I Know What I'm Doing..Sheesh!

Hair stylists really ought to get into landscaping. The reason this popped into my head was that my lawn needed to be mowed and I won't have the time, energy nor motivation to do it in the next four days. If ignored four days hence, it'll look grubby and disheveled. So I went out and did it. Once cut I looked back and thought, “There, just like a new haircut, all neat and trim.”

Andy LeCompte could sell grass shampoo and perhaps a stylish lawnmower that doesn't leave split ends. Ah, it's been done already, Scotts fertilizer company makes their living off of neurotic homeowners who equate a neat lawn with moral hygiene.

And in fact that's what it's all about, framing the house, keeping it's “face” neat, clean and presentable. An upstanding member of the community is a house that's well scrubbed!. My home's face is now admissible to the neighborhood for another couple of weeks. I pray it doesn't rain and the sun bakes all plant life into dormancy so I don't have to mow anything. 

**

I once said my learning curve for self training or being coached for that matter looks like hell at first. I make a zillion mistakes but fairly quickly I tend to “get it.” The problem occurs if the discipline is dangerous. Chains saws for that matter. There isn't much forgiveness early on in the learning curve for that kind of study. You screw up once and....it's 911.

Then there's the opposite. The “I Know What I'm Doing” attitude. Now here's one I've been seriously guilty of because “I know what I'm doing, I've done it a million times before...” Experience tends to work since you have worked with something a lot, but then there are those times...

Years ago in another career I worked for a group home that had a lawn. In an effort to cut costs, the agency had fired their outside landscaping teams. They then suggested that the employees of the various homes cut their own lawns. We were paid for it.

So, one late July I'm out, making nice straight passes back and forth in the front yard, with my brain going elsewhere as it does when I do a repetitive task. That's doable really, you can apply just enough attention to something that bores the f out of you and still get it done, while you make plans to get good and drunk at Misquamicut beach one day.

Mowers have that chute where it expels the clippings and from all lawn mowers I worked with, they get clogged. I had learned, since I was a teen, to quickly flick the obstruction out, either with my foot or hand. I became pretty adept at it and for years I was successful doing it without one problem.

That day however was different. The mower chute became clogged and I kneeled down in front of it and then flicked out the clog. But that's when I felt a strange sensation. I felt 10-15 weird vibrations in my hand as I did it. I then noticed my white painters pants looked like someone had flicked a paintbrush full of red paint all over them.

I was in NO pain whatsoever and was confused. What the hell just happened? What was that sensation?

Then slowly, my eyes tracked to my left hand.

Jesus H Christ. I never thought that any part of my body would look like freshly ground hamburger. I had some pretty good spills in my life, falling off a bikes, a freight train and a few car crashes where my idiot friends treated Newport Ave like a dragster strip. But none of those times did I see any part of my body opened up and twisted like that.

I ran into the home, wrapped a towel around the index and middle fingers of my left hand and sat down. Nick, another employee there, wanted to see “how bad it was” and I took off the towel but I  refused to look. All he said was, “Wow.”

“Wow” isn't a good word sometimes.

A few minutes later A. comes through the door and suggests I go to Kent County as it doesn't look like Band Aids will help much.

As we were driving to Kent, I was preparing a speech to tell the nurses and Dr's about what I had done.

Dr: “You stuck your hand inside a running lawn mower?”

The Fool: “Wait! There's a reason why I did! You see, for years I've been able to...”

Of course they talked about it. I'm sure one went around the corner and said, “Hey, Margaret, go to bed 4 and see the tard who shoved his hand in a lawn mower! No joke, he did it!”

You know how many times I had to tell that story? About my being able, for years, to magically clean out a running lawn mower chute with bare body parts? Nearly every nurse, Dr and hand surgeon I met.

After being X-rayed and stuck with antibiotic needles, the Dr asked: “You see anything on the lawn, I mean besides blood?”

“No..why?” I ask.

“Well, from the X ray, you no longer have any bone in the tip of your middle finger....I wondered if you saw it on the lawn..if so, we could put it back. It's pretty resilient, it can stay out of your body for quite a while and still 'be good.'

“No” I say, “I saw nothing.” The truth is, probably, that bone was turned into bone meal. It's now part of the ecosystem in western Cranston now.

