Geezer friends of mine on occasion have extolled pretty good bits of park bench humor and wisdom. Recently one of them, looking around our morning kaffee klatch, came up with "Time is a great healer, but it's a lousy beautician!" Another one shot right back, reiterating, "Yah, time has sneaked up on us all like a windshield on a bug!"
After sharing the resultant group chuckle, i got to wondering what other thought gems I might discover if I paid more attention to what people say and what they pass on in their writings. And it turned out to be golden research. Check out my treasure hunt findings.
So much of what you are not is because you are standing in your own way of becoming.
People who don't plan for the future have to live through it anyway.
The difference between a beautiful person and a charming person is that you notice the beautiful person, but the charming person notices you. --Conrad Fiorello
People wrapped up in themselves make small packages.
A hypochondriac usually suffers in every way except in silence.
Those who often jump to conclusions land in ignorance.
What we need is a good diet shampoo for use by fat heads!
If you do a good deed, be sure to get a receipt, just in case heaven is like the IRS.
Happiness is good health and bad memory.
The moments of happiness we enjoy take us by surprise. It is not that we seize them, but that they seize us. - -Ashley Montagu
Happiness never decreases by being shared.
Many candles may be lighted from a single one and the life of that one will not be diminished.
People who say "it can't be done" are usually interrupted by those doing it.
Saturday, June 7, 2014
Thursday, June 5, 2014
How Hot Is It?
Summer is finally upon us. Now we can bitch about the heat, which we've been wanting some of all winter!
Start our rant with "It's so hot and dry in Clearwater county that the Baptists are starting to baptize by sprinkling, the Methodists are giving out wet wipes, the Presbyterians are giving out rain checks, and the Catholics are praying for the wine to turn back into water." (according to Jean Cooke of Orofino, ID)
As for the rest I have to tell you...........IT'S SO HOT THAT...
...furniture stores are doing a brisk business selling frozen water beds.
...you put on fresh sun screen just to go check the mailbox and, using any sunscreen formula less than 50 spf, is a joke.
...you find pet cats sleeping on the bottom shelf in the refrigerator.
...trees are whistling for dogs.
...your husband no longer snores. He sizzles.
...farmers are feeding their hens ice cubes to keep them from laying hard boiled eggs.
...Idaho potatoes are cooking underground. All you have to do is dig them up and add butter, salt and pepper.
...the irrigation shortage is solved: sweaty men on rotating chairs.
...you notice your car overheating before you even drive it.
...drivers wearing shorts are learning how to drive without their backsides actually touching the seats.
...car seat belts have become branding irons and you discover it only takes two fingers to drive your car.
...the prime parking space is determined by shade, not distance.
...when the temperature drops below 95 you feel a bit chilly.
...the new exercise at the senior center is "Naked Jazzercise".
...hot water is coming out of both taps.
...you discover a "swamp cooler' is not a Happy Hour drink.
...you realize asphalt has a liquid state.
...air conditioning repairmen are treated like rock stars.
...the real estate market heats up as the devil starts buying up homes.
(This has been culled from here and there on the Internet and, as usual, credits have not been given to the literary comedians responsible for them. But know at least, whoever you are, that your humor bits are being appreciated.)
...
Start our rant with "It's so hot and dry in Clearwater county that the Baptists are starting to baptize by sprinkling, the Methodists are giving out wet wipes, the Presbyterians are giving out rain checks, and the Catholics are praying for the wine to turn back into water." (according to Jean Cooke of Orofino, ID)
As for the rest I have to tell you...........IT'S SO HOT THAT...
...furniture stores are doing a brisk business selling frozen water beds.
...you put on fresh sun screen just to go check the mailbox and, using any sunscreen formula less than 50 spf, is a joke.
...you find pet cats sleeping on the bottom shelf in the refrigerator.
...trees are whistling for dogs.
...your husband no longer snores. He sizzles.
...farmers are feeding their hens ice cubes to keep them from laying hard boiled eggs.
...Idaho potatoes are cooking underground. All you have to do is dig them up and add butter, salt and pepper.
...the irrigation shortage is solved: sweaty men on rotating chairs.
...you notice your car overheating before you even drive it.
...drivers wearing shorts are learning how to drive without their backsides actually touching the seats.
...car seat belts have become branding irons and you discover it only takes two fingers to drive your car.
