Ticking Fast!

 

 

 

This isn't a lesson in cosmological time but unfortunately for you, you're going to get one to prove another point. Carl Sagan, in order so you could grasps the past 13.9 BILIION years of time, compressed it all down to just one year. It's a a lot easier to apprehend that than anything in the billions. 

 

 

Click for Larger.

It kind of jolts you when you realize our Earth formed in September. It feels kind of late but that's when it happened compared to the rest of the universe's births. Even more startling, compared to the rest of time, is that the first real humans formed on December 31, 11:52PM on the last day of the year. Just 8 minutes ago..if today was New Years eve and you're seeing the ball drop now.

I wondered, could I apply this to my own life? Show my own life compressed on a one year calendar? You bet you can if you sit there and figure the damn formula out. The one I came up with may be wrong and off. I know it's not entirely accurate down to the exact day but it's enough to have startled me. I have to make one supposition though, when was I going to kick the bucket? I used a site, “Living to 100” to get a “range” of when I may pop the twig. Due to the males in my family kicking it wayyy before their time and I have those genetics, I probably ain't long for this world as well. Then again, I could be wrong an beat the genetic averages of this family but in order for the calculation to work, I need a life span in years.

According to Living to 100...which I won't and the calculation pegged me to quit at 74.

So, I'm 58 and a half now, what day of what month do I live at?

I start with my age, 58.5 x 365 = 21,353 days. Multiply that by .0138 (my personal dead factor) and that gives me 294.7. Divide that by the average number of days in a month (30) and I get 9.82.

That's 9.82 months. Nine months (September) plus .82 of the next one. That comes out to about October 25^th. Holy Mother of God. I'm in late October now! Two months left, abouts, if I actually hit it at 74 on December 31^st.

If things hold true and I float away at 74, my life on a calendar looks like this:

I started kindergarten at 5 on January 29^th.

First Communion? February 10^th at 8.

At 13, I saw the first Star Wars movie on March 8^th. That's how old that flick is!

Add to that is when I saw Apocalypse Now (1979), which fell on March 19^th. Another oldie. 

March 18th was my first concert seen, Frank Zappa.  

I got my license at 16. Which fell on March 24^th.

A certain fun something happened at 17 and a half, that was March 29^th.

High School graduation? April 3^rd.

College graduation? April 27^th (I did the FIVE year plan. It would've been April 22^nd had a relative not going completely crazy requiring me to play nurse for a good time).

Best concert I saw?  Pink Floyd, April 29th of my calendar. The Delicate Thunder tour.

I then noticed many of the great fun things I had done, all the major milestones I reached in my life, happen in my youth. Why did I notice that, because the rest of the calendar gets more sparse as I and it age. I was then a working schlepp and the fun moments were more and more spaced out. Also, I cannot recall every damn day I worked because...why would I? Why would anyone? What possible mileposts can be found with, “Sigh...another Monday again” can I peg on my calendar and why would they stick out?

My Mom died in 1996, or June 11^th. My brother in 2003 or July 21^st. That also be the time I had a nice summer fling with Roberta, who was far out of my league monetary-wise.

My dalliance with Lori of Cheyenne Wyoming? July 2^nd.

I got my first dog, a maniacal German Shepherd in 2005 which was July 26th.

I had a great free, state paid for summer vacation in 2012 which fell on abouts September 4^th.

I hit 50 on September 12^th

The last technical real mountain I climbed, Willard (which is a kid's hike vs. Mt Washington), was on or abouts October 12^th.

Covid hits the US solidly..(St Pats Day in 2020) about October 14 ish,

Today, I'm in late October...Wow.

All of this just underscores the fact I better get that bucket list checked off faster than I thought. All those days I have left ain't gonna be with a great, agile and working body come late December. Or...I may get hit by a bus tomorrow...either way, time to regain some of that fun I knew in my youth. It's time to cue that old saying they have about older men who try to grasp vitality and youth one more time, it's usually said after they make a huge mistake and create a fine mess of their lives...”You foolish old man! What were you thinking?!!”

 

No Brakes

 

Click Pic to Play!

In the shuffling madness
Of the locomotive breath
Runs the all-time loser
Headlong to his death

Oh, he feels the piston scraping
Steam breaking on his brow
Old Charlie stole the handle
And the train it won't stop
Oh no way to slow down

 

 

I guy I know who is much younger than I, in his 20's, made a great comment on mate selection.

“Does this train have brakes that work?” Translation: “Can this girl stop herself from careening towards destruction?” I thought the saying novel, comical and right. This doesn't mean guys are immune from living lives that bounce from wall to wall, but H. and I were just talking as guys do and the subject was women.

