Ma, I Don't Feel Good

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids — the Stickies — eventual selves to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted.  

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating meltdown.  

About 

Glossary 

Featuring Dana: Hallucination, guest star, and charming literary device  

"It's no longer a question of staying healthy. It's a question of finding a sickness you like." -Jackie Mason

Dear Stickies and Gentlereaders,

I have a confession to make. As a kid and a callowyute, I regularly missed school by claiming to be sick when I wasn't.

{Gasp!}

My mum and I had an unspoken, unacknowledged agreement that as long as I didn't get carried away, as long as I was passing, this was acceptable. 

{Wait-wait-wait. If this arrangement was unspoken and unacknowledged how do you know what she...}

For the same reason I knew that if I did get carried away or I was failing that she wouldn't have hesitated to intervene, Dana.

{Huh. Ask a silly question. I'm going to go out on a limb here. You didn't much care for formal education, yes?}

It interfered with my reading, but that's not what I want to talk about.

{I'm shocked. May we, your humble gentlereaders, have a hint, pray tell?} 

Certainly, it's about how I felt about illness/injury/disease/etceterease as a kid and a callowyute as opposed to my take now that I'm a sexy senior citizen.

Even when my delayed adulthood finally arrived — when I was 32 and went from hippie with a job to a man with a chronically sick wife and a nine-year-old daughter (a tomboyperson still prone to self-injury decades later) virtually overnight — I took my good health for granted and assumed it would last forever. 

{Forever?}

In the sense that I didn't give it much thought. Having been blessed with what I now realize was excellent health I somehow assumed this was the way of things. Other people might be subject to health problems, but not me.

{That makes no sense. I suppose you thought you were going to live forever as well?}

Paradoxically, no. I've long assumed, to one degree or another, that we're all merely characters in a very vivid dream that God is having regardless of what's next. Since there's nothing to be done, what's all the fuss about?

For the record, I can't take any credit for this attitude any more than I can take credit for many decades of effortless good health (now gone), or any more than I can take credit for having no desire to live forever (which I suspect would be quite boring).

That's just how I roll, as they say, assuming they still say that. 

{You should ask them.}

 

Nowadays, I give a lot of attention to the state of my health for multiple reasons: 

- I'm in no hurry to be deleted. Watching Western Civilization attempting to commit suicide is fascinating. 

- I'm almost 70 and I've always thought that 70 and up means you're old. I'm now coping with various and sundry health problems, none life-threatening (that I know of), that started about five years ago and seem to be proliferating. 

- I know a lot of dead people who live on in my psyche.

- I've personally been directly involved with more than one H. sapien dying slowly, painfully, and not "well" (as they also say), and I know there are worse things than dying.     

Fortunately, unlike my mum and dad, who died 5 and 13 years prior to my current age, respectively, I've never been addicted to nicotine and I have effortless access to a world wide web of all knowledge.

Unfortunately, real, licensed, practicing highly trained docs frequently disagree with each other about any given malady. 

Note the word real and consider yourself warned because there's also no shortage of (technically) real doctors and licensed practitioners of this, that, and that other thing on the web, many of whom have thousands of "followers," and who claim to have the answer (or the product) you're looking for. 

There's also no shortage of quacks, blackguards, and ne'er-do-wells making a comfortable living legally selling snake oil in the Information Age by posting notices and warnings in the fine print. Preying on the sick and vulnerable might not be the world's oldest profession but it's on the top ten list. 

For some reason, George Noory, host of an extremely popular late-night radio show, comes to mind 

Wikipedia: "Coast to Coast AM is an American late-night radio talk show that deals with a variety of topics. Most frequently the topics relate to either the paranormal or conspiracy theories."

Helpfully, there's a website where you can easily access: 

"...EXCLUSIVE HAND-PICKED PRODUCTS FROM GEORGE NOORY'S SHOW! ONE-OF-A-KIND PRODUCTS, FOR LIVING AND LOOKING A HEALTHIER LIFE, ALL WITH A FREE GIFT AND FREE SHIPPING."

As Mr. Spock would say, may you live long and prosper. 

