Three Rules After 50

Tell 'em I sent ya...but only if you're buying something.

Years ago, long before it had any semblance of relevance, one of my older brothers told me a joke about three rules a man over the age of 50 must always obey.  Rule number one was: Never pass up a rest area. I was able to recall this the other evening as I was embarking on a road trip and realized I should have used the restroom before I got in the car. Like a fear of stairs or shoes that don't have laces, using the bathroom before one gets in the car is a piece from early childhood that many will one-day, sooner or later, like it or not, revisit.

So far in life I've been fortunate that everything still works exactly as originally equipped. Some of those things may ache and hurt a little more than they did a couple dozen years ago, but they all work. The only medicines I take are Crestor, eye drops, and an aspirin.

That said, I left on my little road trip consciously thinking I didn't need to use a restroom before making the hour-plus drive home even though I'd been drinking coffee and coke over the past couple hours. What the heck? If needed, we have rest areas in this state. That simple act of over confidence and disregard for protocol lead to the second dilemma: Twenty minutes into the trip, okay, so I should have used the restroom before I left, but now, where do I stop? No rest area.

Panera bread shops are everywhere, have reasonably good food choices, and clean restrooms. I hadn't had dinner and so, encouraged by easy freeway access, I pulled in, parked the car, and stepped inside where I discovered I had entered through the rear door which put me right at the threshold of the men's room. Genius. So.....refreshed and ready to go, I walked along the counter, surveyed the menu, and realized I was neither hungry nor thirsty. And that led to this ridiculous dilemma (and post): is it okay to use the restroom when you're not a customer??

I always see those signs in major cities: "Restrooms are for the convenience of customers only." While the Panera store didn't have such a sign-- at least not on the entrance I used-- I still felt guilty leaving without buying; which is exactly what I did. Realizing I wasn't hungry and all I really needed was a restroom, I walked back out to my car and left. But even as I turned onto the freeway on-ramp I glanced back across the roadway wondering if I wouldn't see some guy in a Panera cap and apron, waving his fist and shouting insults at me while running toward the road.

Next time I'm in a Panera Bread store I'm going to eat. And just to make up for this last time, I'm not going to use the restroom..... unless I forgot to before I left home.

The Fabric of History

I have this old pair of boxers that are made of a Route 66 fabric. The fabric is fairly common. I used to have a chair and ottoman upholstered in it; I've seen purses and hand bags made from it. Anyway, I came across those boxers today and read one of the old postcard captions: "We're traveling on Route 66!"

Big deal. Nowadays we can cover the mileage of the entire Route 66 in under 4 hours and $400. We can travel from Chicago to Bombay-- more than 8,000 miles all the way-- in less time than it took to drive Route 66 from Chicago to Joplin, Missouri.

Then again, I guess that's exactly the point: We can do everything today without much wonder. Nowadays, to come home and really wow someone with your travel adventures you have to return from Antarctica or some other remote inhabitable or damn near impossible to get to location. Chicago to LA and return is a day trip. And that's too bad.

Maybe it's a good thing that our children are growing up in an age of opportunity, where the world is a small place, where Hawaii, Europe, South America, and even Africa, are familiar, the geographies of spring break and summer vacations. These are the places "everyone goes"and maybe that will one-day lead to the world becoming a connected community.

But back in the 40's and 50's, in the time before freeways and economical air travel, travel was an undertaking and a road trip was an adventure. Air travel was costly and operated (or not) at the mercy of the weather. A trip by rail was more comfortable but didn't offer a whole lot in terms of time saved. Back then, owing to the effort required, travel was undertaken with eyes wide open, expectations high, and a sense of wonder and adventure. Nowadays, the greatest sense of wonder is often whether or not an upgrade will be provided; the greatest sense of adventure occurs when the front desk doesn't find your reservation.

It's a pleasure, a luxury, and a good thing that we can so readily explore the reaches of the world. I just doubt we'll ever live to see a fabric that aims to recall the wonder of travel in this current era. More likely, it will recall a time in history when travel was dependent on fossil fuels: planes, trains, and automobiles, all burning petroleum products. We should be so lucky, to have our oil dependence relegated to the fabric of history.

Lucky and Dumb

You ever have one of those days? One of those days when you find yourself testing yourself? Your sanity. Your strength. Your memory? Your luck? The other day I tested out on 3 of the 4. Actually we can include strength as well, considering I took the garbage out to the curb.