We both agreed that some excitement is needed, some unpredictability, but not the 'Cops at 3AM in the morning arresting your girlfriend because she's setting fire to your car' kind of adventure. But..more of a positive kind of fun, think Six Flags in a way. The price for that kind of person, if her brakes DO work on her train, are probably some crashes, but they're not fatal to life or the relationship.

Being much older my advice is sometimes warranted but certain areas I steer clear from advising anyone about due to the fact I sucked at certain decisions I made. One area was my choice in women. I tended to find the kind who would stand on the roof of her Acela train, arms waving in air...and had questionable brakes. Luckily for me, I never crashed too hard but it was enough to be painful at times but no broken bones nor massive payouts in any divorce case.

Except one time where my desire for “fun” over rode my usual chicken-shit-scared of any variable I can't control in life. (Sheesh, at this age you'd think I'd ease up on it, but I was warned that the older you get, the more cautious you get about everything!) Anyways, I tossed my reconnoitering of situations, my cost/benefit analyses when it came to some accessible pretty thing who seemed to promise fun I never saw before.

I've written about her before, Lori, the one who lived in Cheyenne, Wyoming. She had grown up in the Attleboro's and by chance, I found her in a chatroom on the internet. She was married, bored to death and she too liked speed and thrills and other boisterous activities. She flew back to meet up and we have our “fun.” Well, that didn't last long because looking back on it, she wanted her husband to find out. Whatever the reason why I don't know but when you leave travel plans, addresses and the such around the house for him to trip across easily, you're really not trying to hide anything, are you?

It was my one and only time an irate, seriously pissed off husband who called my house and spoke to me in the most sarcastic tone ever. Well, I can understand why. I was lucky enough to have 2,000 miles between us and he wasn't about to jump in any car, rail or plane to come here to pull my skin off bit by bit. Last I heard, and this was years ago, they divorced and she found another guy and living in Denver, CO now. I wonder if he notices her train brakes are useless?

Lori, was Queen #1 'No brakes at all on her train' kinda girl I knew. I'm not a big fan of the Spooky House at the fairgrounds. Being scared to make me jump out of my skin ain't my idea of fun. I have come within 50 feet of a lightning strike once, fallen off a bridge 40 feet down into a scummy algae ridden river at 13. I have lost my grip on a branch and tumbled far to many yards down a slope of rocks and to be stopped, by a larger boulder in the way of my descent. None of those times have I reminisced on as fun. Fright does not do it for me. They're war stories to tell is all.  Lori's kind of fun was a bit over the limit when it included her hubby in the end. 

I did have a time with an exact opposite of the female kind too. Karen, who was the most stable, normal, predictable and boring women I was with. The brakes on her train were inspected daily, upgraded yearly and her train never went faster than 30mph. It made sense, she was a parent of two girls who did quite well with that stability. They did excellent in school and were involved in many other social activities that promised a normal upbringing. I have to give Karen that. She was a good Mom who was home...”there” and was going to be there for a long time for her girls. There were no drugs, booze or low self esteem bulimia to contend with when it came to her life as a parent.

However, like I said already, Karen was a crushing bore a lot of the time. I'd come up with some adventures and she'd back off or..”wanted to think about it.” One was to take her and the girls to Ausable Chasm in in the Adirondacks, a miniature Grand Canyon. It had a maintained trail with guides and Park Rangers and silly safe family friendly areas and hotels. I made the mistake of telling her there was one rope bridge we'd have to cross over a part of the Ausable river that was all whitewater. Well, that killed that idea in her head. I think the brakes on her train may have had frozen calipers that always gripped and slowed the entire train down no matter what. 

 

 Ain't that bad...I did it once. The walk along the cliffs is scarier. 

I finally told H, as we talked, that “don't go by my life...it's way different than what you experienced.” IE: Don't go by my example of looking for the rides that you'd find at questionable fairs that pop up in large Walmart parking lots....or those ill maintained chlorine tanker trains in the Mid West that like to hop the track.

“You've had some years of that kind of girl...who couldn't slow her own train down...don't go looking for another” was all I could say.

Now had he asked me about oil futures, why American refineries are mainly heavy crude distillers of Canadian and Venezuelan slop oil and not the nice light sweet crude the USA itself is awash with...I'd be happy to chat him up. That I am very stable and rational about and take so few chances with . By the way, it's true, the USA pumps out incredible amounts of light sweet crude till we're up to our ears with it.  But, there are many refineries in Texas and Louisiana that are built just to handle heavy sludge oil.  The private oil companies are too scared to invest in refineries that can crack down light sweet crude. Why? One day the price of oil will drop and they'll be standing there with high cost refineries that will take forever to pay back on.

