FINAL SEESAW L-Z

Human Fears, Volume 2 — Part II

Christmas 2023 First Edition

So we continue here with another real stinker…. this one is called:

L: Life Insurance

Life insurance is a popular way to financially benefit and ‘protect’ loved ones who are still alive and listed as a beneficiary (important) on the insured person’s life insurance policy if the policy holder dies during the ‘term’ of the policy (critical). That’s just one method/plan that the Life Insurance companies sell as their product. It’s their basic, standard offer. What some refer to as their meatloaf offer. Like mashed potatoes. If the life insurance company had only one plan, that’s the one they’d have. It’s called ‘Term’ life insurance. The contract is between the insurer (the life insurance company) and the policy owner (the insured) which includes a monetary payout to the beneficiary (a person, or persons) specifically named in the insurance plan by the policy owner.

The life insurance company salesman doesn’t care who is listed as the beneficiary because they don’t plan to pay it anyway. I guess I should say they don’t ‘budget’ to pay for it. Not because they aren’t American, upfront, and honest, but because almost all ‘Term’ life insurance policy holders stop paying their premiums before they find themselves either lying on the bottom of the pool or floating on top with sightless eyes bulging at the sky.

I guess what happens is the insured policy holder pays monthly premiums, knowing it will stop in, say, twelve more years, so that’s another 144 payments, and then the whole thing will come to an end and if they want to continue with a new premium, the cost will skyrocket because they will be older. So… they stop paying their premium altogether figuring they’ll take a look at the whole arrangement after the twelve years have gone by. They feel confident they’ll make it through those twelve years at that point, so why the hell are they giving their hard earned money to an insurance agency outfit every month when they know no one is going to see anything from it anyway? So, as said, they stop paying their premiums. And are no longer covered.

The Life Insurance Companies love that. They just weaseled $3000 out of you, or $5000 out of you, and only paid postage on a monthly or quarterly statement. The insurance company may not get the remaining $3000 – $5000 out of you, and they know they are unlikely to get the follow-on $10,000 renewal, but they had a nice little run with you.

Life insurance is a 100+ year old practice that allows the purchaser, the policy owner, to bet against themselves. It’s like betting the Don’t Come line in craps. And like craps, buying Life Insurance is a gamble. That’s one way to view it. That’s my view. It’s a minority view. I never bought a Life Insurance policy. I think that the reality is that Life Insurance companies tread on fear when presenting their ‘product’ to their prospective clients.

Take a look at the horrors of the No Life Insurance wheel below. We’ll continue on the other side.

First of all, it’s colorful and visually compelling. It looks like a child’s toy. Like a child’s game. On purpose. Doesn’t it? It looks challenging and fun and the way to beat it is to buy in. It’s the safest way to win the game. But there are a number of assumptions presented on that colorful Wheel of No Life Insurance.

With a more careful gander, #1: The cyan pie piece at 11:00. How does the Life Insurance Company representative even know that the dead person would have no money for their own funeral? Worst case, if you are paying for life insurance every month, you may actually NOT have money to pay for your own funeral.

#2: The lime green pie piece at 2:00. How does the Life Insurance Company sales plan expert employee know if any of your family members won’t be able to afford to travel to your funeral, assuming they even wanted to be there? Maybe they want to go to make sure you’re really dead. But whatever the reason, the funeral seems like it’s likely to occur weeks to months before any death benefit is paid out, so I guess the death benefit could help pay back the loan that the relative without the funds to attend the funeral had to get to go to the funeral to make sure you were really dead. Is there really a business for loaning out money for that?

As for that shiny red piece of the color pie, the newly deceased may have wanted to be cremated. It is a popular choice these days. Life Insurance companies have all the statistics to run their lucrative business. Insurance companies make money hand over fist.

I’d like to know what percent of people who buy ‘term’ life insurance live beyond the term of the policy they bought. Term life insurance is insurance for a fixed length of time (like 20 years). So I figuratively donned my Sherlock Holmes deerstalker, sat at my desk, and investigated the question. Here is the answer from the world wide web (abbreviated ‘www’, although this abbreviation takes nine syllables to say whereas ‘world wide web’ only requires three syllables.) That’s messed up! WWW is the least effective abbreviation in the world when it comes to speech; highly effective as a typing shortcut:

99 percent of all term policies never pay a death benefit because most term policyholders stop paying their premium, causing their policy to lapse. Here’s the takeaway: Don’t buy ‘term’ life insurance.

Another Life Insurance policy instrument is ‘whole’ life insurance. Whole life insurance guarantees payment of a death benefit to beneficiaries in exchange for level, regularly-due premium payments. The policy includes a savings portion, called the “cash value,” alongside the death benefit. 98 percent of all whole life insurance policies do pay out following a death claim. One downside to whole life insurance policies is their cost: ~10x the cost of ‘term’ life insurance policies.

Being named as the beneficiary on a ‘whole’ life insurance policy has benefitted many. I would bet, however, that those same beneficiaries often paid for the insured relative’s premium themselves. They look at their relative as an investment. And why not? However, the cost for ‘whole’ life insurance can be too high for the named beneficiary to step in and pay it. If you or they forget to pay the premium one month, the policy could be cancelled. Then there is no payout at death.