After being sutured up, given an appointment for hand surgeon at a later time, I go home. For weeks I have to hear...

“You did WHAT? You put your hand inside a RUNNING mower?”

Cue the story again. “Look, I've been able to, for years, clear that chute...”

**

My Hand Surgeon.

Once my fingers healed and they healed into a knobby scar tissue oddity, I met the hand surgeon.

He had told me that he would have to cut it all up again and re-suture things so they'd grow back “normal” looking. He also said I didn't really need a bone in the top of my middle finger since scar tissue in there would be nearly hard enough to provide some structure. As for the lack of feeling in those fingers, he said the nerves will regrow but it'll take months.

Ok, great, cut away...

Once that was done, he gave a six month appointment to return to see if everything healed up as it should.

Three months later as I was reading the ProJo, I come across an interesting story. Apparently a Kent County Dr had shot his own hand with a .357 revolver while “cleaning” it. I thought for a moment...”Hmm..was it the hand surgeon? The ER Dr? Or was it no one I knew?” I let it go as life goes on.

My six month appointment is due and I return. They bring me into the room with the hand surgeon and he starts to look and manipulate my hand. He also asks if everything is OK. As he was doing this I noticed a large, star shaped scar on the palm of his hand.

“Holy Shit...it WAS him!” I think. I seen bullet holes in dead animals, usually if it's a contact shot where the muzzle of the firearm was resting against the skin. The pressure blows out a weird star shaped wound. I can't keep quiet so I blurt out...

“So....I'm NOT the only one!” I say.

“Huh?” says the Doc.

“Your hand...you're the one who shot himself!” I say.

I see the look on his face, it's the same look I had on mine when trying to explain to everyone else what I did.

He comes forth and tells the real story. He wasn't cleaning anything. He tells me he was trying a old gunslingers' gun trick called a Road Agent spin. It's where you look like your surrendering your weapon, to be taken from your hand, but at the last moment you can drop, spin it and fire into the bad ass Sheriff who's taking you for Fort Laramie to be hanged.

Here's the actual trick...

Click Pic and Watch

“It went off.” he says. “Right through my hand, through the TV set and into the next room.”

“Damn, you are lucky, had there been another person in there...” I say.

“Yep...” he says.

I felt A LOT better about my little accident after learning a hand surgeon, SHOT his own hand.

Anyways, I no longer flip anything out of the chute. I just jack the mower up and down till it falls out on it's own...and my yard is pretty enough to date once again. 

 See? All healed. You'd never know had I not told you!

RIC

Youth is the most beautiful thing in this world...and what a pity that it has to be wasted on children!

I went back to my old college, RIC, to keep an appointment with a career counselor. I'm looking into the future, short term and long term and realizing that changes will occur whether I want them to or not. I do however prefer the environment around me become a product of mine, not the other way around. We'll see how lucky I am.

“You do realize the retirement horizon is looking at you.” C. Carsini said to me. What's weird, I know this, but when someone else says it to your face....ouch. By the way, RIC is still staffed with women from Nawt Providence, a third were chewing gum.

I had figured the campus had changed but I wasn't ready, nor aware of how much it has really transformed. Driving in from Mt Pleasant I was greeted with LED signs, external bulletin boards, telling me what's up for the day, week and month there at RIC. As I walked from my car to Robert's Hall, I was met with even more change.

“Where did that building come from? It wasn't here 10 years ago.”

“And that one...”

“No...the Fogarty building never had an annex.”

The main building I was interested in was Gaige Hall, where I spent a pleasurable part of my youth. There was one room where the History Club met daily and we commandeered it for our own hedonistic use, with the help of a professor who ran interference for us. I wanted to see it again.

After meeting the counselor, she had told me, “Well, if you go to Gaige, the only thing that remains, and what you'll remember, is the outside brick work.”

So I go Gaige and am stunned. The place has been gutted and re-designed. It's a bit sterile but the electronic kiosks, the WiFi antennas and a host of other new gadgets fill the place. The elevators talk and the water fountains have digital screens on them. Why would you possibly need a digital screen on a bubbler? I should have tried it out to see what it does...but I didn't.

