HERE'S LOOKING AT ME

I went to the eye doctor today. This is the same optometrist that last year gave me the backhanded compliment that my 'eyes are good for someone my age but now that I am older I should expect them to steadily get worse’. Older? Older!?! Having worn glasses since second grade, I have never associated bad vision with age. Older… humph. Well I guess I am older then the doctor.

I brought up her comment from my last appointment when she was telling me that my eyes had not changed at all in the past year and a half. She mentioned something about seeing what happens next year but I was already in taunt mode. “I will bet you double or nothing on the price of my contacts that I will be in my 50s before we have to worry about my eyes changing again.” Of course 50 is just not that far away.

The Doctor’s assistant that performed the first few preliminary tests looked to be in her early 20s and certainly could not even remotely conceive of what goes through the head of someone in the long shadows of turning 50. She gave me the typical forced pity smile that I have seen many times before from significantly younger people in the service industry that are paid to be nice to you as I tossed out an array of bad jokes like I hope I ace the glaucoma test, I studied all night with a container of canned air. She sloppily raced through my tests, sometimes forgetting to tell me to only use one eye or the other, at a pace that made it obvious she wanted to get done with me and return to more important things in her life like text messaging a friend (** PITA OM SSINF TMOT UV L8R ).

The same ‘straining to smile’ expressions that the assistant gave to me I saw earlier in the waiting room when an extremely elderly woman came in with her caretaker while I was waiting for my appointment. Watching this very confused older woman try to remember and explain why she was there depressed me. The woman had obviously never had progressive bifocal lens (no line) before and just had not gotten used to them yet. Her caretaker spoke in mixture of stressed pleasantness and frustrated tones as she repeatedly said “ all I know is her son e-mailed me that we needed to come in because her new glasses made her see blurry.” All eyes and questions kept returning to the older woman as she tried to grasp for the answers to the simple questions being lobbed at her.
I found myself empathizing with the elderly woman. My mind was racing. How horrible to deal with your own eroding wits, skills and abilities while modern technology races past you and mortality repeatedly slaps you in the face. Older. The doctor said I’m getting older and things will only get worse. Soon I will be that dithering confused old person trying to answer that snippy twenty-something secret code text messaging brat’s confusing trick questions about the blurry spot in my trifocals. Jumping jehosephats, what I’m paying here she should have at least given me a pity laugh at that canned air joke. I’m old dammit and any minute I will be late for the shuttle from this spectacle doctor to the apothecary for my Depends. ** Pain in the ass(PITA) old man (OM) so stupid it’s not funny (SSINF) trust me on this(TMOT) unpleasant visual (UV) later (L8R)

SICK

I do not get sick very often. I have friends that must go to the doctor at least 10 times a year for one ailment or another. I am not saying that they do not have real issues nor am I tossing the hypochondriac word out there. I think that I must be pretty lucky. I get the same 4-day cold about three times a year. I also get some nasty flu bug (despite getting the shot) once every few years and that really is about it.

I have never had to stay overnight in a hospital and I have not broken too many bones. When I was three years old my brother Arthur and I were making ‘Bubble Land’ by blowing as many bubbles as fast as we could. I stumbled and rather risk spilling my bottle of bubble juice or losing the little intrinsically important to bubble production plastic stick, I held tightly onto both items leaving no hands available to break my fall. I landed on my face and broke my nose. My brother and sister laughed at me at the time and continue to tease me about not putting my arms out so as to prevent several months of walking around with a crooked schnozola.

When I was 13 I fell up a staircase and cracked two ribs. No one was there when I got home from school and discovered our new dog Smokey had gotten out of his create/cage and tore up the kitchen garbage. I ran after him to scold him but I slipped while chasing him up the stairs. With my feet in the air above the stairs, inertia kept my body flying forward as I flew up over the staircase until my lower chest landed on the corner of one of the top steps. With the wind knocked out of me, I rolled down the staircase.