Living The Dream Life

 

 

 

This will be a paraphrased, sort of jumbled remembrance of an eulogy I gave for a friend I had known for 37 years. Barn died back in December but J. who is managing his estate had to cough up all the cash in advance before Xmas to get Barn prepared for his final resting place, and to top that off, hire a lawyer for $5,000 to process the whole thing through the courts. So, she waited till now to make more money to have a service at Cartmell Funeral home in Plymouth. I suspect if Barney had been dirt poor, the lawyer would've done it for far less, but that's the way things go when they found out he inherited his Dad's helicopter company and own land next door to Plymouth Plantations. Looks like the Plantations will buy it now, as they always hit him up to sell it to them and J. has no use for it now except to convert it to cash. I decided to tell a few stories of Barn's life that amazed me. I never lived that kind of life being a Pawtucket native.

**

“Good morning, for those of you who don't know me, I'm Ron M. from RI and that'll explain the accent. I met Barney back in 1985 as he walked into a student lounge at Rhode Island College. He was decked out in tennis clothing, carrying a racket, a bandanna around his forehead and was sweaty as hell. He plopped himself down to chair next to me and started talking to other students there. “I'll shouldn't play against 18 year olds!” he says. As he is talking to the others, he glances at his watch and says, “Well, better get to class, I'll be teaching Medieval peasant diets today.”

To which I turn to him and incredulously ask, “You're a professor?” Because he sure didn't look like any of the ones I had there at RIC.

He, a bit miffed responds, “Yes..I am...what are your four degrees in and are they from Holy Cross, Vanderbilt, the University of Bologna and perhaps Champagne/Urbana Illinois?”

I tell you, I never imagined a college professor like this, showing up after a tennis match, snarky and covered in sweat ready to discuss peasant cabbage recipes to history majors.

I'm good for that, getting off on the wrong foot. However, we became the best of friends in time.

**

Barney returned to the Navy after being decommissioned as a lieutenant commander to a civilian contractor. He told me of a port of call he made where he hobnobbed with some KGB officers in Russia. The ship he was on stopped at Archangel, an arctic port in Russia when the US and the Soviets were talking. They allowed the officer class to leave the ship and tour the city and since even if you're retired Navy, your rank still holds sway so he got to tool around Archangel for a bit .

Barn tells that he was walking down the Main St, looking around when he noticed a black sedan slowly following him about 50 feet back. He figured it out quickly as the ship's commander had warned them of being followed or spied upon, so watch what you say to anyone. He then ducked into a small bar and using the little Russian he knew, orders three shots of vodka. He drinks one and then tells the bartender to bring the other two out to the two men in the black sedan parked out front. He does this. Barn then stays to chuck down more shots and after thirty minutes leaves. He passes by that sedan and notices two empty shot glasses on the dashboard and he taps the fender, pointing at the glasses and says in his tourist Russian...

“Не за что” (You're welcome!)

They gave up tailing him after that.

**

Barn also was a member, for a bit in the early 70s, of a hippy commune in Berkeley California after his stint with the Navy. He had made his way from the Navy base in San Diego after being discharged (a year before he was hired back by the Navy as a civilian) up to San Francisco. Apparently he would try anything once if he was curious and the hippies intrigued him. He said the other members of the commune was this guru type of guy who would clang finger symbols all day long going “Ommmmmmmm” to himself to find and attain transcendence. There was Paula, a 16 year old runaway who made her way in life as a high priced whore to the businessmen who lived across the Golden Gate bridge in Marin county and Diana, a Massachusetts comrade who he stayed in touch with when he returned to Plymouth. Others would come and go as they could chip in for rent. His description of Diana was this: “Her whole day could be ruined if her shoelace broke in the morning, her ability to deal with stress was awful. The commune sort of helped her get through a day.”

He tells me, “Next door to our commune was another, called the Peking Man House due to a Chinese sculpture that was in front of it. It was set off a bit from the other homes and shared a courtyard with ours. I rarely saw the other members but two hippy girls, Mizz Moon Solytnik and Nancy Ling Perry who would come over and hang with us. They never ever did discuss who the others were in their home. More than a few times we'd go down to the college and the girls would sell clothing, food, beads anything for a few dollars to support their particular commune.”

“Well, one day they all disappear w/o a goodbye in the middle of the night. Several months later, the LAPD and the Symbionese Liberation Army, the ones who kidnapped Patricia Hearst, had this massive shoot out. When they published the names of the dead, I saw those two girls I knew at Peking Man, Mizz Moon and Nancy, both shot to pieces and burned up.”

“Ron, believe me, I had NO idea that the Peking commune was the SLA safe house. Those two girls I talked to just seemed like two lost young hippy girls, and there were a zillion of them in Berkeley then. But how those two carried themselves...you'd never know what they were really up to.”