...the prime parking space is determined by shade, not distance.
...when the temperature drops below 95 you feel a bit chilly.
...the new exercise at the senior center is "Naked Jazzercise".
...hot water is coming out of both taps.
...you discover a "swamp cooler' is not a Happy Hour drink.
...you realize asphalt has a liquid state.
...air conditioning repairmen are treated like rock stars.
...the real estate market heats up as the devil starts buying up homes.
(This has been culled from here and there on the Internet and, as usual, credits have not been given to the literary comedians responsible for them. But know at least, whoever you are, that your humor bits are being appreciated.)
...
What Does Today Mean?
Have you ever wondered where the names for our days have come from? Wonder no more.
Sunday, it turns out, is literally extrapolated from "Day of the Sun". Monday is from "Day of the Moon", which leaves more questions than it answers. Most of the remaining days are named after Germanic or Norse "gods".
Tuesday is named for Tiu or Tyr, the god of war. Wednesday is named for Odin, or Woden, who was the "chief god", so to speak.
Thursday, easily understood, is named for Thor - not the movie hero, but the thunder god. Friday is a boon to the fair sex. It's named for Odin's wife, Frigg. There's no proof that her name has led to the anti-curse "friggin". And Saturday is named after Saturn, the Roman agriculture god. Old Roman festivals, with their wild partying, brings us the term "saturnalia". Appropriate?
Sunday, it turns out, is literally extrapolated from "Day of the Sun". Monday is from "Day of the Moon", which leaves more questions than it answers. Most of the remaining days are named after Germanic or Norse "gods".
Tuesday is named for Tiu or Tyr, the god of war. Wednesday is named for Odin, or Woden, who was the "chief god", so to speak.
Thursday, easily understood, is named for Thor - not the movie hero, but the thunder god. Friday is a boon to the fair sex. It's named for Odin's wife, Frigg. There's no proof that her name has led to the anti-curse "friggin". And Saturday is named after Saturn, the Roman agriculture god. Old Roman festivals, with their wild partying, brings us the term "saturnalia". Appropriate?
Monday, June 2, 2014
SIGNS OF HUMOR
I love clever signs, those that present the business they advertise succinctly and with a bit of language ingenuity, preferably tied up with a humor caste. A good example was the slogan penned by a real estate agent named Bacon in Raleigh, NC: "Let Bacon Bring You Home". That does the job nicely, don't you think?
And it is surprising how many more there are once you start looking for them.
Sign on a panel truck belonging to a body-and-fender shop in Los Angeles: "We take the dent out of accident."
On the window of the Cambridge Shop for men's clothes in San Diego: "Pants 1/2 off."
An Ojai, California, spirits and fine wine shop was named "Fred's Attitude Adjustment Shoppe".
A mod dress shop in Corona del Mar, California, was named "Happiness Is A New Rag".
A large sign out front of the El Rancho Motel in Lewiston, ID, stated: "Try our beds for sighs".
Sign in a Texas jewelry store: "Diamond tiaras - $70,000. Three for $200,000".
Slogan for Gar's Bread (Washington): "We really move our buns for you!"
Evergreen Refrigeration ad (Washington): "Ask Me About Being Cool".
Harbor Airlines (Washington) ad: "Driving is beneath us!".
Note in window of water bed sales outlet in Lexington Park,. MD: "Your vinyl resting place".
Sign fronting an Atlanta, GA, restaurant: "If the Colonel had OUR chicken recipe he'd be a General".
Sign at the entrance to a Sperry, OK, cemetery: "One Way! In Only!"
Lastly, but far from least, Los Angeles signs on a health food shop, stating "Diet Aids", next to a fast-food luncheonette adding "Cheat here!"
And it is surprising how many more there are once you start looking for them.
Sign on a panel truck belonging to a body-and-fender shop in Los Angeles: "We take the dent out of accident."
On the window of the Cambridge Shop for men's clothes in San Diego: "Pants 1/2 off."
An Ojai, California, spirits and fine wine shop was named "Fred's Attitude Adjustment Shoppe".
A mod dress shop in Corona del Mar, California, was named "Happiness Is A New Rag".
A large sign out front of the El Rancho Motel in Lewiston, ID, stated: "Try our beds for sighs".
Sign in a Texas jewelry store: "Diamond tiaras - $70,000. Three for $200,000".