I try to find that room we all hung out at and had so much fun.

Not There.

I try all floors, perhaps my memory is off.

Not There. Not There.

But I remember it being there! This place is of Legend! It looks like it was ripped out and turned into a larger classroom. It has similar, but smaller equipment Roger Waters used to project images/movies on his Wall. A youngish professor was on a lap top running it all for this summer session class, spraying images of Medieval Europe on the white board that transformed from one to another.

Damn...

Well, it was 32 years ago...Shit...I grow old.

**

Another thing about being my age, you pack on the experience. As I walked the campus I noticed the women there. Of course I did, nothing's prettier than a college girl. But as I passed them walking, sitting down reading, my brain just popped out quickie evaluations of them I could never have forged when I was that age. I wasn't mature enough yet. I had not yet learned that people wear, quite unconsciously, their innermost personality on their shoulders. From that, you get a nearly decent estimation of them. I suppose working with the deaf population taught me a few things as well. Body language for example.

I passed one girl, at a table, slightly geekish and reading. She looked up with a hint of desperation to talk to anyone. “Who are you? Are you alive? Wow..a REAL person!”

“Lonely...stuck living in her dorm all summer long” I thought.

Another I talked to in order to find a certain room...

“Professional girl working for RIC, being paid crap. Lit up when I talked to her...bored shitless she is.”

In the waiting room at CC at RIC, a 20 year old with the self esteem of a bug was reading a weight loss magazine. What drew me toward that was her long sigh after holding up a fold out showing a genetically lucky girl who was proportioned perfectly. This girl who was sighing didn't need to lose an ounce. But try to tell her that. Try to tell her that she's in her 20's and has the best look she'll ever have, before age ruins her.

There was a kid I passed, his look was of defeated confidence. God knows why. He had passed a girl his age, a nice girl, who looked up at him as they walked by each other. He never spotted her curiosity. He was lost in his mind and missed that look he received.

I passed a proverbial douchebag as well. Every college has a few of them. The thing was I could see right through that mask. Those guys I knew in my college years seemed to “with it” but now...jesus..now I see them as jokes. “All you have, my friend, is your display, you have no talent yet, you have no chops!”

Only if...only if...I had this perception when I was at RIC then, I'd have 24 bastard children out there somewhere. Maybe it's very lucky I didn't...considering child support. But still...it would've been more fun.

Nope, you don't get these powers of perception until you're ancient. It takes a long, long time to bake that cake to completion. These college kids are still jiggly, with much liquid cake batter not just set yet. But, to have that done when you're young! To have that capacity at such a young age!

I will grow my brilliant white hair and beard out. I'll get a staff, ramble around like Gandolf and offer proverbs to the young who cannot fathom what I am talking about. What I preach about doesn't exist nor has it ever existed to anyone that young. They don't get it.

There was a time when I never “got it” either.

I do now. The price for that skill is time, a lot of it too.

You Learn Things...

As you drive towards Mt Willard, going north on 302 just outside of North Conway, the mountains fill the span of your entire windshield. Pictures can't really do it justice, you need your own eyes to see the effect. Also, since I never saw Willard in real life before, it's looming appearance made me think, “Oh shit, this is going to be waay harder than I thought.” The mountains in the area just shoot up out of the ground and many with vertical cliff faces that run hundreds of feet long. Willard's face just showed one hell of a drop off and that was giving me second thoughts. “Fuck me...this might be a big mistake!”

AllTrails.com and most other sites devoted to climbing in every form had this to say about Willard. “A moderate hike, probably the most 'bang for the buck' scenery-wise vs. many other mountains in NH.”

Add to that a forum where anyone can post and pretty much said the same thing, except they added “easy and quick.” A relative few said it was harder.

Sure, it's easy if you're 24 years old. It's easy if your cardio, PaCO2 and ligaments are late model and in fine working order. I sure ain't “late model” anymore.

I won't repeat what happened as I wrote about it when I went up Watatic a while back. Just say I ran my heart rate up to 160 bpm and had to stop, numerous times, to wait till it got back down to a “manageable” 100 bpm. Once there, it didn't take much to ramp it up once again once I started ascending. I found out later there ain't 22% O2 levels like around here at sea level. Up there it drops to 17% and I guess my late model cardio was noticing it. I personally didn't notice a thing except that my heart was pumping on overdrive. The higher you go, you start to make silly decisions as your brain starts to starve for O2.

