She wasn’t my first love but she was the first female to inflict womanly pain upon my soul. My first love was Lucy Williams in kindergarten. We once shared a mat during rest period and a couple of crayons afterword. Next was Laura Gail Fitzsimmons in the first grade, but she never knew it. She had flaming red hair, a few discretely placed freckles and kept a small lace handkerchief in her sleeve.

Miss Crystal was, actually, my third love … an older woman with whom I became smitten in the second grade. She was the trifecta, the hat trick, the ultimate in kid crushes! She was also the first to break my heart. From the moment I saw her, I knew she was the girl I would marry someday … as soon as I caught up with her. You see, Miss Crystal was my second grade teacher. That meant I had some serious growing to do before Read the rest of this entry

Santa had come and gone. The children were nestled all snug in their beds but the sugar plums that once danced in their heads had been devoured and, by now, the resulting ‘high’ subsided settling things back to a dull roar. Even the nastiest little crumb cruncher hadn’t received coal in his stocking and all was well.  Or was it?

Here it was New Year’s Eve and each year the same two things always amaze me. The first is how the nature of my celebration has changed with time.  The other is our tradition of getting misty-eyed over a song to which most people know the words but few know either the meaning or how to spell it.

For years I held that Christmas was the holiday for kids and New Year’s was the adult holiday.  To prove it, I’d whip up a batch of lethal Read the rest of this entry

As you tread the long road between first tooth and last, you stumble into some things that most of us are never really ready to do … you just do them and work out the consequences along the way. Getting married, having kids or buying a house are a few of the ‘just do it’ things that leap to mind. If you examine them too closely or too logically, you’ll end up lonely, childless and renting a one room flat where the bed folds out of the wall, because you won’t do any of them. I believe retirement ranks high on that list.

My concept of retirement was to be able to do all the things I’ve always wanted, without worrying about being successful at them or having to impress anyone. That included working at my own pace, not someone else’s. Read the rest of this entry

I finally solved one of life’s little mysteries last Saturday, while loitering in the middle of our kitchen. “What are you doing?” Vigi asked quietly, as I stood there sort of swaying like a new calf or an old dog. “I came in here for something, but I’ll be damned if I can remember what the heck it was!” replied a voice that sounded incredibly like mine. If there is even a smidgen of gray in your hair, you know exactly what I’m talking about. You send yourself on a mission. It’s not like going to, say, Shanghai or something. Often it’s just an excursion into the next room … but once you get there, the rest of the directive is obscured by something I call “Brain Fog.” It’s from the Latin, brainus foggus, which loosely translated means “Wait, I knew that a minute ago.”

For the longest time I’ve been puzzled by why it takes me longer to do things now than it used to.  There are still sixty seconds in a minute, right? Suddenly, Saturday afternoon, lights flashed and trumpets blared! It was so simple. When I was a kid, I just did stuff. When I was finished, I kept going and did more stuff. There were no limits! Now, I spend half my time trying to figure out where I put something or what I’m doing somewhere … then spend the other half working at a speed approaching molasses on Prozac, instead of my former legendary warp factor nine. Think of it in terms of throwing a fastball over the plate: When you’re younger you just rifle it in to a catcher. Now you toss, toddle sixty feet six inches, change gloves and catch your own pitch, on one bounce!

The good news is that such episodes are temporary, and a quick retrace of my steps usually causes the tumblers in my head to click into place. Failing that, sometimes just sitting down hard can jog the missing debris down to my primary thought center. The bad news is that it all chews up valuable time in a changing world where minutes seem to perceptibly have fewer and fewer seconds!

By the way, the first cousin of “Brain Fog” is “Mind Vapor” … from the Latin, vaporus mentalus, which is the complete disappearance of a thought or idea in mid-sentence. You don’t have to travel at all to trigger this one. I’ve discovered that retracing words in a conversation can be even tougher than retracing steps into a room … especially once I realized no one was actually listening, including me! Like my mission directive the missing piece is usually retrieved, although sometimes not right away. Veege is frequently puzzled when I pipe up with something like, “Hey, remember when I was telling you about … (fill in topic) ?” Of course, not only doesn’t she remember the conversation but she can’t figure how I don’t know where I put my glasses five minutes ago, yet I can suddenly remember exquisite detail from an incomplete conversation last Tuesday!