I asked, “Was Patricia Hearst there?”

“I bet, probably locked in a closet before she went loony and joined the SLA. The only other safe house they had was the one in LA, the one where the shoot out occurred...and Patricia was not at that one when it went down. The FBI showed up at Peking Man afterwards to investigate and said that it was the only other hideout, Patricia had to have been there.”

Damn...you KNEW two members of the SLA? How freaky is that!”

“I didn't know they were SLA! I knew two girls who really hid themselves well apparently. I never knew what was going on in that house...still amazes me to this day. Hell, they did a great job keeping themselves and Hearst quiet and then managed to convert her to their cause.”

**

There were a couple of times Barn lamented to me about not having a regular, stable typical life others had. For him it would've been a tenure track position at a Boston college, a home, perhaps kids. But instead, he spent most of his life traveling, hitting every country except Nepal, Uruguay, Paraguay and missed a few islands in the Caribbean. I had to remind him most career types would be insanely jealous of his life. I was in a way. I never traveled like that. I am amazed at times the balls he had to just take off with a backpack and say, hitch hike his way across Australia for a summer, and then get seeded at the Australian Open to try his luck at tennis, which he did.

**

So, there you have it folks, you all are now FOUR degrees of separation from Patty Hearst. You to Barn to the SLA finally to Hearst. 

 

These are the two he hobnobbed with w/o even knowing what was up. 

 

Nancy Ling Perry

Mizz Moon Solytnik

SLA Shoot Out

 

Standing On the Brake

Like no one has experienced aging before, but it's new to me. It's proof positive that anyone's self-hood, including mine, dominates. Everyone else's perception be damned. It took me a few decades to “get” Neil Young's line in Mr. Soul. “For the thought that I caught, that my head is the event of the season.” Translation? Your current view of the world is all that matters, other's are dead and do not matter. 

There once was an English college professor I had at RIC, Paul Anghinetti, who said there was only one poem that ever mattered and he wrote it. He loved saying it at the beginning of the semester of whatever class he was teaching.

I,I,I

Me,Me,Me

Now,Now,Now

Gimmie, Gimmie, Gimmie

Mine, Mine, Mine.

Ok, I've hammered the fact we're all self interested and how aging and time matter ONLY to ME. No one else has written about it! Right?

**

Remember when you were eight and you saw it was “Just only Wednesday!” You thought the weekend was decades away and during your youth, and it was. Weeks went by like months. Your next birthday where you turned nine was in the year 2402. You had so much time and the fact it crawled enabled you to complain to your parents, “I'm BORED!” Well, you would be wouldn't you if your perception of time is molasses. How are you to fill up all that time and make it entertaining?

That's why “fun” is the antidote. It makes you forget the passage of time at whatever speed it's at. Young boys, like myself, would go to heroic lengths to find or invent fun. Gary McClintock, a kid I knew then, provided lots of fun one day by setting fire to reams of old carbon paper behind the loading docks of Cherry & Webb on Armistice blvd, on a very windy day. The wind sucked the flaming paper into the open warehouse door and started a fire in there, bringing half of Pawtucket's fire apparatus to the scene. That's a hell of an accomplishment for a 7 year old. It created great amusement for us all, except Gary when the arson detective figured it out and told his Mom.

Fun is still the antidote to time and boring day to day adult life. Just don't engage in things that make 7 year olds wide eyed with amazement.

Poor Gary is gone now. An adult's leg thrombosis took him away a decade ago. In heaven, I hope he gets to burn all the Cherry & Webbs he wants and gets away scott free this time around.

About a decade ago, I was cleaning out my car of a winter's worth of filth when my neighbor, Leonard Knight, an 80 year old across the street, came over to talk and watch. It was a very warm late March day and the elderly tend to leave their hibernation caves when tempted on days like that.

I was commenting to Leonard that the past winter seemed to shoot by me, here it was, spring already. I then confessed I thought time was going “quicker” because I was in my late 40's.

“HA!” Leonard shouts. “Just wait till you're MY age, it goes by even quicker no matter what!”

I looked at him, probably with a snarky look on my face.

Ah, he was right. I'm in my very late 50's and time's speed limit is much faster.

There were times in my life where I had everything on my plate and each hour was accounted for. Was I bored? Nope, I was stressed, which isn't the preferred antidote to boredom. Weeks and months shot by me w/o noticing it. Well, I would notice it, when the calendar was flipped and I remarked to myself, “June...already?”

And there were times when I have ample freedom and could take all damn day to accomplish a small thing.

Know what the speed of time was like during those empty days? The same. It goes by just as fast.

