewhat. To her mind, she thought older people knew a few answers. We do, but the question she raised was the wrong one to ask. Her question was, “How can I be happy?” The last word she left out was”...forever?” It was then when I shot  “forever” down that ruined her usual bright face for a few moments.

*****

This I found after finding out Kerouac had a daughter and never owned up to.  Jan Kerouac, strode in her Dad's footsteps as a wanderer, druggie, whore and whathaveyou. She died of kidney failure at 44.

"I am described as " Bruce from Oklahoma” in Jan’s second book, Trainsong. Jan and I spent a year together in 1976-77. I knew it then as I certainly know it now, Jan was lost.  She never had a chance.  Joan Haverty, Jan's mother, was a neurotic flake posing as a hipster moll, dreadful and entirely neglectful mother. Kerouac may have seperated himself from Joan because of her taste for the bizarre and outlandish.  After her alienation from Kerouac, Joan took up with a black cook who worked aboard merchant ships.This man’s name was Harry Pease ( sp. ? ).  I had met Joan at her hippy abode in a small town in Central Washington, living with her son David, Jan’s half-brother, the son of  Harry Pease.

Jan acted tough and worldly on the outside, but on the inside she was a little girl who wanted her Daddy to love her and he would not.  She wanted her mother to protect her but she was not protected.

What is a man’s life worth when, though he is a celebrated author, he fails dreadfully at the only chance he had in his life to do something noble and dutiful and truly worthwhile.

Jack Kerouac was a gob of spit in a sea of pus.

Michael R. Hagberg Hester

 



Esalen Institute, Fun Read If You Look It Up

I have another “first.” I dreamt of Gestalt group therapy sessions in down around the Narragansett beaches. It wasn't a nightmare, just one of those dreams that morph from one thing to another. But Gestalt Therapy? Add to that, the song, “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy when things are gray...” was playing throughout.

 

I can't pay attention during the sessions because there's this incredibly pretty auburn haired girl with us. And I'm way too obvious about liking her too. It was one of those moments when we guys have look keep looking; and give ourselves away in doing so.

 

Another woman, a Glenn Close-granola-Big Sur type in her 50's has to bring my attention around to the task at hand, which is engaging everyone else in the group.

Of course, the dream morphs with Glenn and I in some tourist trap shack by the beach. She picks up two pieces of candy, a Swedish Fish and Gummi fish and proceeds to whip some mind-bending Zen on me. It works. I wish I could recall what she said but that's a dream for you, they vanish pretty fast.

 

We morph again. This time Glenn and the pretty auburn haired girl pull up in a car so we can go out out for the night. I hop into the back seat next to Pretty and we're off. The dream is starting to become much more fun and interesting.

 

Then I wake up. Son of a bitch!

 

All of the dream had vanished except, “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine...” playing in my head still.

 

When you think about dreams, you can tell where they came from. In my case, I did study Gestalt therapy at one time. Barry Stevens? She was Fritz Perls student in Gestalt. She was an Earth Mother who used to travel up and down the West Coast's Interstate 5 dispensing wisdom in the 60's and 70s. The girl? I knew her but forget her name now. Yes, she was auburned hair, pretty and in my Personality class at RIC. We became friends. I was moving things along, as I was ever hopeful, till I found out she was more than married.

 

Well, perhaps the next dream I'll be speaking to walruses about the space-time continuum. During which I'll be smitten by another unattainable girl.

 

 

 

I still have this book for God's sake...

If you have the time, here's some interesting reading...or not, according to what you give a rat's ass about. Esalen Institute. And a link to the funky chick above, Barry Stevens, Earth Mother.

I sort of wished I had a link to that girl I was half in love with.
 

Birthdays and Pissing Off the Young

I turned 49 a few weeks ago. Did I care? Nope. It actually felt like any other day really, except with the “Happy Birthdays” and usual jokes about nearing 50. So what has changed? Both body and mind have over the years, but the body less so. But that'll catch up in time.

 

That last snowstorm we had, the MONSTER one, tested my abilities to shovel 20lbs of snow 500 times in a row. I did well. I compared it to how I did during the last winter. What I did notice were the after effects were more pronounced. Shoveling snow has always left me feeling like I was beaten with a hockey stick. But, the recovery takes longer I find now. I managed to dig myself out in one day (sort of...90% at least), so I still have “it,” for now at least. I suppose biking 20 miles a day like I did during the summer and autumn helped prepare me?   But boy did I feel that last snowstorm in my legs, back and knees.