I must have had a concussion because when I woke up on the floor I was dizzy and could not stand up with falling right back down. I crawled into my folk’s bedroom and got to the phone to call for help. The problem was the only phone number I could remember was (212) 936-3838. I kept dialing it over and over and over but since the number was for Dial-A-Joke, it did not really help me much. I laid on the floor with the phone listening to Henny Youngman repeat the same set of jokes over and over and over until my Mom got home.

A couple of days later I was horsing around during lunch at school when one of the science teachers caught me playing a joke on him. Not knowing that under my shirt I was taped up with two cracked ribs, he punched me in the chest to get me to shut up. It did but it also got me fall on the floor with a shooting pain. He was about to yell at me for over acting when someone told him what was up. I assume because he thought I might sue him and the school, he did not say a word to me for a week. Then he caught me after classes off school property and apologized. I told him it was my fault. I’m not sure if that made him feel any better but at the end of the year I had a great grade in Science.

During all the years I traveled I had some other various and sundry odd illnesses. One time I caught some freaky lung infection in Phoenix that was apparently common to the region. I thought I was having a heart attack but it was my swollen lung rubbing against my rib cage that made it hard to catch my breath. A nasty case of food poisoning made an incredibly stressful and busy day in Hartford really miserable. Another time in New York I got a stomach virus that forever changed my digestive system. Prior to being sick I could eat anything in any quantity and never have a problem. From the day I got over it, certain foods no longer agreed with me and I started occasionally having heartburn and acid reflux. I mangled my knee playing a midnight game of basketball in Los Angeles. It might have healed a lot quicker if I stupidly did not try to play on it again four days later. My little knee brace looked very nice under a suit.

I did have one bad spell about four years ago. The year started with a nasty case of the flu. Later some type of spider, that I must have an allergy to, thought there was an ‘all you can eat buffet’ sign on my arm. I had a really weird reaction to the bites and my elbow swelled up till I could not move it. The doctor told me there is not much to do except wait and see if a round of the usual antibiotics and a steroid shot would do the trick. The giant lump shrunk dramatically but for weeks afterwards there was a freaky little bump at the corner of my elbow that felt like it was filled with a stiff gelatinous glob of Silly Putty.

That same year I fell asleep on the floor one night and woke up with a shooting lower back pain. Most of my siblings have had back issues and my oldest brother attributed it to my turning 40. After a few days of waddling around like the Hunchback of North Dallas, my coworkers and wife talked me into going to a chiropractor. Aside from my sister’s ex practicing on my spine when he was in Chiropractic College 25 years earlier, I had never gone to a ‘back cracker’.

Going every week for a few months was not cheap and I honestly cannot say for sure if the treatments or time passage helped my back get better. Luckily I always had fun during my appointments; he was a very entertaining doctor with a sense of humor similar to mine. I started calling him Spine-Boy and his office was filled with all sorts of body part models and tools for me to play with. My back has been pain-free for over three years so I guess I should not complain.

I just told my wife what the topic of this blog was. She said that she might as well start using Airborn and Zycam right now. According to her there is no way I can write about not getting sick without a nasty case of ‘irony’ hitting and causing me to catch some horrible illness. Just to be careful, maybe I will wash down a couple of zinc pills with a half-gallon of orange juice. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dial-A-Joke

LOOKS THE SAME TO ME

Where does the time go? It feels like just a few years ago I was an annoying obnoxious bratty kid and now I look at myself in the mirror and I see an annoying bratty middle-aged adult. Time does seem to fly by but I really do not have much in my life that I truly can complain about. I like my world right now; it has taken decades but I am finally very comfortable living in my skin (maybe I’m more comfortable because between the extra weight and the sagging I now have more skin to live in). I still get excited about the future, but sometimes I can’t help but wish I could climb into the past and spend just a little more time within a certain time or place from long ago.

