Mar. 13, 2002 - 19:41 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

Mixed Dates

That's what happens when you get old, or at least that's what happened to me. On looking back through things I find the mistakes I made, unknowingly some time ago.

I'll do a little run through here to refresh my dateless mind. Fourth of July ? Oh, yeah a celebration of our becoming independent from Britian. My birthday ? Not sure if I was born or not. eighteenth of March ? my Mom's birthday. December twentyfifth ? Christmas. January first ? the first day of the new year. November eleventh ? We used to call it Armistice Day, now it recognizes all military veterans. There are days in there which are calculated by the 2nd Monday of a certain month or some such. Too confusing for this simple minded dolt.

That is one of the advantages / disadvantages of keeping a diary, I can look back and see the blatant errors I have made over time, concerning dates. Things that happen every year on the same date and I manage to fluff it.

I have a list in an address book that shows birthdays and other important days of family things. With five kids, seven grandchildren plus two step-grandchildren and their numerous mates and progeny, it takes a date book and a calendar to keep track and do the proper thing at the proper time.

I tend to row, row, row merrily down the stream of time and guesstimating dates. Seasons are pretty obvious, but in many ways are just generalities and can be different in different locales. Somerset, England seems to be in the midst of spring from what The Old Grey Poet says, while here in Denver the cold has relaxed its grip a bit but is still throwing snowballs at us now and then. One day riding with the car windows down and the next cowering in our cave looking out at the bleak, unwelcome, snowflaky scene wondering how many days this nasty bit of weather will last.

Trying to mine details of the past when our married life began in 1943 is a bit difficult. If I said we were paripatetic, that would be putting on the dog, intinerant would be be more understandable I guess. Not migrant, just not being in the same place all the time. In the 60's when I was filling out the necessary paper work to get a security clearance required for my job it required a list of all the addresses and cities I had lived from my beginning. At the start it was easy, three addresses, Grandma's place, our house in South Denver and the one we were living in when I married. On top of those three, Heather and I had lived at more than onehundred different places, some as close as next door and some clear across country, at that time. Then add maybe another dozen places to date.

So I suppose I should get out the time line book of American History in the 20th century and match myself to years at least. Heretofore it has been a by guess and by God sort of thing. For instance - where were we living in such and such year ? A period of discussion, well the oldest one was in third grade and was going to such and such school so we were living on 2113 Easy Street next door to the Flibberty Gibbets. This of course is in itself a nice trip through our lives, bringing back memories. Memories enough that sometimes we forget what the question was.

But this memory and date thing is such an unruly thing in my mind that heavy mental exercise is required for me to even name a year. You might say that I suffer from a plethora of Mixed Dates . . . . . . . . .

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