I listen to various radio stations from around the world and and pipe them through my computer to the stereo. Weirdly enough, some station in Denmark played The Motel's Suddenly, Last Summer. I was 19 when it came out and it basically tells of massive life changes when Martha Davis, the singer, tells of a romance that forever ended her childhood and the death of her mother from suicide when she was 19.

I time warped back to 1983 with all it's fun and ugliness like every year has and then noticed that that age, 19, took forever to get to 20. In my mind at least it did then. Now, the day I turned 50 felt like a few weeks ago.

And it's going to speed up, whether I'm busy or not. And that's new to me... as I enter this new age. I'm sure I'll keep telling stories with new facts that sort of startle me as I move up into my 60's, facts I've never experienced at all when younger and couldn't have fathomed. 

 

 Geddy was 33 and complaining about time lost. He's 68 now and Neil Pert has gone to the Choir Invisible. That blonde chick with the rat tail is Aimee Mann, the singer of Till Tuesday's "Voices Carry." 

 

I Just Had to Let It Go, For a Bit Anyway.

This is a first draft so there is no tightening of the grammar, style, placement and flow. And I guarantee this story will wander. It may just plain suck but so what.

There used to be a commercial for a mini-van showing a very busy Mom dropping the kids off at school, going to work, picking the kids up, dropping them off at their after-school activities, grocery shopping, get the kids again and then finally getting home. She gets out of her car and happily remarks to the camera lens on how wonderful her Dodge MiniVan improves on her “full life.”

I then yelped at the TV, “Lady, your life SUCKS!”

Since when was being busy to the point you crash in bed every night from exhaustion living the full life? Getting everything done with seconds to spare isn't my idea of a life well lived. I am fully aware of those families that have to work constantly for the $ and try to give their kids a decent life, but in no way can you convince me that's a life dreamed for. For some, that trap of low pay and no prospects is an economic jail sentence. It's devilishly hard to escape from. If you had the decent job, it was probably a eye opener to you to discover you had only so many hours in a day to raise kids and try to live a larger, more expensive life than your parents did. There is a reason why the axiom "Biting off more than you can chew" was invented.

Though I'm one to bitch about this as I have done it for several times in my past. Once was in college as a full time student and working full time. That was fun. Weeks shot by w/o my realizing they were it was going so fast.  The second was again in a school getting another degree, full time, while also working, full time. It was seven days a week for two years as the school's program was twelve hours long on the weekends. I chose to do that!

The third, was due to my stupid loyalty to others. There are times I can thank my parents for instilling that Edwardian etiquette in my. It keeps me civil. Think of the English soldier throwing himself on a live grenade while storming Normandy, so the others can advance up the beach. Wow, what honor...bravery...thoughtfulness. Well, he's still dead. And any parades or Veteran's days people honor are for all of them, en masse. There is no singling out of any poor schlub who took a bullet for their nation.

Anyways, the third time. I had been working for a corp that didn't care if you lived or died, just so long as they could fill that schedule due to all the mismanagement, call outs, covid expulsions and what not. I worked and on my fewer days off I stared at the wall or did laundry. Since I was doing little else, and since my bills were small due to not having to heat the house when I was at work, not using electricity while I was at work, not eating at home...you get the point, I banked my check, again and again with that added bonus of “here's more money, please don't quit during covid!” After a year and a half of doing that, I noticed I could walk out the door and skate for months and months on the savings. Plus, I was done with the corp and it's merry go round of managers and a host of other reasons. Note that I live alone with no kids, no college tuition to pay, no expensive gambling or cocaine habits and a mean ol' witch who dropped a house on me back in 1996 (Old story, I was that last one left standing in a family of terminal cases). At the end of the day, I just have to support “me.”

The first few weeks I was out was a great relief. I just slept, ate and rolled around on the couch like some elephant seal you'd see at a beach. A giant pile of blubber barely moving on the sand, too fat and satiated to go back to sea to get more fish to stuff down it's gullet. The inactivity was necessary and I thought it was healthy, and it was.

However it's very easy to slide on that slope. I became a slug, far too quickly. Damn, it's either feast or famine for me. Though slug-life has it's advantages...for a while. The problem occurs is that inactivity makes u lose muscle mass, impairs your heart and decreases bone density. You actually feel it eventually. I'm glad I didn't turn into “My 600lb Pound Life” but I think I know something of it now. You literally have to do “nothing” to accomplish that goal.