If these tendencies toward fog and vaporization continue, it shouldn’t be long before I can start thinning out my extensive DVD collection. In a few short years, we’ll only need to keep a couple of discs around … watch a movie and it’s brand new again by tomorrow!

Most young people can’t really apply these little inconveniences to themselves. After all, it’s not their own reflections they see in the fun house mirror. Not yet. The first gray hair or squint line may herald some reality for newly christened middle-agers, but the idea of operating at less than light speed is beyond imagination. At thirty or forty,  when the world is at your feet and you’re ninety mile-an-hour fastball is still popping the catcher’s glove, it’s impossible to picture a time when just finding the plate may occupy a significant portion of the day. That’s something that only happens to … old people.

The next time I run into some multi-tasking lightening rod who acts like he has all the answers or thinks older folks are kind of funny, my tolerance will be increased a hundred fold … because not only am I the one who understands most of the questions, but I know who’s going to have the last laugh! I hope I can remember that.

Listen to Bananas Crackers and Nuts Podcast. Find Links under “Recent Podcasts”… and more shows on my Podcast Page.

It was a perfect dive … arms fully extended, head down and four inches of rock-hard ice rising to meet me at warp speed! The emergency room doctor later called it a “Superman”, although my instant replay indicates it must have looked more like an Elmer Fudd. I bruised several ribs and possibly cracked two of them, just to enhance the effect. But th-thea the-thea that’s not all folks!

Since my arms were occupied with a death grip on my upper torso, Vigi went outside to chip some ‘winter mix’ off the windshield so we could find our way to the hospital … and, not to be outdone, she successfully executed a back flip on the same slippery, snow dusted surface. Her L4 vertebra is now attempting to pass L5 like a couple of NASCAR drivers closing on the finish line at Daytona. That was more than a month ago and we’re still nursing our bruised, battered bones. Last night as we poured ourselves into our respective couch corners she asked, “Is this what old age is going to be like?”

Since Veege is a pretty upbeat person, I know when she asks a question like that it usually isn’t rhetorical. I’ve never been known for a loss of words, so the resounding silence that enveloped the room echoed even louder, eliciting both a slightly arched eyebrow and an actual pause in her knitting. It’s amazing how much can stampede across your mind’s hi-def widescreen in only a few short seconds.

I remembered a lean teen standing shirtless in front of the mirror, flexing his muscles and vainly admiring bulges that I eventually learned were called names like pecs and abs. During my middle years, I didn’t have to take my shirt off to see that many of those bulges had shifted somewhat and now stood before the looking glass calling them ‘contours’ and saying things like, “Not bad, not bad.” While I still have bulges, they have completely reconfigured themselves in both geometry and geography. None of them have names anymore.

Not long ago, in the process of greeting the new day, I stumbled past the bathroom mirror and noticed an older silvery-bearded gent giving me a curious once over. The landscape between his right and left ears was dominated by a field of skin, and I wondered who had been trying to make waffles on the side of his face that only moments before had been nestled into a properly punched pillow. Thankfully, performing my morning toilette is the only time I have no choice but to stand toe-to-toe with the updated ‘Me’ … the rest of the day I try to avoid all reflective surfaces of any kind.

As those silent seconds passed, with my widescreen now beginning to flicker, the scene changed and a devilish little voice inside my head began whispering about how food used to taste better, things lasted longer and a buck stretched all the way from necessity through desire with a little left over for saving. It reminded me of 5¢ chocolate bars that filled out their generous wrappers and didn’t taste like something you’d light on fire atop a birthday cake; how steak was so succulent and tender it made you feel as if the cow had given it up willingly … and when stuff broke, you were able to fix it instead of throwing it away. Life just used to seem less complicated. Maybe being more energetic and less brittle had something to do with it.

Then, as I looked over at my bride, her eyebrow had returned to its normal down and locked position, the yarn resumed its flight around the needles, and for some reason I began thinking about our wedding vows. “For richer or poorer,” we had promised. We’d been fortunate enough to struggle ourselves up to a comfortable middle point over the years. Where adversity sometimes pulls people apart, it has always bound us closer together with a kind of “you and me against the world” attitude.  “In sickness and in health.” Well, like most people edging closer to the ‘getting-off’ place than the ‘getting-on’, we’ve had our share of door number one in the past few years. The thing is, I couldn’t remember anything about injuries anywhere on the list … certainly nothing about ice-diving.