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

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Dear Tiffany,

Image by Monika from Pixabay 

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids — the Stickies — eventual selves to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted.  

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating meltdown.  

About 

Glossary 

Featuring Dana: Hallucination, guest star, and charming literary device

"And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or..." 

                                                                                        -Barack Obama

Dear Stickies and Gentlereaders (and Tiffany),

Hoo-Boy... I've done it again. 

I apologize, Tiffy, may I call you Tiffy? You see, I saved a quote attributed to you and I don't know where I got the quote from. In my defense, I'm almost old. I'll be turning 40 next summer and my short-term memory, as well as my organizational skills, ain't what they used to be. 

I think that it may have been in the Wall Street Journal. Their opinion page occasionally includes an item called Notable & Quotable that features a quote from someone who's not necessarily important or well-known. Regardless of where I found the quote I'm certain that you are the quotee. 

{There's no such word as quotee, and don't you mean opinion pages, plural?}

Are you sure? And for the record, the online version of the WSJ posts all three pages of op-eds that are published in the dead trees version as one long scrollable page, Dana. Anyway, I find Tiffy's quote to be interesting and worth sharing.  

Tiffany shares Mrs. Clinton's and Barack Obama's opinion of the Deplorables. Being semi-deplorable myself, naturally, her quote caught my eye.  

"I understand why they might be grumpy. After all, in all sorts of ways, especially economically, they’ve lost/are losing ground. What I don’t understand is why they don’t learn to code, or pitch ideas for reality TV shows, or something instead of whining about it all the time."

Obviously, Tiffy is not devoid of empathy, but clearly she's no pushover.

You know what? I'll wager that If she courageously decides to reproduce in spite of the many problems and downsides of doing so in a postmodern world — finding a genetically and financially suitable mate, the environmental impact of creating yet another carbon dioxide emitting H. Sapien, finding woke daycare, stretch marks, etc. — she'll be a tiger mom (tiger birthing person?) regardless of which ethnicity she self-identifies with.

{You're just recruiting um... fresh participators? The Ponzi scheme that finances your Social Security checks requires a steady stream of same.}

Is participator a real word? Anyhow, don't get her started:

"And don’t get me started on the Bitter Clingers! They may think that their “religion” gives them the right to not have anything to do with abortion, or baking cakes for LGBTQ etc., but what if it was still legal in some states to refuse to serve white, brown, etc sorts of people?"

Abort that baby, bake that cake, and shut up! A woman of principle. I must admit I'm confused though. Refusing to serve a person of pallor is the sort of discrimination actively encouraged by many of the awokend as atonement for sins real or imagined.

If the Supremes were to just wake up and start interpreting dust-covered legislation, and the moldy old Constitution for that matter, in a much more flexible way Tiffy's frustrations could easily be resolved.  

"It’s our duty to drag these folks into the 21st century for their own good!"

The last line of the quote is my favorite. It reminds me of the idealism many of my fellow Boomers and I professed a long time ago in a zeitgeist, far, far away — at least for a minute or two before most of us were mugged by reality and had to get a real J.O.B.

Unfortunately, it also reminds me of the late, not-so-great Mao Tse-Tung's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and/or any given inquisition conducted by the Catholic church over the course of several centuries. But in her defense, given the current state of the American education system, Tiffy may never have heard of either.

Fortunately, this being the 21st century — and not the late middle ages and early renaissance when the inquisition was really rockin', or the swingin' sixties when Chairman Mao was Chinese communisms comeback kid — we don't torture and/or execute heretics anymore, at least in America.

We just dox 'em, cancel 'em, and destroy their livelihoods and reputations. We've come a long way, baby. And if they profusely profess the error of their ways (and hire the right public relations specialists) redemption is theoretically possible.

{Hey-hey-hey, wait a second. You're turning 70 next summer, not 40, what do you think you're...}

Well, gotta go, Tiffy. If I don't get out the door soon I'm gonna be late for this week's Ironman Triathlon. Please feel free to contact me if you should happen to read this.

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

Scroll down to share my work or access oldies. Buy an old crank a coffee? Extra content is available to members of Cranky's Coffee Club.    