I remember talking to my Mom back when she was approaching 50 years old and I was still in Junior High. She mentioned that as a kid ‘50 always seemed very old’ to her and since she was almost there, she was having a hard time adjusting to her body being that old yet her mind still looking at the universe as a young woman. I have never forgotten that conversation. I not only understand it more as time passes, I have also braced myself over the years for the feeling. Now that I am not far from the same age she was when we had that talk, I see that my own views and reactions might have modified with maturity and age but I still see the world through the same eyes I always have.

My opinions on many different issues have changed and grown over the years but my core belief system is really the same since I was young. Who I am has not changed with age. I might be a bit mischievous but I think I am good person. I find comfort in the fact that I believe I have always been and will always be essentially the same person I am today.

What I found funny as a kid, I still laugh at now. Like the fact that I still find humor in the lyrics I wrote, printed and handed out to my 6th grade classmates before a school-wide assembly performance. It still makes me laugh that I got a bunch of 11 year old kids to sing my rewritten words of “Country Roads take me home to the place I belong West Virginia…” that included two references to the lower female genitalia and one to homosexuality. I still find a twisted humor in the fact that 15 years ago my buddy Mike and I taunted people playing nickel slot machines in Vegas by rolling dimes at them and that I got a table of 20 Asians to on my cue stand up in unison in a restaurant and announce to my startled table that ‘Dan L is Number One”.

Much to the chagrin of the people around me, I think my sense of humor will be unaffected by my age. I have always pictured myself as a feeble old man walking around the mall in mismatched clothing pulling my false teeth out in front of young kids and gumming the words “this is your future’. When you are very old you can get away with all kinds of stuff that no one would tolerate when your young. There are of course the aches and pains that come with old age but that is the price you pay for living to an age that you do not have to worry about impressing anyone anymore. I’m sure I will find great pleasure as a 90 year old man going through the express lane at the grocery store at 6pm with 40 items and making the growing crowd behind me wait as I have the cashier read me back the price of each item already in the cart as I decide what I can actually afford to write a check out for.

The type of woman I was attracted to as a teenager discovering my sexuality is still what I like now. I assume that will not change, as I get older. I guess that explains why very old men lust after young woman; they still desire that same ‘type’ that they first fell for as a kid. Since they see the world with the same eyes as they did as a kid, the ‘look’ they lust for does not age along with them. For the record I am not sure if this is true for me. (Here is where a smart man would say something very nice about his wife but proving I am as foolish as I was as a kid…) I thought Bernadette Peters was way hot when I was 12 years old and I still think she is hot today.

Here I am. Older and maybe even a tiny little bit wiser but I cannot control how fast time just keeps rushing by. Friends who I want to see every few weeks drift farther away as the space between visits roll from week to month to year. I do not mind personally growing older but I hate that the space and time between myself and the people I love, grows with the passing time as well. I again would like to take this moment to tell the people in my life how much I treasure their love and friendship. I am a better person because of the influences you have all been on my life.

COFFEE MAKES ME PEE

I was in a synagogue last Friday night (since I am not religious that probably seems a bit odd) although I did not attend any religious services (well that makes some things seem a bit less odd but does open the door to a whole lot of other oddness) I was helping my friend Bethany serve espresso and cappuccino coffee drinks to folks after a special holiday dinner (I guess that does not really help explain any of the oddness, but it will make sense later). I have never helped serve fancy coffee drinks to a hundred or so Jews before but I guess it is not very different then serving fancy coffee drinks to a large group of Catholics or Islamists* except maybe for the occasional kvetching**.

Bethany, a member of that synagogue’s congregation who happens to be a rep for the Nespresso*** espresso company (I told you things would start making sense), had asked a few of us to help her serve drinks that night. Since I have two Nespresso machines I must have seemed like a logical choice despite the event’s location (see, it all fell into place). Several people operated the cool machines, I took drink orders, my wife corrected my numerous mistakes (no different then every other day, it’s one of the many reasons I need to keep her around) while Bethany ran around like a crazy person talking up the machines and solving problems like our running out of decaf and the electricity to the machines going out.