Finally, trying to lighten the moment with something clever I offered, “Hey kid, like it or not these are the NEW good old days! If we’re going to have any ‘golden years’, I’d better buy a bucket of paint!” She didn’t seem particularly amused … didn’t even look like she thought it was cute. As if peering at me over an invisible pair of reading glasses, she sighed that sigh that women sigh [like when you spill something] and adjusted the stack of pillows supporting her back.

With one hand on my ribs, the other on the T.V. remote and Vigi’s question neatly tucked away in a corner of my cranium, we settled back to resume our evening secure in the knowledge that “for better or for worse,” we had each other … and a large bottle of Tylenol at the ready.

Listen to Bananas Crackers and Nuts Podcast. Find Links under “Recent Podcasts”… and more shows on my Podcast Page.

That year, I wanted a Lionel Santa Fe diesel for Christmas more than anything else in the world. Johnny Schumann and his dad had a train layout in their basement that was so big, they needed pop-up doors in the middle of it in case the train jumped the tracks … and right next to their three black steam locomotives and gray Erie switcher, ran a yellow Union Pacific diesel. They had some pretty cool stuff, but nowhere in sight was the silver and red of a Santa Fe!

It was a time when steam and electric engines were giving way to diesel power on the railroads. It was a time when trains meant as much to little kids as cars meant to big ones … and fast freights circling the tree meant Christmas to all kids. It was a time when I had reached that age of wondering if there really was a Santa Claus. Most of my friends thought it was silly to believe in some jolly fat man who flew through the air with a bunch of reindeer, but I was afraid not to. I mean, we all believed in Superman, right? What if Santa really did exist and I doubted him? I’d never get my Santa Fe diesel then! Geez, even the names were alike …

Besides, believing felt good. The anticipation of his arrival added a special tingle to the Christmas butterflies that already danced in every kid’s stomach. My friends and I had any number of intense, philosophical discussions on the subject, always with the same result. They stood against the red-suited elf and I was his staunch defender. I even talked it over with my parents but the evidence on both sides of the question was inconclusive. I had to know for sure, so I cunningly devised a test.

Mom and Dad went shopping frequently around Christmas but I knew they always stayed out longest when they went shopping for the tree. There was a time Dad used to wait until Christmas Eve “when the price was right,” as he used to say … but since it was now against the law for vendors to simply abandon their unsold inventory, we started getting our tree a little earlier and Dad became a little fussier. That would be the perfect time to really scour every nook and cranny of the house without fear of getting caught. A friend of mine said it was snooping. I preferred to think of it as conducting a sort of scientific experiment. After all, I wasn’t really hurting anything and it had become a matter of honor.

My criteria were simple: It was pretty close to Christmas and a Santa Fe diesel was a pretty big present, so they would have to buy the engine early enough to make sure they found exactly what I wanted. If I discovered it hidden somewhere, then I’d know for sure that my friends were right and Santa Claus was a fake. If I didn’t find it, and it showed up Christmas morning, chances are only the jolly old elf himself could have delivered it and I would have proof positive for all those nonbelievers at the playground.

The big day came when Mom and Dad went out to buy the tree. I really had to be thorough … after all, a lot was riding on my research. I started in the attic, working my way down through the coat closet and guest room all the way to the basement. No luck. I really had mixed feelings about what I was doing because, as determined as I was to find my present, that’s how much I hoped that I wouldn’t! I had looked everywhere. Almost.

I hadn’t looked in my parents’ room. That was off-limits … a mysterious place that I had mostly seen only from the doorway. It’s not like they ever told me not to go in there but I always kind of felt it was almost holy, for adults only. Maybe I got that impression because they usually closed the door when they went in there. Anyway, I was getting desperate and this was important. I ventured into the room and tip-toed silently around, peeking under this and inside that. I don’t know why I was being so quiet … it’s not like I was going to wake anyone up!