 

My crow's feet lengthen, my beard stubble whitens and I've had to get a stronger script on my glasses. These things advance slowly but surely.

 

There are ages where we all cross a threshold that shouts out to us about our past. Turning 18 is huge, as you graduate high school and are considered a legal adult. Turning 23 and graduating college was another. Then the word “adult” sunk home as I now had to enter the real workaday world. I was doing adult things constantly. Paying bills, taxes, getting the car fixed...bitching about getting more money to keep doing the same things but with more ease.

 

Turning 27 was the cutoff mark of being a young adult. I could not, I thought, with any justification, be found dead in a ditch with a mind full of chemicals. At various ages you are no longer allowed to pay with certain toys. Past six years of age, playing with blocks gets you laughed at. Playing with cocaine past 27, gets you laughed at at your funeral. You put down “childish” things to pick up toys more attune to your age, like keeping the lawn weed free or refusing to play a make-believe “Dad/Designated Driver” to your drunken, immature buddies who haven't figured it out yet.

 

The next hurdle that shook me was 35. I felt I had entered middle age then. I could tell. I no longer understood or even knew about the new music, fashion, comedians or what-have-you that the 18-22 crowd fawned over. I didn't care either as there was no interest in me for it. Asking me then if I had heard of Destiny's Child would be like asking me if I knew the latest pop songs being played in Argentina. It was foreign to me now. That was then when I started to pick up that aging man's annoying habit the young hate with a passion, being dismissive.

 

There was a well meaning young 20-something I sort of knew then and he had called my attention to a song on the jukebox he had ordered up. As the song played, he was in half rapture as he listened to it. When it was over, he turns to me, expecting me to thank him for finally finding the Holy Grail and asked me...”Well, what do you think of it? It came out last month!”

 

I answer,

 

“It's a take off on Emerson, Lake and Palmer's Brain Salad Surgery.” I sort of dropped that fact onto his lap like a bowling ball. I probably showed some boredom and total lack of enthusiasm about it too, because he was visibly hurt by my caviler answer.

 

“Who?” he asks.

 

“ELP came out with this very new, almost orchestral album that took off like a rocket waay back then. The song we just listened to ripped off some of their riffs and style...I have heard this kind of music before.”

 

It was not new to me, but new to him. That's the difference and that's where the source of irritation the young hold against the old. We've been there in some fashion or another and we're not surprised or wowed anymore. If I've had Thai food for years and you just discovered Vietnamese, then trying to get me to be as enthusiastic as you at your new discovery, ain't gonna work.

 

Can you tell that I'm not a parent in any way shape or form?

 

But. And a big BUT. I'm not going to stand in the way of their personal discoveries. The road is theirs to travel. I try not to dissuade or cheerlead.

 

There's another story about two seeming 20 something lesbian's making out in front of us 40 year old guys at the Celtic a few years back I ought to tell too. Perhaps I'll tell it later, it'll just take a few paragraphs. The same moral of the story is in that one too. “Been there, Done that.” I'll entitle it, “Every Generation Thinks They're the First to Discover Sex.”

 

My fortieth birthday? So.what. It was no mile marker to me. The only surprise was that I was numerically 40.

 

And now nine years later, here I am!

 

I've reached that point where I look back on things, how the arc of my life bent this way or that and understand it better now. I find that I can't help but do this. I have been told, by those much older than me, that I'm reaching that point where reflection is automatic. I'm told I can't help but to think back and look upon my own path, why I chose this direction and not that one. You see, none of us can see too far ahead into the future. You make your best educated guess and go from there. You do your course corrections as outside influences (and inside ones you are barely aware of) force you to change direction. You may get back on course...or need to change it altogether. That's a living, working reality.

 

Each year that creeps by gives me another course load on Life. I'm attaining my PhD in it in small lengths. You gain a larger perspective on it all as the days tick off. When I was younger, people and their actions confused the hell out of me sometimes. Not so much anymore. Also, I tend to let a lot slide when it comes to peoples' ability to FUCK UP royally. When you take a perspective on their lives, try to walk in their shoes, you ease off using the judgmental club on them. But also, I've learned to wear a CDC environmental suit around those who would spatter their smallpox laden life of mistakes on me.

 

Tune in in fives years, should I still be here and hear another update!

*****

Ok, here's the lesbian story, since I mentioned it and you want to hear it...

 

Mike, John and I were sipping our beer one night when two very young girls come into the bar. The place was fairly empty at that time of night and they sat close enough to us. I would guess three chairs away. It wasn't long before they decided to put on a show.