That's where it started. I had done my weekly routine, garbage out at the curb by 6:45. Then, as I went to get in the car, I decided I needed to take one more small bag out to the bin before pick-up. So I set my iPad and sunglasses down, took the bag out, hopped in the car, and set off to work. Rounds at the hospital, an hour and a half meeting with the CEO, and then to the office for clinic and only 20 minutes late! Everything's good.

Then at noon, my partner Joe walks in, iPad in hand and asks, "Hey, buddy, is this your iPad?"  He'd found it right where I'd left it: on the roof of the car just 4 hours and 2 miles ago. Unfortunately, the sunglasses were no longer on the roof of the car. They were on the trunk of the car where they had slid to safety.

Lucky and dumb. It's not always so easy to be both

Yard Work

A nuisance-- living or dead

We woke up the other day to a rather unpleasant site in our front yard. Some poor unfortunate soul of a squirrel had ended up on our front lawn, bloodied and dead.  He either took a terrible tumble from one of our big oaks or, more likely given the condition of "the body," had been whacked by a car. Either way, he was quite dead and quite gross lying on our lawn, fluffy tail waving in the breeze like the flag of a defeated warrior.

Once we realized what it was, Tam immediately informed me I would be on the mortuary crew: get rid of it. Now, ordinarily, that wouldn't be a problem. I'd do what I usually do: call someone. Unfortunately, mid-April in Michigan is not the same as mid-April in Southern California or South Carolina. We won't have enough grass to warrant a yard crew for another month or so. So, I did the next best thing: I suggested we leave it for a day and see if we couldn't recruit a raccoon or something to come haul off the corpse.

Next morning the body was still there. Then this big hungry guy showed up around 9AM and spent the better part of an hour and a half dismantling the poor bastard. Yummy! Who wants pancakes!! You didn't have to watch him (her) work for long before you knew for certain this bird is descended from the dinosaurs. I'm thinking T-Rex.

Note the dusting of snow on April 20th. Still, it's picnic weather for some!

Unfortunately, like a lot of people, vultures do not pick up after themselves when they're done eating. I still had to dig a hole and bury the bones, fur, and that floppy tail. It was gross but all I could think of was this: Thank God I'll never have to smell a vulture's breath! I hope.

Playing With Bombs

Saturday morning we sat and watched the re-cap of events this past week in Watertown, Massachusetts. In the olden days, as kids, Saturday mornings we sat and watched Hollywood westerns and an occasional war movie as a pre-game warm-up. Then, outside we'd go to play war.

As kids, my brother and our friends and I used to love playing cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians, and war. We utilized everything from bow and arrow to small arms to fully automatic weapons, from tanks to battleships, fighters to bombers. It was not an infrequent occurrence that, passing within 50 feet, you would have heard the young vocalizations of gunfire and bombs going off on our property.

In spite of all that early exposure to guns and bombs and armed conflict, I am pretty much a pacifist. I'm of the opinion, given that killing people, invading their homelands, and setting off or dropping bombs has never brought lasting peace or a lasting sense of security, we probably do not really have our hands around an effective means of fashioning a secure and peaceful coexistence in the world.

So now, just days after the horrific events in Boston this past week, I hear Evan call out from the other room, "I only have there bombs!" He's playing Fruit Ninjas on an iPad. We've never let him play with toy guns but he loves his model airplanes, his fighter jets, B-17, B-25, and B- 28 bombers. Given the world in which we live today, it drives me crazy that we've provided him with even these toys. It is the destructive nature of the beasts that seem to hold his attention, with their bombs and rockets and guns. Suddenly, as a grown-up living in a world filled with threats and actions and a pervasive sense of fear and alert, it's not fun anymore. And it's hard for me to remember anymore just how far child's play is removed from real life events.

With Ev I can talk to him about real bombs, real victims, and real events. And, I like to think at least, he kind of gets it and he knows just how opposed we are to the use of guns as personal protection and war in general. But I worry about a lot of this country where people spend hours playing war games online, bombs blasting, guns going off, and bodies flying apart.  Maybe psychologists will tell us it's an important form of release; that fantasy disarms reality. I don't know. But I certainly hope it never gets us to the point where we look passively at events like those in Boston last week-- as well as the horrors that occur everyday around this planet populated by our scared and selfish humankind.  I hope Evan, and all of his generation, don't ever stop feeling an absolute sense of sorrow at our continuing need to kill and injure-- our utter failure as a species to live in peace.

