When I got off the train at this heretofore unvisited depot, I felt like a stranger in a strange land. All my family members and friends detrain at the station down the road in Septuagenaria. leaving me alone for the last leg of the trip. The previous landings are hectic, busy places with children and grandchildren zipping around handing roses to Nana and caffeine pills to Gramps as the welcoming band tootles old Frank Sinatra songs like I’ve Got The World On a String and You Make Me Feel So Young. In Octogenaria, who’s kidding who? The platform is practically bare and a one-man-band is playing 2 Minutes To Midnight. Nobody is carrying balloons and the taxi drivers are all asleep.
I look around for signs of encouragement. On a tiny bulletin board on the station wall, there is a bright flier advising the UFOs will meet on Friday. Good Lord, is Gary Borse here, too? No, turns out to be the United Flying Octogenarians, an international organization of over 1400 pilots above age 80. Some of them still fly, but not any plane I’m likely to be on. I’m all for supporting the bros but occasionally one of them will mistake a mountain for a mirage and before you know it you’re lying in pieces in a burlap-lined box while the ultimate band plays When The Saints Go Marching In. The lonely stationmaster advises me that this place is still much better than the depot at Nonagenaria, just down the tracks.
“Over there,” he says with bushy eyebrows lowered, “the first step off the train is a wowser, a hair-trigger trap door. Underneath ‘er is a pit full of hippogators which haven’t been fed in a month of Sundays. You have to be cobra-quick to escape, sort of a survival-of-the-fittest test. It’s a wonder anybody ever makes it to Century City. So buck up, pardner, it could be worse.”
I’m holding out for a better deal. Maybe there’s a trackside scalper selling Two Tickets To Paradise. Anybody want to come along?
80+ And Loving It
"For the unlearned, old age is winter; for the learned, it is the season of harvest."---Hasidic saying.
Not everyone fades into the woodwork in their eighties. Queen Elizabeth is still ruling the roost at 87 and promptly steps on Prince Charles’ instep every time he tries to elbow her aside. “I plan to have fun, fun, fun til someone takes the tiara away,” huffs Lizzie. The Queen’s consort, Prince Philip, is till tickling the old girl’s fancy at age 92.
Former Bond Girl Honor Blackman is still turning heads at 88, and not because she’s a bag lady with toilet paper stuck to her shoe. Honor is still a cutie and continues to tour with her one-woman show. She says the stage-door groupies are getting awfully long in the tooth but the money’s good.
Jack Nicholson, 82, is still around kicking up dust rather than transmogrifying into it. We first met Jack in Easy Rider, watched him almost lose his nose in Chinatown and smiled as he won three Oscars and was nominated for a trillion others. Jack is still in his seat in the first row for Laker games. He’s fat now, and a little gnarly, but he’ll still kick your ass if he has a mind to. Unless you’re under 65.
And then there’s Juanita Inez Kniffen. Forget it, you never heard of her unless you’re a patron of the Farmington, Missouri Family Fun center, where she bowled twice a week. Or maybe the Farmington Martial Arts facility where she took tai kwon do lessons twice weekly. Ceth Jordan, her instructor, was 6-2 and 220 pounds in his prime but says Juanita’s karate moves took him down several times. She tested for and passed her 5th degree black belt in tai kwon do at 80 years of age and learned to swim in her late sixties.
“She was a little eccentric,” says her granddaughter, Kele McDaniel, a physical therapist in Santa Fe. “Right before she took up karate, I saw her pinning her hair back to dip her face in a sink of water. She told me she was preparing herself to learn to swim.” Juanita also walked three marathons after age 51, learned to belly dance and regularly practiced yoga. “I saw her draw a circle in the air over the head of a man with her foot,” swears Kele. “You’d never think of telling her she couldn’t do something because next thing you know she’d be doing it.” So next time your arthritis kicks up a little, remember Juanita and quit your whining.
The Old Philosopher Rambles
We have a sneaking suspicion that a certain number of blog trolls under 30 are out there snooping around in Elderworld, trying to assay what makes us tick. Now and then one or another of them makes an appearance in writing and asks how we made it this far in good spirits. Or wonders what it was like at the dawn of time when everyone lived in caves and ate dirt. Reluctant as we are to dabble in the false art of guruism, we feel these seekers of Truth deserve some sort of answer so we put in an urgent call to our ancient pal, the Old Philosopher in Nepal. In between stints in his tofu garden, here’s what he had to say:
1. Don’t marry young. Sure, it works out for some people, but so does grand larceny and indecent exposure. That doesn’t mean it’s a good idea for YOU. Odds are your first marriage will be a botch, anyway, you’re too young to know what the hell you’re doing. Save yourself the grief. Travel. See the world. It will give you a better perspective. If you insist, however, lay off having kids. It’s a nightmare. They’re expensive and encumbering and will suck up all your time. Your relationship with your sweetiepie will change. And when your marriage comes crashing down like a Kathmandu tenement, your choice of future partners might run somewhere between Eddie, the grocery bagger and Casper, the friendly dwarf. Sorry to give you the bad news. And no, you’re not likely to be the exception. Of course, you can toss this advice if you run into a young Brigitte Bardot.