Slogan for Gar's Bread (Washington): "We really move our buns for you!"
Evergreen Refrigeration ad (Washington): "Ask Me About Being Cool".
Harbor Airlines (Washington) ad: "Driving is beneath us!".
Note in window of water bed sales outlet in Lexington Park,. MD: "Your vinyl resting place".
Sign fronting an Atlanta, GA, restaurant: "If the Colonel had OUR chicken recipe he'd be a General".
Sign at the entrance to a Sperry, OK, cemetery: "One Way! In Only!"
Lastly, but far from least, Los Angeles signs on a health food shop, stating "Diet Aids", next to a fast-food luncheonette adding "Cheat here!"
Saturday, May 17, 2014
HOW TO LIVE TO 100...by those who made it!
Old age, to the unlearned, is winter;
To the learned, it is harvest time!
---Yiddish proverb
This means there are more senior citizens than ever and they are living longer, fuller and healthier lives. Men who reach 65 can expect to live another 17.7 years. And women who reach 65 can expect to live another 20.3 years.
At the farther end of the age spectrum are our "century citizens" - those who have lived to 100 - and we have more of them than ever also. And it makes sense logically, then, that these longer, fuller and healthier lives spoken of will benefit this group as well. But, of course, such studies and reports don't take into account individuals' family longevity quotients, eating and exercise habits, job and economic stresses and such other factors that can waylay century living.
In the 1960s much was made about isolated citizens of Abkhasia in the Soviet Caucasus. Reports of 120 to 140-year olds, in blooming health, were being shunted in the media. One elder, from Azerbaijan, near the Turkish frontier, was awarded the Medal of Distinction when he reached 150. He said he owed his long life to hard work on a collective farm.
/Shirali-baba Muslinov, a shepherd in a village a mile high in the same republic, was the "oldest person in the USSR" in 1966 at 160. Then there was Ashkanger Bzania, who remarried at 112 and sired a son. He died at age 147.
According to Russian claims this region between the Black and Caspian Seas boasted 5,,600 persons claiming to have lived more than a century, at that time. How had they done it? They lived 1,500 to 5,000 feed above sea level, did regular hard work, ate whulesome food and inherited strong constitutions, according to Soviet scientists who studied them.
But no one outside the USSR was allowed to see them. And, when people started asking for proof, this Communistic hype quietly disappeared.
In 1988, when I first started keeping track of century citizens locally (northern Idaho and eastern Washington), I found one 110, two 107s, a 106. a 105, four 104s, eight 103s, 16 102s, nine 101s and 25 100-year-olds alive. In 1989 six more were added, seven more in 1990, 14 more in 1991, one more in 1992 and 20 more .in 1993, In 1989 a book, titled "Idaho 100: Stories from Idaho Century Citizens", by John O'Hara Kirk (published by U.S. West as an Idaho centennial project), listed 155 centenarians then living in over-all Idaho.
Why was I researching in this region? Because I'm personally 90 (next month) and looking forward to the year 2024, the year i will be 100 years old. So I was checking on the secrets of these centenarians, how they felt they had been able to live so long. Unfortunately, none of these people had a glimmer how or why. Not one stated he or she started out at a young age with a goal of reaching the century mark.
One obvious reason, of course, is that Americans don't treat their elderly like the Hottentots do, or did, leaving them in the desert to die, or like the Sardinians used to do, throwing them off cliffs. In the local media reports, though, a number of elements stuck out that seemed to have worked positively for our long-livers. They took care of themselves, avoided stress and didn't take on bad habits.
My analysis showed that most of them worked all their lives, a great number farming and ranching, so they kept physically fit naturally.They did a lot more walking than we do today as well. According to pictures and sightings, there have been few fat 100-year-olds.\
They reported living relatively happy lives, working through personal and family problems. And they were raised primarily in small communities, among families with as many as 16 children .More children meant more free farm help! These traits would be expected since the American society was largely agrarian in past centuries.
Unexpected things showed up in my media search too. There were many teachers (12), though few college grads Some were teaching rural schools as teenagers. Many played musical instruments, often self-taught. Barn dances were the most often discussed "amusement" of the era.