What did strike me this time around was how dark it is in the forest. The skies were just party cloudy for mid July and the sun is usually screaming bright but not on the forest floor. Then again, I had to tell myself that this isn't the woods of RI. This is the real forest I heard about in Grimm's Fairy Tales and that movie, “Deliverance.” The Black Forest in Germany isn't black, they call it that because so little light reaches the ground due to the trees and plant life blocking it. I'd say the forest in NH ain't too far off. When I popped out my camera to take a shot, the flash automatically flipped up because IT didn't think there was enough light either.

Another thing too, most woods have a scent, something akin to rotting leaves but this was a conifer/deciduous forest (a mix of pine and oak trees). The smell was like shoving your face into a warm, wet pile of fuming garden mulch. It doesn't stink but boy does it have it's own signature. If you like dank, go here.

If you go camping in these parts, real camping where you piss in the woods and hump your own equipment in and out, you're going to end up smelling and looking like the surrounding area pretty quick. You will become just like every other animal that calls the Whites home. Ticks and fleas in your nether regions are an added bonus.

**

Hiking with others can be fun but it poses some complications as well, namely; physical condition, age and motivation. If you want to kill the vibe of the group, just have one person who's into a competitive race with the others. You'll then see some real interesting dynamics develop you haven't witnessed since high school. Add some stress to an otherwise congenial group of friends and boy, will it ALL come out and not necessarily the good stuff. You'll see political groups forming, disbanding and reforming to gain the upper hand on the decisions needed to be made.

I hike with someone nearly half my age who jogs regularly. Good for him. I wish I was in my 20's too (but this time around knowing then what I know now). His excellent physical condition means he can whip my ass at ascending while I have to hold back and mentally keeping pace of my heart rate. Yes, we are mismatched as a “team.”

So why can't I get anyone my age to do it?

Most of the real locals I know here, who are my age, view their weekends as a time to rest as they work either physical jobs or very time consuming/stressful jobs...or both. They see weekends as a relief to do nothing.

“Huh? Are you fuckin' kidding? I ain't going to climb 3,500 feet! I'll climb the six steps to get into a liquor store though..and that's IT!”

That still ain't a bad idea for a weekend though.

Here's a vignette I had on Willard last week that taught me something I forgot long ago. A little life's lesson you tend to lose in the minutia of day to day living.

Without getting into it, there's been changes...many changes where I work and it poses some short and long term questions to me that will have to be eventually answered. As I was thinking about it, an old thought popped into my head that a close friend said long ago about work in general.

“No one can force you to do “anything!” You can say NO!” He was referring to a job he had in Ohio while in school and he found that it sucked so he blew it off. There was a price to be paid for that too. Finding another job to replace it and go a bit further w/o a steady income. But in his mind, it was worth it. He wouldn't settle and “Embrace the suck” as the Army Rangers say. As far as embracing the suck, you can make yourself mentally tougher if you do tough it out, but there are certain situations in life where you could still get that kind of workout, but it's way better, far smarter, to flee them with a flame coming out of your ass. There are some places, events, where being tough isn't much of a reward in the end. Want tough? Hang out in Syria or where the Ebola virus wants to crawl on you. I don't care how tough you are, it's a SUCK situation. . An illiterate person would've left that a long time ago, leaving your educated tough ass behind.

So....

As I was humping up Willards busted, rocky trail, I could feel the physical stress building in me. Most times I would just keep quiet and plod on. But, you reach a point where it becomes overwhelming and you have to stop. I do anyway. At 55 I will. Don't forget, I'm old now and an on again off again smoker who needs to blow off 20lbs. Final analysis: “He's getting there, old and decrepit...but not quite just yet but he's feeling it coming!”

My young friend understood why I was stopping but it is a bit tiring to someone that age to have to do it again..and again.....and yet again. Like I said, we were mismatched.

“You'll do it! You can keep going! We're almost there!” were the hints of support I was getting. With that I would start again, cutting short the length of the break I wanted and acquiescing to his prompt.