So the trick is moderation. Christ, you'd think at my age I'd keep that in action, since I know it full well. Well, even at this older age, you still fuck up. Perhaps not as dramatically as you would when you are 22 but you still do in a classier and more mature, slower way. So, I'll keep active as I can but not insanely so to aggravate that one day dis-abling pelvic arthritis nor over pushing those hardening arteries that stresses the heart, but just enough. (Gotta love parental/grand parental genetics! Brick hard arteries coming up!) I'll be active for a bit till I become that old guy taking tickets at the movie theater. That may be coming faster than I thought. Is that a demotion? A kick to any career self esteem? Hell no, at this age, you don't give a shit about that anymore. “You're a 35 year old CEO of a start up cloud based financial firm...that's nice..can you pass the pepper please? After this lunch, I plan to nap!”

God...I really have dropped a lot of that Keeping Up with the Jones's stuff. Ah, as you age, no one expects you to put on a show of success, gleaming moral hygiene nor any other public show of how great the Golden Years are. They ain't. I've had many of that age laughingly say it was a god damn lie. Those commercials of the happy, healthy gray hairs sharing wine during sunset at Cabo San Lucas isn't what day to day life really is. What it is is just a moment. It ain't 24/7!

So great, as I age, society expects less of me and I'll give that to them! Know why? Because I'll say it again, as you grow older you really do not care what others think of you. That's the liberation of aging.

So, no minvan life for me. No desperate approval seeking from the family, friends or neighbors is needed. They can all adjudge me slothful due to not filling every minute with that seemingly good life of the overstuffed full plate. Been there, done that. I'll annoy the rest of society by driving my life at 20mph in a 30mph zone. IF I can manage it barring Russian warheads or God-Knows_What. It's what we oldies do, get in the way of your busy life. 

 

"Don't you miss the Big Time boy? You're no longer on the ball!"

 

I "get this" now after all these years. And no, I don't miss all of it.

 

 

 

 

 

In the Name of Pride

 

 

 

There are those “A-Ha” moments that grip you resolutely, cementing a disdained fact into your head you've long been ignoring. I had one last night as I tried to shovel out that embankment the city plows so graciously build at the end of my driveway, and yours. I was whacking away at it, noticing my breathing and heart rate were climbing. Well, so what. Shoveling is compared to running on a treadmill by most doctors because it's that taxing. I kept at it till that “Oh Holy Fuck!” moment arrived. I had to stop and catch my breath and get that heart rate below 130.

I know enough to do that but I had kept slugging away till my body was ORDERING me to stop, and it will get it's way whether you like it or not. The last time I ignored that was on the slope of Mt Willard, when I was trying to keep up with a kid half my age. I was huffing 'n' puffing and my pulse, I could hear in my ear. It was banging that hard. So, I hung onto a tree to calm down and tried not to get more dizzy because the trail below me was at 40 degrees and filled with 70 yards long worth of rubble. Falling down that might be a problem.

I lean against the car, cooling it when I see the 30 year old “kid” across the street shoveling his walk. He's slinging snow left and right, making good progress and not slowing down at all. He's not dizzy, huffing or doing fast math in his head about pulse rates. He's probably thinking about that girl he saw running the register at the Quickie Mart. Sooo, I get back up and into the game. I'm not being left behind by him!

As I shoveled, I was thinking about how long a rescue would take to drive through this mess to jump start my heart.

I “thought" i had things  in hand and as I attacked that pile of snow but I can hear my heart in my ears and the smarter part of my brain, which I don't always listen too, tells me to sit down for a bit.

“Sounds like a good idea.” the dummo part of me says, in agreement.

I sit there and realize that my pride was pushing me all along. “You're not pushing 60! “You can do it!” “That kid over there ain't going to show YOU up!” “Hell, you climbed rock falls not too long ago!”

And it hit me, I AM pushing 60. I am so-called “old.” Not elderly but my age now ain't about keeping up with a 30 year old, even as I try to do so and worried how I might look if I couldn't. As a younger man, if someone did something, I had to do it better, faster, higher and stronger, if I could. I'd at least fight for it and sometimes I'd win too and gain all those puffy chested bragging rights. It easily explains my humping up New Hampshire mountains not too long ago.

I sat there and further thought, “Not anymore kid...You get AARP mailings twice a week. You have to nearly turn your whole body to see over your shoulder as you drive. No more just turning my head. Now if I try that, cervical bones tell me they may snap.

I got curious, so I looked up, “Shoveling After 55” on Google and every site I came across offered this medical advice....”NO!” A blurb from Beth Israel in Boston had a doctor complaining about how many of us come across his table after a winter storm.

“Just don't. Everyone I see over 50 has some amount of heart disease, it's natural for most people even if they feel great. Accept the fact you may need to hire someone to do it or at least, get a snowblower that's self propelled.” he advised.