2. Share the wealth. Nobody wants to be coming to someone else all the time bumming money. It’s okay to have joint accounts, but each partner should have his or her own geetis to do with as they will without explanation. If it is agreed for whatever reason that only one partner will have a job, some funds from that paycheck should go to the nonworker’s account. Cut her off after the fifth cat purchase, though.
3. Do not buy real estate in a place where you have not lived for a reasonable period of time. Rent for awhile, perhaps several months during the least favorable period of the year, and always check the flood maps. It’s easy to love Jackson Hole in Summer, but how about January 15th? Florida is peachy most of the time but you might be gasping for breath in the heat of June, July and August. Hey, everybody would like to live in Hawaii, right? No, not Bill. He went there once for three weeks. After the first week, he thought it was the greatest place on Earth. After the second, it was still nice but fraying a little at the corners. After the third, he was writing SOS in the sands of Waikiki, ready for extraction. Some people just prefer the Fairfields of the world. Not many, but some.
4. Stuck with a lemon? Make limoncello. The old advice is still sound. Don’t be permanently bumfuzzled by bad luck, jarring experiences or disappointments. It’s all temporary. And there’s a bonus to every big setback---you get stories you can tell. Ask Bill the blogman. Even the worst of dilemmas give you tales for the grandkids. In his days as a callous youth, Bill got hassled a lot by cops for selling magazines, sometimes put in jail. It was a mortal outrage, but in the worst of times he was already composing a funny article for a future column. It’s an ill wind that bloweth no humorist good, sometimes it just takes awhile to note the hilarity of the inside of a jail cell or a blown car engine. So next time your truck is in a ditch and you’re bleeding all over the upholstery, remind yourself “I’ve got to get a grip. The Old Philosopher says someday this will all be a laff-riot. Right now, I wish I could just remember who the hell the Old Philosopher was.
5. Time is the most valuable thing you’ve got. Use it wisely. First, educate yourself. Go to college for at least a couple of years, by hook or by crook. The experience will help you find a path, you’ll meet interesting people and learn to be relatively independent. Travel, it broadens your horizons. Remain as unencumbered as possible in your early twenties and don’t be pushed into thinking you have to know by then what you’ll do with the rest of your life. Find an occupation you enjoy but also one that provides you with a financial foundation. Work as hard as you like for a few years to build a structure for your future but always allow time for non-work activities. Never marry a beautiful man or woman who can’t carry on a conversation; it takes too long to get rid of them. Of course, you can toss this advice if you run into a young Brigitte Bardot.
6. Don’t be afraid to turn on a dime. Just because you think you know what you want to do at 17, you’re not obligated to stick with it if you start having doubts. As you proceed in life, you make new discoveries, find new interests. If the bloom is off the rose in your originally intended windowbox, don’t be afraid to jump ship despite pressure from parents, pals or nervous girlfriends. Debby Brandt, an Architecture major at the University of Florida, got a job in the Silver City arm of the Subterranean Circus and fell in love with the fashion business. She had a terrific personality, was a natural salesman and loved clothes. Bill took her to New York on a buying trip and she was sold. Debby added a Public Relations minor to her UF dance card and when she graduated she was immediately hired by the Landlubber jeans company, a monster in the industry at the time. Landlubber made her their primary Southeastern sales representative at a young 22 years of age. She lived well and prospered. Score one for adaptability. Oh, and don’t worry about all that money spent for an unused Architecture degree. Debby just built herself the tallest, most sophisticated sunset tower in Atlanta. Sometimes, in the early evening, she sits up there and drops lighted matches down on the rednecks.
Regrets….I Have A Few….
I wish I had tried harder to learn to hit the curve ball.
I wish I had started going to a gym 30 years earlier.
I wish I had visited Paris in my thirties.
I wish that Marilyn Todd, Pamme Brewer, Dick North, Pat Brown, Lieuen Adkins, Joe Brown, Tony Bell, Betsy Harper, Claudine Laabs, Lee Shaw, Ricky Childs, Rick Sturm, Sandy Solomon, Shelley Browning and Janis Joplin, many of whom disappeared at an early age, had lived much longer. I regret not recalling all the others who don’t immediately come to mind.
I wish I’d had a moment with three exceptional women. They know who they are.
I wish I had saved Jack Gordon, Linda Bridges, Sharon Cinnie and Irana Zisser from becoming Republicans, and I atone for this daily.
I wish the Red Sox had hung onto Mookie Betts.
But most of all, I wish that Siobhan had posed for that Odalisque picture. Her reticence brings a tear to my eye, a constant sadness deep in my soul. And I also regret that this obvious ploy will do nothing to change her mind.
That’s all, folks….
bill.killeen094@gmail.com