I have not been in a church or synagogue for a while. I have strong feelings on the subject of religion and I would like to think of myself as smart enough not to push my personal beliefs on anyone else. The bottom line is that even though I am not active in any organized religion, I strongly follow the main tenets that most are founded on. Of course the folks I work with tell me on an almost a daily basis that I am ‘going to hell’ but I expect that response to my somewhat blasphemous jokes since I live in the buckle of the Bible belt.

I had never been to this particular synagogue before that night although I was aware of it since it had been in the news lately. A few weeks ago an 81-year-old retired police officer was standing up for a prayer during services when his gun fell out of his pocket and discharged when it hit the floor. The accident might be funnier if the bullet had not shot his daughter in the leg as well as injuring two other people. To make matters worse there turned out to be another member of the congregation with the exact same name as the ex-police officer so when the story made the local news, the 84 year old retired furniture store owner with the same name kept getting phone calls from concerned and confused friends. ****

It was a chaotic event but it went by very fast. I got to hang around with some nice people and not only did I help but I also had fun. Afterwards I am not sure who kidnapped whom but Bethany and David (her ultra-swell gentleman pal) joined my wife and I for a cramped short drive in my Mini Cooper to a very non-kosher sushi restaurant for drinks and a late dinner.

We were sitting around chatting over the odd combination of onion rings and albacore sashimi when it came up that half of the table uses the restroom a lot more frequently then the other half. Yes, I was one of two frequent bathroom users. I am not embarrassed by this fact and I am very used to it.

For years as I excused myself to go use the facilities I have announced to drinking buddies in bars that ‘beer goes through me like an arrow through cotton’ and that ‘I have TB – tiny bladder’. A frequent bathroom goer like myself tends to have a whole repertoire of bad bathroom jokes to use while getting up for the umpteenth time to use the bathroom. I do not think there is anything physically wrong with me. I just go a lot. I think it is most likely due to all the beer and fancy coffee drinks I consume.

For years I have introduced my friend T-Bone to people as the ‘man that changed the way I go to the bathroom’. The line always gets looks, but it is true. Years ago he told me of an article he read about men having 50% less bladder and prostate problems if they follow the simple rules of not ‘pushing’ when you urinate and not ‘holding it’ for prolonged periods of time. I have followed those rules ever since. About the only time I ‘hold it’ in is when there is one of those creepy annoying bathroom attendants. I would rather have prostate and bladder problems then deal with them.

How or why the bathroom conversation came up that night I do not recall. My wife finds it very strange that since she has been with me the topic of restroom habits seems to frequently rear its ugly head when we are hanging out with friends. She claims to have never been a party to conversations like that before I came along. She feels her life has not improved by now knowing that there is an unwritten urinal rule amongst men that you never ever look down to the left or right, the fact that some bars have newspapers mounted on the wall above the urinals, that some men sit down in public restroom stalls to pee and that some men feel the need to spit when they pee.

I have never really understood the spit when you pee thing. I think a lot of guys do it because there is nothing else to do or just simply out of habit. I figure when some men were very little boys trying to feel macho while embarrassingly peeing in a public exposed place, they took up spitting as a seemingly manly man activity to do. The habit develops and suddenly as grown men, the loogies start to fly whenever they pee.

It is not only our male friends that discuss bathroom topics when we are out. We have learned from our female friends about all sorts of equally scary feminine bathroom rituals that I am sure no one really wants me to get into. Some people might say that there is no appropriate time to publicly discuss stuff like this but the truth is, like it or not, we all go to the bathroom (some more then others). Like the weather, it is a common point of context that we all can relate to. Well I better wrap this up; I have to go pee.* http://www.superluminal.com/cookbook/essay_coffee.html** http://www.thefreedictionary.com/kvetch*** http://www.nespresso.com/precom/home_us_en.html**** http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/091907dnmettemplegun.2d374ee.html