A friend of mine, who had no obvious symptoms of heart disease and felt his cardio was exceptional due to a life time of playing tennis and trying to get “seeded” in various tournaments (and did many times, even the Australian Open), dropped dead in his bedroom. Cause? Cardio atherosclerosis. Otherwise known as “a heart fully clogged up with fat, cholesterol and goo.”

That crept into my mind sitting there...so I go inside and peeled off the winter clothing and told myself, “You're gonna take TWO days to shovel out.”

I am surely letting go of my youth with a fight. Age gracefully? Fuck that! Well, my pride doesn't get to make certain decisions about that anymore...and being found frozen in a snow bank doesn't appeal to me, even if I'm nicely preserved by the cold.

The kid across the street will have to compete against another old fool hanging onto his pride.

I got the snow cleared, taking two days...and that's OK. I will proudly fight aging with something else, I'm sure knowing me.

13 Stages of Christmas

 

 

I'm out of Christmas stories so I'm re-posting this one.

1-5 years old

You're too young to understand the concept of Christmas. Toddlers enjoy the pretty lights, the gingerbread cookies and popcorn ball treats, the songs and carols and everything fun about the holiday but they don't quite yet understand the power of Xmas. To young kids, Christmas feels like a second birthday except the gifts are doubled, there is no blowing out of birthday candles or parties with ponies taking embarrassing dumps in the backyard. At this age the toy or the box it came in is just as fun to play with. Chewing on the Christmas light cords is fun because the dog showed you how to do it.

6-8 years old

This is the Christmas sweet spot. The age when anything...any gift, magical event, or wish is possible thanks to a fat man living up north in a house full of midgets making toys strangely identical to major manufacturers (yet no one seems to mind). The holiday also includes the greatest gift of all — a week off from school and the constant torture of teachers, bullies and the inability to take a dump for eight hours a day because no one would dare use a bathroom at school...under any circumstances. This is also the age where breaking your new toys can be fun too. This was hard at one time because Tonka made their toys out of real metal then. You kids have it easy today!

9-12 years old

Santa was a lie! You had an idea a few years earlier but now all signs point to your parents shoveling you bullshit for the first decade of your life. What else have they been lying about? Oh just tooth fairies, bunnies delivering chocolate and your uncle who stopped coming by the house a few Thanksgivings ago. He’s not in the Peace Corp, he’s in jail, but they won’t say exactly what for. Maybe lying to his kids about a jolly fat dude with a perverted sounding “naughty” list and a tooth collecting broad with more singles than a main stage stripper on a busy Saturday night to dole out. This is the age where you begin to play the same game back to your parents by ever so deftly manipulating them into getting the gifts you want. This is especially easy if your parents are divorced. You can really haul it in! Simply make them work against one another to compete for your love and approval.

13-20 years old

It’s not about asking for toys anymore, you're a teen, it’s about getting gifts to elevate social status. Designer clothes, expensive kicks, flashy tech gear and maybe even a car if you’re old man is willing to finally give up his beater of a ride, fork over the keys and buy something built in the 2010s. If in college, you loathe yourself for getting so excited over a Christmas gift basket filled with stuff you need at your dorm. You just kissed your parents for the thoughtful gift of bulk toilet paper and rolls of quarters to do laundry. You also realize that getting any clothing is a great gift because you didn't have to buy it yourself. That Merino sweater your GrandMom got you at a eleven years of age wasn't such a sucky gift after all.

21-25 years old

You’re out of college. You’ve got a job. It’s now your responsibility to buy gifts for your entire family. Thankfully, Jesus invented gift cards (it’s in the New Testament) so gift buying is a cinch. Unfortunately, you spend the day after Christmas in return lines because your family has no idea what clothes you wear, your actual size, what music you like, and that you haven’t read a book since Lit 101. And seriously, what the fuck is a compact disc? You also discover that the Chinese are heathens and don't celebrate Christmas and mercifully keep open their restaurants on Christmas night so you can escape your family and go get drunk with your other 20-Something friends. You won't feel like a loser alcoholic because the place will be packed with others running away from their families as well.

25-30 years old

You’re in a long term relationship and you're already spending the Xmas money you don't even have on engagement rings and first homes. The holidays start feeling really different, since you don’t spend them with your own family anymore, but with her family, her friends, and maybe if there is time you can swing by your parents house to visit your Mom who’s pissed you’re not spending the holiday with your family and an old man who has been drunk since his work Christmas party in early December. Stopping by with the right excuses may lessen the jealousy of your parents. Remember to leave the girlfriend home at her parent's place as your Mom never did like her. Realize as well that come December 26^th, Christmas never happened as you are back to your regular workaday world and have to deal with that reality.