The biggest surprise debunked the idea that these elders lived in one place most of their lives. In truth, many homesteaded in several places. Not surprising was the fact more women than men made the century listing. In my centennial study there were seven men and 60 women centenarians. In a California bicentennial study only two of 200 listed were men. And popular national columnist L.M. Boyd, at the time, revealed that two-thirds of people older than 100 were women.
Few of my regional centenarians let slip any advice or personal secrets for long living. Annie Palmer said, "You have to keep active....I don't drink and I don't smoke. That's the main thing." Mae Stuk said, "I was always contented. I looked forward to the next day to what I had to do." Martha Weeks added, "Clean, Christian living!"
Irene Hazelbaker was more of a philosopher: "Either handle it (age) or it will handle you. You take what comes and make the best of it," Eva Hodson thought longevity was no secret: "Healthy diet, including a steady diet of oatmeal, exercise and the work that goes with raising a family."
Most men queried were more facetious than helpful. Vineyard owner Charley Braunersrither stated, "I owe it to the grapes." Ralph Stickney, Sr., who gave up smoking at age 70, drank only in moderation and wouldn't take medications after that, smiled when he admitted he didn't know. "The family just wanted to be sure I suffered long enough," he laughed.
Richard Stout said, "I eat three meals a day and do nothing, so I'm in pretty good shape." He agreed with a newspaper report where a centenarian was asked how he felt and he replied, "Fine. In fact, I get around better now than I did a hundred years ago." He laughed and reminded me of the old chestnut, "If I had know I was going to live so long, I would have taken better care of myself."
Sarah Larson was asked, "What plans do you have for the next 100?" "I was just wondering about that," was her reply. One idea suggested was to check out possible endorsements, like the centenarian who was asked, "To what do you attribute your long life?" and he replied, "I'm not sure. I'm still negotiating with a mattress company and two breakfast food firms."
Still hale and hearty at 90 (next month) there is considerable longevity in my family tree, on my mother's side, with her mother living to 93 and two aunts to 102 and 104. She beat breast cancer twice and lived to 99 1/2 with no debilitating diseases or health problems (other than deteriorating sight and hearing). But one of her last comments to me was, "Why has God let me live so long?" She was lonely for my dad, who died a dozen years earlier, for old friends, all gone also, and for grandchildren, scattered so hither and yon she never saw them. Two specialists both told me that it is not uncommon that century livers just give up on life, unable to face such devastating changes in their lives.
Happily, many more century citizens don't face such losses
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
GEEZER MEMORIES FROM CHILDHOOD
At my advanced age I can be one of these grandparents talking about "those good old days". But they weren't, you know. Those days gone by were simpler, I think, certainly less expensive, and kids didn't have so much "stuff". But nostalgia is funny, making things past seem better - more fun than they actually were - viewed now in retrospect.
Take the "graveyard phosphate" we kids enjoyed (before Coke and Pepsi and all the other drinks got so big). Saturday movie "matinees" actually started at 10 a.m. and lasted three hours minimum. We enjoyed a double feature, cartoon, comedy, coming attractions and newsreel - for a dime. After the show we trooped across the street to what I can only label as a "greasy spoon" diner, named the Coney Island, for a little repast. This included the "phosphate", a soda counter drink I haven't heard of in many years.For another dime the "soda jerk" squirted the phosphate into a large glass, then went down the line of flavor spigots, adding a squirt of each. Thus the facetious name "graveyard".
The 15-cent hot dogs there came with chili and onion bits slopped inside the bun. These, sometime later, would be called "chili dogs". Of course we had already had a nickel bag of hot-off-the-popper popcorn and a nickel candy bar or two during the movie, so the cash outlay mounted up to about 50 cents.
Extra nickels went into the mini-jukeboxes installed in each booth at the diner. The cacophony from each jukebox playing a different tune simultaneously was not a musical treat, but it was part of the Saturday habit. And a 50 cents outlay was well worth it to parents who then knew where we were and what we were doing the entire Saturday!
Black licorice "whips" were favorites at the penny-candy showcase. They are still around, but they're shorter and sell in packages for more serious money. Even priced at a penny, though, we often had to resort to a common substitute. We would haunt road construction sites and glom onto chunks of the road-covering tar to chew. It tasted terrible, but that wasn't the point. It was chewable and our parents hated for us to chew it. Especially when we let it get too dry and it bonded onto our teeth. It looked terrible and almost had to wear off. Sometimes, to keep us from chewing it, they'd give us a nickle for a package of Black Jack gum. Haven't seen that around in quite a spell either.