 

The two start making out at the bar. Ok fine. I don't care what people do with their lives as long as they don't dump it into my backyard and screw my life up. You like raping sheep? Fine, rape them all! Please just leave me out of it! I would hope others would extend me the same favor.

 

But, as these two were going at it, the pig faced one (yes, she wasn't all that pretty) kept turning around to see if we 40 something guys were staring. She'd go back to sucking face, turn around to gauge our reaction, then back to it.

 

We guys, were goofing on the fact she was trying to get a rise out of us older men who OBVIOUSLY never have heard of lesbians. You see, at a young age, any man or women who's around your parents age...ARE your parents and must be treated as so. They are ignorant, unskilled and stupid.

 

Finally, I have to say something.

 

“Hey, (and I'm addressing this to pig face) you think what your doing is new? That we've never heard of it or seen it?” Mike and John, who are sitting next to me, start giggling under their breath. It was the kind of giggle that says “Oh shit..he's gonna do it!”

 

Miss Piggy gives me a snarl.

 

“I suppose you think of yourself as sexually free, right?” She doesn't answer.

 

“If you are that sexually liberated, then you can show me something I've NEVER seen before...(dramatic pause)...Fuck a dog in front of me...I've never seen that live!”

 

Mike gets up to “use” the bathroom real quick. John openly starts laughing.

 

She finally has to say something...'That's GROSS!”

 

“No it's not,” I say, “sexual liberation is about doing anything! Why judge? Why come down on that? People should be free to be who they are and experiment ALL the way!”

 

I pissed her off. She dragged her nicer looking girlfriend to back room, probably saying “Fuck you” under hear breath the whole way.

 

I'm sorry...there are times when I shoot my mouth off, but I can't help it.

 

 

 

Bonnie Franklin from “One Day at a Time” is gone. I had no idea she had pancreatic cancer but then what do I know? I don't watch much E-TV to tell the truth. On hearing this, the first memory that came to me was “What a bitch that character Ann Romano was.” This I came to find out was a very old and shallow estimation of that character.

So I Googled the show and the memories came back. I used to watch it fairly regularly after it premiered in 1975 when I was ten years old. I was too young to notice why Valerie Bertinelli was oogled over. Being ten, all I was interested in was my bike and fireworks. I think the main reason I kept watching it was to see apartment supervisor Schneider act like a moron.

“Why did I despise Ann Romano” I wondered? The memories of the show became clearer and I then remembered she was bit of a Hitler as a Mom. Back then I naturally took the sides of her kids because I was a kid then as well. Mom was a strident bitch.

But being ten, I knew nothing of life and why a family like the Romano's would be the way they were. It took decades of seeing other families for me to realize that the Romano's were part and parcel of regular life. You find them everywhere.

As I reread about the show, I forgot how timely it was, even for then. It included controversial topics that every family grappled with but were NEVER spoken of pubically, and forget broadcast TV! One issue that kept coming up that I didn't understand well enough then, was Ann's “at the edge” financial position. She was always working too much, over pressured and always fretting about deadlines. The costs of raising a family on a single Mom's income back then was sketchy and Ann Romano reminded the kids, again and again, of how money doesn't grow on trees.

“Jesus..Ok lady, stop PREACHING!” was my reaction as a child.

You never understand anything until you live it. I can surmise what visiting China might be like, but honestly, it comes no where as close as to seeing it and living it. This I know now. As a kid, I proudly thought I knew many things. I thought I knew more than enough than to be inflicted with Ann Romano's lessons on budgeting.

As the years unfolded for me, I saw many instances of the Romano family. I got to hear them on the phone as a Mom I knew stressed out over a divorce she was going through. She interrupted me to screech at her kids in the background to “CUT THE SHIT!” Her's was a week from hell she wasn't about to have any more stress piled on.

At 18, I listened and waited for J to come downstairs. He had said something to his overworked Mom, as she had just come home from working some low paying factory job and she then went off.  Her voice was like an ice pick in January. It went right through you and she unloaded every ounce of stress her day had brought her onto her son. He never did tell us what he said to her.

I saw another family where the parents complained and griped to their son about going to school or at least find a job. He could've eased the financial burden of running the house. I shot a look at the son and just noticed a 20 year old kid whose self esteem and confidence were in the sewer. He wasn't about to move quickly I thought. They'll be plenty more of this screeching in the coming months I thought as well.

At ten, I really didn't understand what the saying “one day at at time” meant. I do now. I now know why Ann Romano was so strident. She was fighting every day. She, as many of us, are pushed to the cliff's edge and we scratch and scramble back towards safer grounds.