2001-03-20 - 19:35 MST

March 20, 2001

Your Thoughts

My excuse ? I mumbling, muddling, meditate. So there too.

So here is this grizzled, gruntled old dude at a keyboard, fingers skittering along. Making words, English ones at that, stringing them together to make sentences too. ? ? ? ?

He was sixty-nine in 1990 when he retired reluctantly leaving the hubris and companionship of being with younger fellow workers.

Crippled but mobile, not using a walker yet, just a cane. Man, watch him get around the super market leaning on a grocery cart. Having the senior pains of arthritis, which most everyone has with age.

Living in an apartment complex with his wife of many years, Heather who bore and raised five kids and is putting an oar in now and then to help raise the Grandkids kids now.

Vegetating ? No, just not caught up in the mad scramble on the carrousel of the work-a-day world. Miss it ? Yeah ! But now able to make common sense choices at will.

What does he do ? Of course much visiting with grown kids, their grown kids and spoiling the Great's. Visiting friends. Just returned from a week in Tampa, Florida visiting a friend, one from the years 1952 on. He goes shopping and on errands with Heather, making rest stops as necessary. Judiciously eating out now and then. For two non-splurgers eating out is really not much more expensive than eating at home and a darn sight less tiring. Denny's senior menu serves just about the right amount to be filling but not grossly so. But spoiling each other occasionally going to a nice place, ordering big, eating their fill and asking for a doggie bag to take home. Plebian ? Sure, why the hell not ?

He devours the morning paper and as a purgative/emetic reads the best part of the paper last, The Comics. Like a good doggie he uses the paper. Later he ruminates about what he has read. Tries to figure out the P.C. spin the media has put on the already whirling jazz the bureaucrats, politicians and special interest groups have turned the mess into. He tries to fit the latest into the camouflaged, so called facts gleaned from previous propaganda. He again notices that most of the time, facts and figures needed to really understand the items are sadly lacking. For instance -- in a hypothetical news item, "Joe Jones in an argument with a neighor hit him with a 2 x 4." A two by four what, 2 inches, 2 feet, 2 miles ? ? How long was it ? ? A quarter of an inch or mile ?? Was it wood, steel, cloth ? ?

He is wary of the items stating figures as most of the time all the facts are not there. He notes that most anything can be apparently proved by skewed charts, graphs and figures.

He spends a lot of his spare time thinking and trying to make sense out of the world, from its recorded history up to the present day. So far it is still muddled in his mind, too many lies and smoke screens.

Well, what the hell can he have to say ? Opinions and a bunch of them. Formed from experience, thinking and observation and some bias no doubt. He likes to tell stories of what it was like when he was a kid growing up, remembering ancient scenes and friends. Once in a while coins a bit of doggerel when in a sentimental mood. Waxes a bit lyrical when enthused about something.

He has something to say when someone offers to give him a penny for Your Thoughts . . . . .

Blog