Other penny candies then popular were the mini-bottles made of wax that enclosed a few drops of a Kool-Aid-like drink, red-tipped white stick candies supposedly resembling cigarettes, and Red Hots, small red spicy chewables.The red coating, when wetted with spit, could be spread on the lips, so young girls loved to pretend it was something their mothers wouldn't allow, lipstick.
Another source of summer sustenance was the ice wagon. It was a horse-pulled wagon filled with huge ice chunks that the delivery man chipped to ordered sizes, hoisted with metal tongs onto a leather shoulder apron, and carried into kitchen "ice boxes" (later called Frigidaires by one progressive company). We would pick the wayward chips out of the wagon and suck them on especially hot days.
I mention Biscuit Soup on occasion when breakfasting out and it surprises me that waitresses have never heard of it. It was passed down to me from my grandmother to my mother to me. It was common during the '20s depression, as a way to use up days-old biscuits. Heat up a few cups of milk in a pan, with a couple spoonfuls of butter and a few shakes of salt and pepper in it, drop in a couple biscuits. In a couple minutes you have delectable biscuits awash in buttery milk. I still prepare it.
Back an era, nuts were not sold shelled and packaged as they are now. Mixed nuts, usually on holidays, were merely put out in bowls, along with a set of picks and a nutcracker, and eating them became a do-it-yourself chore. Brazil nuts or "niggertoes" (so called long before language niceties banned such a name) were.tough to crack, so the youngsters left those for the adults, which was perfectly fine with the adults who thought they went very well with the "home brew" that often came up from cellars for clan holiday get-togethers.
Every boy who got his first jackknife learned to play Mumbledepeg with it, usually from his dad. It then went with the boy wherever he went. The more blades it had, the more precious it was for bragging rights. The game consisted of placing the blade point onto various parts of the anatomy, holding the knife in place with a finger on the base of its upright handle, then whipping the hand forward and down so the knife would flip and stick into the lawn. Even with only two players the game could last an entire lazy afternoon since it started with flipoffs from the feet, then progressed to the knees, hips, fingers, elbows (it paid to be ambidextrous), shoulders, chin, nose, ears and (very carefully) the head. The better players always wanted to play the "miss and start over" rule.
Other "toys", I guess they could be called, were discarded pieces of neon tubing, which could often be found in trash bins behind sign shops. Straight pieces made great dried pea or spitwad shooters. Curved pieces took a lot more practice and skill.
Making darts was another skill we learned. We took a burned wooden matchstick (matches, for lighting wood stoves, sold in boxes), cut slits in an X across the non-lighting end with our jackknives, took a pair of pliers and forced the threading end of a needle into the other end of the stick, and tied it in place with a number of loops of thread around the stick where the needle was implanted. Then we cut two short strips of heavy paper to fit into the X slits, to serve as flight guides. An empty egg crate made a better, and safer, target than a playmate. We used to hunt flies with them, not too successfully. A dart with a couple inked hashmarks on it, though, was good for a week's bragging rights by its owner.
Take the "graveyard phosphate" we kids enjoyed (before Coke and Pepsi and all the other drinks got so big). Saturday movie "matinees" actually started at 10 a.m. and lasted three hours minimum. We enjoyed a double feature, cartoon, comedy, coming attractions and newsreel - for a dime. After the show we trooped across the street to what I can only label as a "greasy spoon" diner, named the Coney Island, for a little repast. This included the "phosphate", a soda counter drink I haven't heard of in many years.For another dime the "soda jerk" squirted the phosphate into a large glass, then went down the line of flavor spigots, adding a squirt of each. Thus the facetious name "graveyard".
The 15-cent hot dogs there came with chili and onion bits slopped inside the bun. These, sometime later, would be called "chili dogs". Of course we had already had a nickel bag of hot-off-the-popper popcorn and a nickel candy bar or two during the movie, so the cash outlay mounted up to about 50 cents.
Extra nickels went into the mini-jukeboxes installed in each booth at the diner. The cacophony from each jukebox playing a different tune simultaneously was not a musical treat, but it was part of the Saturday habit. And a 50 cents outlay was well worth it to parents who then knew where we were and what we were doing the entire Saturday!