In my head I knew it wasn't that I needed mental encouragement. Hell. I can be focused as shit and never stop if I have a goal in mind, almost insanely so. If in the right mind, I.Don't.Quit I will summit this and come down in the rain and midnight dark if I have too because I have all sorts of nifty equipment in my backpack to do so. But this time there were REAL physical limitations that cannot be ignored. There are actual walls I have to contend with. These limitations, are different.

So, after stopping and hanging onto a sapling for support, he suggests we start again. I cave into the peer pressure and go. I glance up at the trail and see how steeply it rises and stomp on. I go until I start to feel the heat beaming off my face like a freshly made glowing ingot of steel. My heart was easily heard in my ears too.

“No...NO..Fuck no...FUCK NO!...I'm STOPPING no matter what anyone thinks for as long as I WANT!”

I didn't say that, I sure as shit heard it in my head though.

I sat down on a log and take the pulse. Wow, 160 per minute. That's a bit too far beyond the safe limit for someone my age. I stay seated on the log till that rate came down and I felt refreshed somewhat.

“Ok, Let's go” I say once I was completely satisfied that I got things to a comfortable level. I then said, “I'm going in stretches...then I'll stop..and go again...and we'll reach the summit.”

As we headed up, I thought about what happened. I finally, finally chose myself instead of going along with the crowd/group...whatever. There came a point where I wasn't going to tolerate my unease any longer, so I chose myself. This coming from someone who's been, in one form or another, the helping progressions his entire life. Add to that an “un” professional career of emotionally carrying terminally ill relatives on my back for years at a time.

When you're the only “strong” person there, you get to carry the load.

But I reached a point on that mountain where I said “No.”

As we got nearer to the summit, I realized that “No” isn't just for mountains alone, I can use it anywhere I feel like it. Work, life, pepperoni on pizza or not...I have choice.

Mike was right all those years back, you don't have to a god damn thing if you don't want too.

Unfortunately, there are two kinds of people in the world, the nurses and the nursed. If you are a “nurse,” you tend to ignore your own misery while you care for others. It's automatic and damn near innate. It's a knee jerk reaction you do w/o a moment's thought. Well, time to nurse my own damn self, don't you think? A billion others do it.

Don't F'ing Quit! (But Take All the Breaks You Need!)

I was worried about the wrong thing when attempting Mt Watatic again, a small mountain of the NH Wapack range. The last time I climbed it I pegged my heart rate at 135 beats per minute. For someone of my age, it shouldn't get near 145. Any higher and your heart may say, “Alright you asshole...I QUIT!” Last year I was pushing it close to 145 but since I became so damned exhausted, I had to stop various times on the slope to catch my breath. After a bit I finally decided to stop and instead, not only catch my breath but to wait till my heart slowed down as well. I didn't drop dead so there's use of Common Sense for you. That or the fact my body made me stop and take a breather before I hit that maximum limit. What does it feel like? Run your ass off as hard as you can till you want to drop. You've felt that before...going so hard that in the end you want to melt into a puddle.

I didn't have to feel my pulse to count it out then either. All I did was listen for it in my ears. It was banging that hard.

That was last year. This year I am hoping to hit a few of the higher peaks in the White Mountains. Worthier, more stunning views, you know?

Bu, since we couldn't get to the Whites these past few weeks because it's been raining up there so much, we hit Watatic again. I was wondering if my severely cutting down on smoking would have any effect on my cardio. It did. At the near worst of the climb, where the slope is pushing past 40 degrees and there is no path save busted rock, I stopped and checked my pulse.

“Wow...120 beats per minute...That's a hell of an improvement over last year.” I thought. I could routinely get my heart rate to that point when I was biking or hitting the gym. There is no problem with that rate at all. It's not bad if that's the point where I'm really pounding my body hard.

I was still huffing pretty good but I was able to breath a hell of a lot more deeper than the previous climb. Yay for nicotine patches! If I have to live with these things stuck to me instead of inhaling smoke...So.Be.It.

But something else happened instead that beat me to shit.

When I did Watatic last year, it was near the end of a summer's worth of hiking and climbing. My legs were in pretty decent shape to hit it. This year, I thought maybe we could use Watatic as a warm up to the bigger bastards in New Hampshire. This would be my first climb after nine months of hibernation, idleness and sitting in this ratty office chair by the computer.