Dumb Ideas

There's a columnist they run in our local paper whom I really enjoy. He's a conservative editorialist who almost routinely pisses me off. Wednesday's editorial was no exception right from the get-go: "Why not teacher evaluations by students?" Mind you, he's not talking about university course work.  His essay goes on to discuss how teachers need to be more aware and involved in students' lives. How teachers need to be more focused on those students who are struggling or not fully engaged. Teachers, teachers, teachers.

I'm a little sensitive on the subject because the same thing is happening in medicine. Both fields are struggling with validity issues in the form of outcomes and performance measures. Both fields are being flooded with cadres of experts and consultants. Both fields are being increasingly placed in the public spotlight for failings more so than successes.

With respect to healthcare, many of the proposed changes are for the better. Many are reasonable and respond to changes in available technology and evidence based knowledge. But, as with education, many of the accusations and alleged shortcomings are misinformed and misdirected at the provider.

As in healthcare, education is currently suffering from an enormous void in personal accountability. In medicine we battle with patients who choose unhealthy habits, diets, and lifestyles. In education, teachers battle with children who come from homes where education is not cherished or esteemed, where there is little or no support or encouragement to learn. And it's not enough to lay this at the doorstep of poverty or social struggle. There were plenty of poor families and families that struggled in the early part of the twentieth century, a period when great ideas, great industry, and great accomplishments were brought forth from the public schools of this nation. Likewise, there are plenty of students who come from homes where they are well-fed, well-dressed, and afforded the luxury of every currently available form of distraction.

I don't pretend to have the answer to our tarnished system of public education. I do believe, however, that until public education is restored to a position of esteem, until our financial investment in open public schools and teachers is commensurate with our purported outrage and expectations, and until families find the motivation to encourage and support their children-- in short, until we demonstrate that we as a society value public education-- we will continue to witness the current decline in learning. We will continue to see an ever increasing army of so-called experts, we will continue to spend more and more money on more and more so-called bright ideas, and we will continue to see more and more teachers leaving education frustrated and cynical. We will not, however, see our children getting any smarter or any more engaged in the process of learning.

This country is in a crisis of personal responsibility. It is a void that breeds charlatans and hucksters, snake oil and potions. Until we collectively recognize the mandate of personal responsibility for ourselves and our children, we will remain desperate in our pursuit of half-baked remedies, victims of our own ignorance.

Grass, Gas, or Ass

I remember this bumper sticker from the 70's. It seemed reasonable enough then, in the age of liberation, drugs, free love, and gas prices creeping ever closer to 50 cents a gallon. I was 15 or so. It was funny, cool, and just slightly naughty in a hip-sophisticated sort of way.

Now it's not so funny. Now, when I read public opinion overwhelmingly in support of background checks for prospective gun buyers and then see the measure fail in the Senate, I don't think it's funny. Whether you favor fewer regulations with respect to firearm ownership or more stringent regulations, it's almost beside the point. What we really need to accomplish is the removal of that sticker from the bumper of every car registered to every legislator in every state in the Union and Washington, D.C.

The influence of special interests has got to be unplugged from the wallets and war chests of every elected office holder, whether it's the NRA, dairy farmers, retired people, insurance companies, medical societies, or any other well-financed special interest. President Obama said, "So, all in all, this was a pretty shameful day for Washington." I would have to agree. In part because, even though there are a significant number of Americans who wish to fervently maintain their rights to bear almost any and all manner of arms, there are more, an unfunded vocal majority who were asking for action; an unfunded vocal majority who were asking for some type of reasonable intervention; an unfunded vocal majority who were asking for some type of regulatory concession in light of the fact that hundreds of children are killed, and thousands wounded, by hand guns every year in this country.

In larger part, however, it was shameful because a majority of United States senators chose to feign contemplation and consideration, to feign protection of individual rights, to offer some convoluted theory of protecting individual freedom in order to side-step public opinion and maintain the support of one of the most financially and politically powerful lobbies in the nation.

Shameful indeed. The United States Senate chose Wednesday to let it all hang out and prove beyond any reasonable doubt that we are, indeed, a government of the buyer, by the buyer, and for the buyer. As a result, I think at this point I am willing to overlook the failure to make any progress with gun control if we can somehow get a handle on the whorehouse that is U.S. politics. No gas. No grass. No ass. Just get the hell out of Washington, D.C.!