At last, there was only one place left, only one place in the whole house … their closet. A quick once-over revealed there was no engine at kid level so that just left the top shelf. I carefully positioned a chair, took off my shoes so as not to leave any evidence, peered over the shelf and poked around a little. There, half-hidden under a quilt was an oblong box that read “Lionel Lines” on the side. I had to be sure. The end was only folded shut. No tape. My heart was nearly pounding out of my chest as one-by-one I opened each flap … and revealed the shiny silver and red nose of a Santa Fe diesel! My momentary delight suddenly gave way to a dizzying sadness and I felt empty, like someone had let all the air out of me. The butterflies in my stomach formed a knot the size of a real locomotive … and I took one giant step out of kidhood. Simon Sez, “Grow up.”

Christmases were never quite the same after that for a very long time. Then one day, I found myself staring into a pair of teddy bear brown eyes and heard a small voice excitedly talking all about what Santa Claus was going to bring that night. We hung a fuzzy red stocking from the fireplace mantle and set out the obligatory glass of milk, plate of cookies and a couple of carrots for the reindeer. Then I tried to sleep.

In the morning, for the first time since I stood on that chair in my Mom and Dad’s closet, I felt the special tingle of Christmas butterflies dancing in my stomach … as the keeper of those eyes gleefully rushed a mountain of presents under the tree, and I realized that there is a Santa Claus after all. You just have to know where to find him.

Listen to Bananas Crackers and Nuts Podcast. Find Links under “Recent Podcasts”… and more shows on my Podcast Page.

I’ve been told that when I retire I need to ‘reinvent’ myself. The recommendation would seem to imply that, somehow, I was invented in the first place, like a lightbulb or a washing machine. Actually, there are several life-changing situations for which I was given the same advice. At least, that’s what they say I should do.

Without intending to offend the ever-elusive theysayers in the crowd, let me state in no uncertain terms that, to the best of my knowledge, I was not invented … nor did I suddenly appear in a puff of smoke or under a cabbage leaf in my Father’s vegetable garden. As intriguing as those explanations may be, the fact is I simply evolved … the product of two terrific parents on one hand and the corrupt influence of a generally dysfunctional society on the other. No more, no less.

Furthermore, that evolution has taken more than half a century and I fail to see how any meaningful adjustments are going to be made overnight. Because the engine is chugging a little going up a hill, it doesn’t make sense to me to drive the whole thing off a cliff and get a new car! Maybe it makes more sense to just pull over to the side of the road and fix the engine … especially if you’re comfortable with the butt marks you’ve worn into the seat.

The problem is that somewhere between the cliff and “Hand me the 1/2 inch wrench,” guys who have defined themselves by their occupation most of their lives often find themselves with no place to be. They either start feeling like the proverbial man without a country, or they go back to some kind of job where they work as hard as ever but without getting paid for it. This is usually referred to as volunteering. But what happened to retirement? I don’t know if women run into something similar but there are a lot of older ladies out there not collecting wages for a lifetime of expertise! If that’s reinventing yourself, you can keep it!

My Dad was one of the guys who drove his car off the cliff and walked home. His company pastured him out at 65 and he managed to stay completely inactive until he was 80. I remember trying to urge him to “get out and do something,” only to be met with a tirade about how hard he worked all of his life and how he had “earned this”… as he dozed off again in his recliner behind his Newark Star Ledger. He may have been the poster boy for what not to do … but for the first time in my life, I understand what he must have been feeling.

The fact is, I believe that given the option, most people would rather continue working [and earning wages] than retire under the circumstances most of us finally learn to accept. There’s a vast wealth of experience and great talent going to waste because of the myopic vision of the generation running things today. Oh sure, we might not be as fast as we once were and maybe most of us can only multi-task to the tune of three or four things at once, instead of ten … but the quality difference outweighs any quantity difference by immeasurable amounts.

Looking back, I have come to realize that the battles were more exciting than winning the war … the journey more fun than arriving at my destination. Time and energy, or what I’ve dubbed ‘tenergy’, has become too limited to begin new battles or undertake new journeys of any consequence. I don’t have the definitive answer yet, but it’s coming along … and I know it has more to do with repair than reinvention.

I suppose, in some ways, I’m still waiting for my ship to come in … although she’s moving more slowly now with all those barnacles on her bottom. I only hope that when she does, I’m not either stumbling around out at the airport or busy being keelhauled, instead of greeting her with warm, welcoming arms from the dock!

Listen to Bananas Crackers and Nuts Podcast. Find Links under “Recent Podcasts”… and more shows on my Podcast Page.