Before we did this, I warned W., who is half my age and due to such, in much better shape. Yeah, I was. Not cardio mind you, though a few months of working that one would've helped anyway. It was my legs this time around. I didn't have the benefit past training at all.

When we started past the split boulder which sort of marks the beginning of the climb, I could feel my calves starting to burn. “Uh-oh...this is happening way too soon.” I thought to myself but dare not vocalize it. When you hike with others, it's a social event with all it's unsaid rules, rites and rituals. You have to project assuredness and be “cool.” Break that rule and you've automatically occupied a lower rung on that social ladder. Guess what? Anytime you're not alone is when these rules pop up, you generally have a mask on to prove your position in the group. High school never ends.

Fake it till you make it is the Order of the Day, unless your body forces you “out of the closet” and then everyone can tell you're a Screaming Queen of Pain and Weakness.

Look, I admit it, doing this at my age is different now and I WILL stop as many times as I want to recover from whatever it is that pains me. This year year stopping wasn't due to my heart, it was the legs as I have said before.

As we hit the steeper slopes, I realized that doing this hill as a 'warm up” wasn't probably the best idea or the other thought that crossed my mind was more apt, “You shoulda hit the gym to work those legs!” But too late, I'm half way up and I won't quit, not after driving all the way up here, only just to turn around.

The saving grace came when W actually said it first, “Shit, my legs hurt!” That gave the go ahead to announce mine did as well. OK, so I wasn't the only one. But since I'm 55 and he's barely 26, there will be a difference.

When you climb some really bitch slopes and you're hammering it, you don't look up a the rest of the 150 yards of smashed rock to see where you're going. You stare straight at your feet to save you the pain of knowing there's...”Shit....There's still 149 yards to go!.”

Psychologically, it works. Pay attention to the smaller bites and don't try to gulp the whole thing down at once, or you'll give up due to the realization of the sheer size you must accomplish. No joke, take smaller bites. Also it really helps to know where your foot lands and then pick out the next spot to plant your feet, otherwise falling backward fifty yards on rock ain't no fun.

So, there I go, step by step and my legs as a whole are starting to burn and scream. Want to know some other weird feeling? Ever feel your joints and ligaments move around? I felt that a few times. That told me that my legs were certainly soft and unready for it all. Last year at the end of the hiking season, my ligaments were tight and taut as leather. This time around? They were soft and gooshy.

So onward I step. I plant footfall after footfall and I can feel myself starting to falter. My legs are becoming unsteady and then it happens, I feel and see my thighs shudder and shake. The muscles are burning and are quivering under the strain. “Holy Shit...this is BAD.” You know, I had a suspicion as we were driving up something like this might happen but I blew it off.

“OK...That's it...you STOP HERE!” I tell myself. “Stop pushing yourself beyond care, beyond a safe point, is bullshit!” If I lose my balance I'll plunge down 60 feet of rock and brambles and possibly smash out of my mouth that $10,000 worth of dentistry I put in over the decades. I didn't relish using my face as a brake.

I wait till my legs stop burning and plunge forward and up again, then stop to calm the legs, and then again go up..and stop..and up. I think I was making 20 foot verticals each time before my legs screamed STOP! I kept at this till were made the top and cliff outlooks.

Going down is easier but for one thing, it's all knee and calve work. You are constantly having to work those muscles and it doesn't stop. till you reach the bottom.

The final analysis? Gym. That was what was needed. Second analysis, I'm old. But so f'ing what, I'll keep at it. 

 

Never Trust Anyone Over 30

I live on a quiet street, dead quiet. In fact, if you even live in Pawtucket, chances are high you've never heard of nor could find my street w/o Google Maps.

That's OK. I've come to love the peace and partial seclusion.

This neighborhood used to have the familiarity and the loose association of Eisenhower middle class. That was all shot to shit by the 70's when everyone turned inward to do “their own thing” and it became harder to identify the neighbor down the street. Since no one was talking much anymore, it was challenging to know just who lived on that corner lot. We all adopted that attitude and no one cared anyways by then.