Black licorice "whips" were favorites at the penny-candy showcase. They are still around, but they're shorter and sell in packages for more serious money. Even priced at a penny, though, we often had to resort to a common substitute. We would haunt road construction sites and glom onto chunks of the road-covering tar to chew. It tasted terrible, but that wasn't the point. It was chewable and our parents hated for us to chew it. Especially when we let it get too dry and it bonded onto our teeth. It looked terrible and almost had to wear off. Sometimes, to keep us from chewing it, they'd give us a nickle for a package of Black Jack gum. Haven't seen that around in quite a spell either.
Other penny candies then popular were the mini-bottles made of wax that enclosed a few drops of a Kool-Aid-like drink, red-tipped white stick candies supposedly resembling cigarettes, and Red Hots, small red spicy chewables.The red coating, when wetted with spit, could be spread on the lips, so young girls loved to pretend it was something their mothers wouldn't allow, lipstick.
Another source of summer sustenance was the ice wagon. It was a horse-pulled wagon filled with huge ice chunks that the delivery man chipped to ordered sizes, hoisted with metal tongs onto a leather shoulder apron, and carried into kitchen "ice boxes" (later called Frigidaires by one progressive company). We would pick the wayward chips out of the wagon and suck them on especially hot days.
I mention Biscuit Soup on occasion when breakfasting out and it surprises me that waitresses have never heard of it. It was passed down to me from my grandmother to my mother to me. It was common during the '20s depression, as a way to use up days-old biscuits. Heat up a few cups of milk in a pan, with a couple spoonfuls of butter and a few shakes of salt and pepper in it, drop in a couple biscuits. In a couple minutes you have delectable biscuits awash in buttery milk. I still prepare it.
Back an era, nuts were not sold shelled and packaged as they are now. Mixed nuts, usually on holidays, were merely put out in bowls, along with a set of picks and a nutcracker, and eating them became a do-it-yourself chore. Brazil nuts or "niggertoes" (so called long before language niceties banned such a name) were.tough to crack, so the youngsters left those for the adults, which was perfectly fine with the adults who thought they went very well with the "home brew" that often came up from cellars for clan holiday get-togethers.
Every boy who got his first jackknife learned to play Mumbledepeg with it, usually from his dad. It then went with the boy wherever he went. The more blades it had, the more precious it was for bragging rights. The game consisted of placing the blade point onto various parts of the anatomy, holding the knife in place with a finger on the base of its upright handle, then whipping the hand forward and down so the knife would flip and stick into the lawn. Even with only two players the game could last an entire lazy afternoon since it started with flipoffs from the feet, then progressed to the knees, hips, fingers, elbows (it paid to be ambidextrous), shoulders, chin, nose, ears and (very carefully) the head. The better players always wanted to play the "miss and start over" rule.
Other "toys", I guess they could be called, were discarded pieces of neon tubing, which could often be found in trash bins behind sign shops. Straight pieces made great dried pea or spitwad shooters. Curved pieces took a lot more practice and skill.
Making darts was another skill we learned. We took a burned wooden matchstick (matches, for lighting wood stoves, sold in boxes), cut slits in an X across the non-lighting end with our jackknives, took a pair of pliers and forced the threading end of a needle into the other end of the stick, and tied it in place with a number of loops of thread around the stick where the needle was implanted. Then we cut two short strips of heavy paper to fit into the X slits, to serve as flight guides. An empty egg crate made a better, and safer, target than a playmate. We used to hunt flies with them, not too successfully. A dart with a couple inked hashmarks on it, though, was good for a week's bragging rights by its owner.
Thursday, April 17, 2014
THE KEY TO ETERNAL YOUTH: Lie About Your Age!
Women have clichedly (new word?) been famed for "untold ages". Nothing takes as many years off a woman's age as the woman herself! In fact, about the only time a woman wishes to be a year older is while she's having a baby.
As a single senior I dated a single senior lady who was in an intriguing dilemma. She didn't want to have any more birthdays, but she didn't want to give up getting birthday presents either. Like so many ladies, she wanted to stop telling her age about the same time her age started telling on her. About all men could know then was that she was between the ages of consent and collapse.
Every woman seems to know inherently that the secret of everlasting youth is to lie about their age. That way, via planned forgetfulness, they can age gracefully through all the latter of seven stages: infancy, childhood, adolescence, junior miss, young woman, young woman, young woman.