Comments? Head on over to my Facebook page and love me, hate me, or try to have me canceled. Cranky don't tweet, but I'm considering it... Go Elon, go!

 

Dinner With the Family

Image by wixin lubhon from Pixabay 

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids — the Stickies — eventual selves to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted.  

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating meltdown.  

About 

Glossary 

Featuring Dana: Hallucination, guest star, and charming literary device

"Tell the truth, work hard, and come to dinner on time." -Gerald R. Ford

Dear Stickies and Gentlereaders,

I'm so old that when I was a kid eating dinner supper with the whole fan damily was literally a rule, and I don't recall being aware of any family that didn't follow the rule. 

{Fan damily?} 

A lame old joke that still pleases me, Dana. I enjoy spoonerisms as much as I do bad puns and alliteration.

{Lame and old would seem to...}  

This rule was not the result of the fact that, as Stanford University now informs us, "Numerous studies show that eating together not only is an important aspect of family life..." that "when a family sits down together, it helps them handle the stresses of daily life and the hassles of day-to-day existence."

Paging Norman Rockwell. 

{Who?}

The reason my family ate together every day — which we called supper because "Democrats eat supper at 5:00, Republicans eat dinner at 9:00" according to my parents — was for both traditional and practical reasons and just the way things were. 

{Wait-wait-wait. Dinner vs. supper? I don't get it.}

You're overthinking it, it was just one of the ways Ed and Reda Mehlmauer expressed their firm belief that the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the working man gets it in the neck. 

{Don't you mean working person?} 

Nope. They were both too busy trying to keep their seven kids fed, clothed, and sheltered to worry about sexism, and not even aware of their white privilege. Alas, both died relatively young. He was 56, she was 64, and they both died prior to the Great Awokening.

It was traditional, I can remember hanging out in front of a local corner store, the proprietors of which lived upstairs, waiting for their family to finish supper and reopen the store. 

By the way, like most stores at the time, it wasn't open all night and was closed on Sundays. I'm not personally aware of anyone starving to death because of these primitive customs but I am aware of individuals who were the victims of intense nicotine fits. 

It was practical, for multiple reasons. Most mums were stay-at-home mums and making supper was part of the job description. Larger families and less prosperity on average made eating out relatively rare in working-class circles. "Fast food" was around but not ubiquitous like it is today. 

Obviously, pizza and Chinese food were two all-American exceptions. You may have visited Colonial Williamsburg, eaten pizza made in brick ovens, and taken a ride in an authentic, horse-drawn pizza delivery wagon.

Unfortunately, being a working-class family of nine, real pizza was rare. But Chef Boyardee's pizza in a box came along in 1955. Some maintained it tasted more like the box than it did actual pizza but the price was right.  

Chinese food dates to when the California Gold Rush got cooking. A beautifully restored Chinese laundry and a Chinese restaurant next door that were in continuous operation since 1848 — that are now owned by the San Francisco Historical Society — are currently closed due to pending multi-party litigation. 

But I drift. 

Thinking back, I seem to remember that my sibs and I stayed fairly busy pursuing a wide variety of interests and activities in spite of the fact that supper was at five — be there or go hungry.

Free-range child rearing was also a tradition, but any adult-organized/supervised after-school stuff was run by people who also had to get home for supper. Evening activities — street fairs, dances, boy or girl scout meetings, loafing on a comfortable stoop, etc. — had to wait till supper was over.

{What the hell is a stoop?}

But that was then. We stayed busy but the pace of life was slower and we didn't have nearly as many options and choices. Nowadays, mum's stuck at work, and who wants to hang out and gossip and flirt on the stoop on warm summer evenings now that air conditioners aren't only for rich people and we have social media?

{What the hell is a stoop?}

I'll bet that after I'm deleted the Stickies will reminisce about how Poppa liked to eat his dinner in his man cave while streaming a carefully chosen movie or TV show on his large computer monitor because he used his phone (which was often turned off) primarily for phone calls and that he regarded the concept of a smart TV as a contradiction in terms.  

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

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