Bill and I are the last of the original “settlers” of this tract that was built in the housing boom after WW2. Hell, we aren't even that, we were the children of said veterans who bought up these Capes. Even so, we're still that last vestiges of that era. We are probably the oldest people living here as far as I know because you don't often see 78 year olds leaving the house much at all, unless it's by Pawtucket EMT. And I haven't seen any ambulances taking anyone away lately.

Bill and I are it...we have to be that last by now.

I know now how I'm regarded now by the kids on this street. When I was a kid, there was Mr Wrynn, a white, shaggy haired old guy who lived around the corner from us. He was friendly enough but had a bit of a limp, told fantastical stories about some era called the “30's” and for all I know could've fought at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. He looked like he could've because he looked that old. I've said this before because it's sort of true. Anything that happened before the year you were born is a rumor, a grainy black and white photo or a story that seems a bit dubious. So as a kid, when I looked and talked to Mr. Wrynn, I had some skepticism.

“All these houses weren't here back then, it was all corn fields here. The Morrisettes live in the first house built here by an Italian family who also ran a store out back in a smaller building.” Wrynn once told us.

I thought, No...that's wrong...these houses have always been here. They have been here ALL my life. And there was NO store in that garage behind Morrisettes, it houses two cars now!

My entire life of 9 years told me this so.

You get the point...

But, I know that today, I am now the current Mr Wrynn. I have the white hair and I favor my left leg and can tell stories from 50 years ago.

“1969? Isn't that when they invented the light bulb?”

**

This neighborhood has changed quite a bit since then. The influx of black and hispanic families have slowly dribbled in. But the quietness hasn't changed at all still. Geography and street layout still rules. You cannot ram 40 cars a minute down any street here really and this area is no good as a short cut to anywhere else either. This area is a maze and we're happily ignored.

Last night, a hispanic neighbor threw a summer party and when I started hearing the noise, I thought, “Oh shit, there's gonna be high energy Mariachi music all night long, with pigs and chickens roaming freely in everyone's yard and gunfire!”

But that didn't happen at all, the following did happen and it brought home the fact I'm Mr Wrynn.

There were about 15 kids at that party, a mixture of latino, black and white and they decided to have a soccer game on the street. You can do that here, as the street rarely sees a car going down it.

I tend to sit on my front steps in good weather while I talk on the phone and I watched as this gaggle of kids ran up and down the street kicking and passing the ball. I swear there must've been about 32 red card violations as they played this. Ain't that amazing? As an old white guy I now know some of the rules of that strange, foreign game.

Anyways, as kids do, they become more an more excited and forget themselves as they charge all over the street. One kicks the ball and it lands on my front lawn and they all come barreling in after it, falling ontop of one another as they try to wrest the ball away. They were happy, loud and boisterous until that final moment when they realize where they were.

That pile of kids got dead quiet, and slowly and respectfully stood up, staring at me like I was a feared predator who you NEVER take your eyes off of. One snatched the ball, in the fear I was going to take it away. I never moved off my steps though.

“Hey, it's alright. I don't care...and the score is STILL South 1, North 0.” I said. I was actually paying attention to that score as I spoke to my friend on the phone.

They remained silent as they backed away. They didn't trust this old guy at all.

Once they returned to the street, that game started up again and the boisterousness came back and I sat there, realizing that to them, I am that old. There is that huge gulf between us. I am that guy who I knew as a kid. To them, I could have been Clint Eastwood with the M1 Garand rifle , aimed at the kids, telling them to “Get off my lawn!”

I don't care about my lawn...in fact it's made of zoysia grass. It's like a shag rug and IT is an invasive plant that will cover up anything in it's path. The grass, not you, is the aggressor.

Mr Wrynn, back then, spent his time piddling around his garden, yard. I haven't reached retirement yet but piddling around don't seem like a bad way to spend my days at times. 

 

And I Leave My Collection of Boogers To...

There are those conversations you have but aren't supposed to have, because they require the death of a relative. I had one with someone who was sort of wondering if his girlfriend's grandfather, who adores her, would leave the property he owns to her, thereby improving the lot of these two soon to be marrieds. I tempered his “sort of hopeful” fantasy by asking, “Have you read the will?” That threw cold water on the whole dream. But these scenarios come up daily in people's lives. They are real. They do now as my cohort's parents are reaching the ends of their lives.