30-40 years old

This decade sucks one massive Yule Log. You’re married, you’ve got kids, and those kids demand toys considered “hot ticket items” which oddly get released the week before Christmas by Hasbro who has been hyping the shit out of them all season. So you're traveling in circles around the state just days before Christmas, sometimes even across a couple state borders, to find one stupid Hatchanimal. As you frantically search each store hoping for a miracle (does Home Depot carry toys?) the only thought circling your head is your kid's disappointment because the toy isn't under the tree. You've failed as a parent. You SUCK. You’ve given them love, a home and attention but couldn’t deliver a fucking toy every other kid will get and then wave in the faces of your kids. Hopefully the arresting officer will go lightly on your situation after you punch a Maryknoll nun who was buying a cart full of Hatchanimals for the orphanage. It’s a Christmas miracle you didn’t knock out her two front teeth.

40-50 years old

You've got kids in their teens and early 20s. The toys turn into gadgets and the holiday morphs into an event exorbitantly more expensive than ever before. As if footing the bill for six years in college and another year “finding themselves” wasn't enough of a gift. You don't like anything about the holiday — even the songs you've heard a thousand times each December for the last four decades. Now they annoy the shit out of you on the first note. The Classic radio stations you love now play this crap 24/7. Also the decorating, the traffic, the commercials and those Charlie Brown specials you adored in your youth but now feel like PSA cartoons about the dangers of bullying in school. Seriously, if ever there was ever a cartoon kid to load up an AK-47 and then shoot up his school, it's Charlie Brown. A mindful jury would exonerate him.

50-60 years old

You didn't care about Christmas till a week ago. Your wife (if you're still married) does all of the shopping, you only have to buy for her, and yet you still manage to screw that up. Your kids visit for a couple hours, just to collect their gift cards and eat, and then shuttle out the door to visit their future in-laws because they are “splitting time” between families this year. You’d all celebrate together but your in-laws are fucking bragging loudmouths. Do you really need to hear about their three-week vacation in Italy? You know they'll rub your face in it. You're also not allowed to eat half the food on the Christmas table because of high cholesterol or that just-starting heart failure you've been diagnosed with. You sneak to the buffet table in the other room alone where you can to shove all that wonderful salami into your mouth. As long as no one sees this, it can't hurt, right? You end the day in a drunken sleep.

60-70 years old

The holiday is slightly more enjoyable. You're older now, semi-retired, and living off a smaller salary so no one expects absurdly expensive gifts from you. There are also grandchildren. It's fun to watch them open gifts, get excited for Santa and get wrapped up in the festivities like your kid's did — and you — did so many decades ago. It's also enjoyable to witness your own children, now grown, slowly lose faith in the holiday while chasing down the newest piece of crap toy for their kids. You're laughing your ass off, chugging spiked eggnog and grinning “Welcome to the Club” with a warmth that’s probably thanks to the brandy spiked chocolates and double rum cakes. If there is one thing to celebrate during the holidays, it’s booze-infused baked goods. What's neat at this age, you can complain of feeling too cold or tired and your kids will drive you home and you get to avoid all the ugly family drama.

70-80 years old  

 You don't notice, or care, it's Christmas time. Many of your friends are dead, all your kids are gone during the holiday, visiting your grandkids or just refusing to spend time with a miserable old bastard like you. The good news is no one expects shit from you as far as presents because you're living off a pension or meager social security benefits. Retirement? Ha! Bigger bullshit than Old Saint Nick. Your family would rather you not buy them gifts anyway since you're terrible at buying them. It's because you always left it up to your wife. You on the other hand buy gifts that have no relevance to the recipient at all. “Ohhhh, a compendium of Persian history, three volumes....uh...thanks..” Where is your wife? Well, it depends which wife you're talking about. Also, you spend at least five minutes Christmas day thinking about your impending death. You're really old now, how much time do you honestly have left? It's enough to kill your mood at the Christmas dinner table.

80-90 years old — Christmas? You call this shit Christmas?!? When I was a kid, THAT was Christmas! You refuse to be present at the Christmas that's going on now and prefer to speak of ones that occurred right after WW2, like from 1945-49. Each Christmas you manage to live to see keenly reminds you of the next one you, by probability, won't see. The Social Security mortality tables sure shores this truth up.

The Cemetery Ahh! Finally Linus's speech in Charlie Brown's Christmas Special has come true! “Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth peace, good will toward men. That's what Christmas is all about Charlie Brown.” Except the last Christmas your kids visited your grave was over five years ago and when they did, they both yelled at the ground below their feet about how you fucked up raising them. Oh well, perhaps that sparrow that likes to visit you by landing on your headstone will come by or maybe that homeless guy will lean against your stone, to sleep off his holiday drunk again.