Lying enhances the self image, I've been told, and, in some special instances, it can even become economically logical. Like in the story a census taker in Serman, Texas, once told. She was doing her duty all morn in one of the less entrancing sections of town and, having just finished an interview, she was leaving the building to go for lunch. Surprised, she heard, then turned to see the interviewee trotting pantingly down the sidewalk, calling after her.
"Lady, I done made a mistake," the interviewee greets her. "I done give you my insurance age, 36, but I should of give my government old-age pension age. That's 42."
Fine As Wine
We would all like to believe that, like wine, we improve with age. But we have to face facts ultimately. That's only true if the grapes were really good in the first place.
The other side of this subtractive (another new word?) thought, however, is that many women could add years to their lives if they would simply tell the truth about their age. Some get around to that radical idea eventually, about the time, as I stated earlier, their ages starts telling on them.
This is when math gets a working over. Women get a passion for tinkering with the rules of progressive arithmetic. They have their own "new math". According to the distinguished French playwright Marcel Archard, women will divide their age by half, double the price of their clothes, and always add at least five years to the ages of their best friends. That may be where Dr. Robert W. Williams, when associate professor of medicine at Boston University, got his proferred definition of middle age: "Someone 10 years younger than you are."
This touchy problem of age attribution is tougher on men than on women, of course. In discussing self-preservation methods with another single senior-dating male, I asked, "What do you do when a woman asks you to guess her age?"
"I guess my real guess to myself," he grinned slyly back, "then I knock off about 30% and, generally, come near to making myself adored."
Wisdom like that does not automatically come with old age, though. Nothing does, except wrinkles.
Age is, after all, relative. No two people age at the same rate, anyhow, other than mathematically. Thus, a woman should be only as old as she feels and looks - to herself, not to how she looks to another woman - mathematics be damned.
All of us should remember -that, no matter how old we are, we are younger than we will ever be again!
As a single senior I dated a single senior lady who was in an intriguing dilemma. She didn't want to have any more birthdays, but she didn't want to give up getting birthday presents either. Like so many ladies, she wanted to stop telling her age about the same time her age started telling on her. About all men could know then was that she was between the ages of consent and collapse.
Every woman seems to know inherently that the secret of everlasting youth is to lie about their age. That way, via planned forgetfulness, they can age gracefully through all the latter of seven stages: infancy, childhood, adolescence, junior miss, young woman, young woman, young woman.
Lying enhances the self image, I've been told, and, in some special instances, it can even become economically logical. Like in the story a census taker in Serman, Texas, once told. She was doing her duty all morn in one of the less entrancing sections of town and, having just finished an interview, she was leaving the building to go for lunch. Surprised, she heard, then turned to see the interviewee trotting pantingly down the sidewalk, calling after her.
"Lady, I done made a mistake," the interviewee greets her. "I done give you my insurance age, 36, but I should of give my government old-age pension age. That's 42."
Fine As Wine
We would all like to believe that, like wine, we improve with age. But we have to face facts ultimately. That's only true if the grapes were really good in the first place.
The other side of this subtractive (another new word?) thought, however, is that many women could add years to their lives if they would simply tell the truth about their age. Some get around to that radical idea eventually, about the time, as I stated earlier, their ages starts telling on them.
This is when math gets a working over. Women get a passion for tinkering with the rules of progressive arithmetic. They have their own "new math". According to the distinguished French playwright Marcel Archard, women will divide their age by half, double the price of their clothes, and always add at least five years to the ages of their best friends. That may be where Dr. Robert W. Williams, when associate professor of medicine at Boston University, got his proferred definition of middle age: "Someone 10 years younger than you are."
This touchy problem of age attribution is tougher on men than on women, of course. In discussing self-preservation methods with another single senior-dating male, I asked, "What do you do when a woman asks you to guess her age?"
"I guess my real guess to myself," he grinned slyly back, "then I knock off about 30% and, generally, come near to making myself adored."
Wisdom like that does not automatically come with old age, though. Nothing does, except wrinkles.
Age is, after all, relative. No two people age at the same rate, anyhow, other than mathematically. Thus, a woman should be only as old as she feels and looks - to herself, not to how she looks to another woman - mathematics be damned.
All of us should remember -that, no matter how old we are, we are younger than we will ever be again!
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