In my own case, I can attribute my “luck,” if you can call it that, to a family that neatly and quickly dropped dead one by one. The house my father was paying a mortgage on was protected by an insurance policy from back in the 70's which activated when he died and paid off the balance of the debt. This left my mother without the monthly torpedo that could've hit her bank account for years to come. This was a major relief to her as she had problems of her own to work out.

Back around the year 2000, I had a rather brusque but honest conversation with a friend whose grasp of reality was incredibly tight. It was so tight it was rude. I had been watching the slow degradation of my brother's cystic fibrosis for a couple of years and was finally accepting the notion that one day, it would come to an end...and end him as well. What was I to do as it did end? How would his half ownership of this house be effected should if he should rack up medical bills passing $1 million? Would I be forced to sell this property to pay off his creditors?

The advice I got was both appalling and legitimate.

“Want to know something about the dead?” I was told.

“What?

“They no longer matter anymore. It's YOU that still stuck on this Earth and have to live.”

“That's a good thing” I say.

“Yes, but YOU, not him, have to scramble to keep your ship afloat. Do you want the drowning to yank you under too? Mother Theresa was canonized for her grace, you won't be! Do you want to do it the easy way or the hard way?”

There's a pause from me as I digest that.

“Jesus, you're MECENARY!” I tell him.

“You HAVE to be mercenary! You think being “nice” is going to solve this problem? Get to a lawyer and soon!”

I managed to convince my brother to do so as he, for a brief moment, really looked at his condition and realized the gravity of it. We found a rather neat older lady lawyer who listened to our story and finagled a “irrevocable trust” situation where if anything happened to one or both of us, the reciprocity nature of the legal action would protect the survivors. If I go, he makes out. If he goes, I make out. You gotta love lawyers at times, some could argue with God Himself and get you into heaven on a technicality. You oughta see how these same lawyers set up a legal, but sham corporation in the Cayman Islands.

**

Hurry Up and Die Already!

...and then there are the relatives who wished you were six feet under.

A friend of a friend, who has no close relatives left, save for his wife's side, is now having to deal with the buttery attention he's receiving from them. He managed to do quite well in his life working in DC, piling up a kitty of nearly $5 million in assets. Now that he's pretty much “alone” in this world with no kids, brothers or living sisters and his next closest relatives are now legally it in line.

He'd probably not even get a Christmas Card every year if his net worth was under $1,000. “Uncle Paul? I haven't seen him in years!” That would be because a poor Uncle Paul can't buy you a condo in Punta Gorda FL should he die. But Uncle Paul really does have assets and is now receiving some rather unwarranted attention from relatives he hasn't spoken to in years.

“You're not really going to leave it to them, are you?” a friend asks him.

“Well, who else? I have no one else.”

“You're going to give that plain Jane niece of yours, who is as boring as wall paper paste, that kind of money? And the others? You DO know what they'll do with it? They'll rent a G5 and blow it all in Las Vegas...is that what you want to see happen to your 50 years worth of work?”

“But who else?” our rich friend protests.

“How about leaving it to me?” says my friend, as a nice jab.

As a retort, our Uncle Paul says, “How about I leave it to the American Communist Party? I can you know!”

“You can, but wouldn't you rather leave it to me instead? Knowing it'll be spent wisely....AH HA HA HA!” he guffaws. “Christ Paul, a million people would love to have the problems you have now...how to dispense millions after your dead!”

Paul relents. “I know, I know, but it's still a problem. Who do I crown with this good luck? Who do I like well enough?”

My friends raises he hand sheepishly and points to himself, grinning.

**

I have a will and only because a lawyer years ago harangued me to get one. When you finally sit down and have to pick and choose who it goes too, it can open your eyes as to what you really want do do with it. I've known parents who thought twice about leaving it to their own kids, knowing what they'll do with it. That sort of tells you how those kids turned out, huh?

There was a line from a movie (I can't remember the title) where there was a reading of a will. In it the deceased says, “To my nephew John, who last year requested I “mention” him in my will.....well...there ya go! You've been mentioned!”

Here's another...click the pic.