I dragged myself out of bed this morning at 6:00 a.m. My wife was still in bed. I said, "Got any ideas for an article this morning. I can't think of anything earthshaking to write about." She said, "You don't have to have an idea. When you see the computer you will snap over there like you are on a rubber band and will start pounding away." I guess she was right. As soon as I sat down, the telephone rang. It was Cindy, our newspaper girl. She knows I'm up early and doesn't mind calling while it is still dark outside. She wanted to make sure I was getting my paper. She said, "Have you been getting your paper since you got back from your Christmas vacation?" I told her that we had been getting the paper. She said she was just up the street and would be by the house in a few minutes. I didn't ask her how I was getting my paper for the last three or four days. Certainly not now that I had decided that my alien friend, Xrytspet, (or her cohort, Silzrack) from Fanton in G10009845788899990766 had delivered it in the FnL7 Time Craft. Cindy's response would certainly have been mundane. Old folks are dreamers. Yesterday I turned the mattress on my vibrating adjustable bed. The mattress has two sides. One is softer than the other. Old folks don't sleep well or much at night. We prefer to snooze during the day. There is nothing like getting up in the morning, sitting in your favorite chair, flipping on the television (if you can find the remote down in the chair cushion), and taking a nap. My bed has wave action plus vibration. The soft side of the bed was better than the hard side. I did sleep better, not needing the wave action, vibration, or the adjustability of the bed. Still, it was not like sleeping in a chair in front of the television. (The best mattress in the world belongs to my autistic grandson who prefers to sleep on the floor.) My bed is good for watching television at night. Leno and Letterman come right into the bedroom, tell bad jokes, and interview movie stars, some of whom are brainless twits. This brings up another point about old people. We are suspicious. The television channels make money from advertising, right? How much do you think the studios have to pay the talk shows to interview their stars and promote the latest movies? "Nothing!" Really! Old folks like to talk about the good or bad old days. The subject of suspicion flashed me right back to Korea. I was a forward observer for a mortar platoon at the time when I took my radioman to the area defended by the Third Platoon of "B" Company. We were on the highest hill on the line. We called it Hill 1243 because its elevation was guess-what? The 1243 is in meters. Multiply that by 3 and then by 39 and divide it by 36 and you will get the elevation in feet. What? I have to do everything for you. That's 4040 feet. Anyway, the Chinese were sneaking up at night and scaring the stuffing out of "B" Company's Third Platoon. The platoon leader asked me to set up firing grids so that he could call in the mortar's at night. When he decided that the mortars rounds I was dropping in his socks were close enough to protect him, he said, "That's perfect!" Well, the last barrage did land in front of us, behind us, and next to us. Little bits of shrapnel cut into our ponchos. When I was later promoted to platoon sergeant, I fired intermittently on these concentrations all night to keep the Chinese honest. I don't like sneaky people. Anyway, that is another thing about old people; our minds wonder. This is still about suspicion. Walking on the trail back to our bunker, we met a major from Battalion Headquarters. He said, "Hey, Jones! I've got a firing mission for you." He said that new Chinese troops were coming in and that they were building bunkers on the hill across from us. His plan was to fire 57 millimeter recoilless rifle white phosphorus shells at them and that when they jumped around with hot phosphorus in their pants I could fire my mortars at them. That's what we did. Pretty soon the Chinese were throwing dead out of their hutchies and the major was thrilled by the success of his little mission to "B" Company. This part of the article is still about suspicion. The most suspicious people in the world are infantrymen. Some of us where standing around shooting the bull after the major left. That's when we learned that a corporal standing there with us had received orders to go home but was not leaving. He had broken a big infantry taboo. When you get orders to go home you must go home or you will die. We begged him to leave. This is what he said, "I'll go home when my stepbrother gets his orders to go home." That is when he broke the taboo of all infantry taboos which is: Never say you won't be killed. His words were, "If I were going to be killed, I would have been killed by now." These words we begged him to take back. A short time later, while eating our daily meal of canned sausage patties and beans and bacon (no wonder I've had bypass surgery twice and have the aortic valve of a friendly pig), we got the news. He was killed shortly after our discussion. I often think of that young man. I don't think of him as being dumb for not going back to Oklahoma when he got his orders. I think of him as a man who loved his stepbrother and was willing to die while waiting for him to get his orders to go home. And that brings us to sentimentality. We old folks are sentimental to a fault. A great-grandchild says, "Goo, Goo," and we get tears in our eyes. Another think about us old folks is that we get exasperated. We think the world is full of idiots all out to get us. That adds the fact that we feel persecuted. I wrote an article about the Medicare Rx plan and how it shows that Congress hates us. That is an example of how we feel. The poorest people on this poorly conceived, ridiculous plan are learning that the particular medications they need to stay alive are not covered by the one of a zillion plans they selected. My article is very popular and it has five stars, so others feel like me on this subject. Because of our exasperation and persecution complex we become cantankerous. That is the great weapon of old people. Too many people around us, especially the loud ones, exasperate us. Being cantankerous keeps them away. Well, there were a few other things I wanted to bring up here. I just can't remember what they were. Oh, yea! It's our stupid cable company that stuck TV Guide on our program channel. It takes up almost the whole screen with brainless twits and their inane chatter. (I wrote to the company. They ignore old people.) The twits distract us from the two lines of programming information at the bottom of the screen. That causes us to wait a zillion eons to wait for the damned programming information to come around again. Then it is still moving too fast for us to read. (Audio and video are never designed for old people. Flashing crap before our eyes with accompanying loud music is not our idea of fun.) It's like this; the AARP Driving Course teaches never to distract a senior driver. Cell phones are out. Even listening to the radio can distract. No talking to the driver. Why? Because when we old folks see a cow along side the road, we tend to stare and ponder. That's when we drive into the telephone pole. The End . |