Maybe it doesn’t work that way. I am no expert. I don’t want to be an expert. As you can probably tell: I’m not a fan. I probably should have picked a different ‘L‘. Like ‘Laziness.’ Or ‘Lunar Eclipse Syndrome’. Or ‘Loser Mentality’.

M: Mental Illness

Mental Illness is at pandemic stages. Every week a new acronym gets invented relating to mental issues. It’s not something to joke about. So without additional preamble, here is Ruby Wax. We will continue in the next block of text.

There are lots of mental disorders. With many variations of what have become well-known names: anxiety disorders, depression, bipolar disorder, PTSD, schizophrenia, narcissism, eating disorders, disruptive disorders… the list goes on. No wonder they say 1 in 8 people worldwide has a mental disorder. At least the USofA is still ranked near the top in something. Unfortunately, mental illness is that something. In the USofA, it’s 1 in 4. And expanding.

My friend’s wife is an expert in identifying and diagnosing which mental disorder(s) a patient may have, as well as describe what of their mental disorder is treatable, and how to treat that aspect. These patients seek her out for her expertise. Sometimes the patient’s parents do the seeking. They know something is wrong with their child… but they have no idea exactly what. Many of these sufferers have been diagnosed multiple times with no positive results. We’re talking about serious disorders.

Diagnosing mental illnesses is a lengthy process requiring several interviews and highly focussed testing. You have to be a genius to figure out the test results. You have to be a super sleuth to see through whatever barriers the patient might put up… and manipulate those barriers without detection. In other words, my friend’s wife is always the most learned person in the room when it comes to how your brain is functioning. Sometimes, not often, I can sense her psycho-analyst wheels whirring in her head when I talk to her and frankly, I don’t want to know the diagnosis. I guess I’m afraid of the diagnosis. I am a denier. Just one of my mental illnesses.

Which is probably what too many mental patients hide behind. They don’t want to know. There are no visible broken bones. There might be nothing particularly visible at all, although a keen, knowledgable observer, like my friend’s wife, can spot mental illness from across the street. And knows the possible ailments. The confused person walking the streets talking aloud to themselves? She knows why they do this. The confused person walking the streets yelling at no one? She knows the possiblilities. Tests and interviews are needed to fine tune. Narrow it down. Although from what I can tell, it’s usually a few things. It’s a cocktail of mental illness.

I’ve had occasions where I could see myself going the wrong direction with my thoughts. Recognizing it and doing something about it are two different things. I’ve not done anything about it. This isn’t a cry for help. It’s not that bad or that often or that persistent or that scary.

I’d say I suffer from anxiety most of all. Need calming down. Need behavioral editing at times. They have drugs for this. They have drugs for a lot of things. I like drugs. Especially recreational drugs. More than alcohol, although I do like wine. Not pink wine. Red, mostly, some whites. Nothing too sweet. Not dessert wines.

I am not opposed to drugs… except for the ones that kill with a sniff. Don’t condone those. But I’ve done many drugs over the years: ibuprofen (Advil), acetaminophen (Tylenol), naproxen (Alleve), aspirin (Bayer), caffeine, marijuana (smoke), marijuana (brownies), hashish, kef, CBD gummies, psilocybin, mescaline, tri-mescaline amphetamine, LSD, PCP, Actifed, Sudafed, antihistamines, Ativan, Seconal, quaaludes, fentanyl (oral surgery), white crosses, black beauties, aspirin, Amoxycillin, Penicillin, NovaCaine (many flavors: peppermint [the standard], orange, grape, cherry, lemon, and lime), metformin, simvastatin, Jardiance, lisinopril, many cold medications, vaccines… just to name a few.

N: Namonia

People have for time immemorial feared getting that Fall Fever Illness called, ‘Namonia’. Then I found out about ten years later that it’s called the Cold and Flu Season, and not, the Fall Fever Illness. Namonia creeps into the lungs of its victims any time of year. Not just around Halloween. Not just around Jesus’ birthday.

‘Immemorial’ is the only word in the English language with three ‘m’s out of four letters. I know. You could think about that for like an hour, and try to prove me wrong, and then write a complaint. But I’ll give you advanced warning, right now. Ready? I thought about it for about, oh – I don’t know, five seconds – before realizing it’s the only 3 out of 4 letter M’s word. They don’t teach that stuff. Back to Namonia.

‘Namonia‘ is what too many people out there in ‘merica call, what us educated people call: ‘pneumonia‘. It’s the same word.

‘Namonia‘ and ‘pneumonia‘ are the same word, spelled almost exactly the same way.

They haven’t released a new dictionary in like 175 years. It’s tough to find the word ‘namonia’ in it. I know. I just looked. Wasn’t in my King James Dictionary. Or my neighbor’s Merriam-Lobster Dictionary, or whatever the last guy’s name was. But you’ll see. I probably should have saved this fixation, ‘Namonia’, for the letter, ‘P‘, but I wanted to write about ‘penile longevity’. Well, I didn’t want to, just so you know. I was asked to do so. It was a request. Some folks asked me to. I was told that penile longevity wasn’t getting nearly enough coverage in the news. Latham said he thought he saw a commercial about it, but the other guys talked him out of it. And I didn’t know what the heck they were talking about. I still don’t. I don’t know what the issue is with ‘penile longevity’. That’s what I told them, the requestors, and I also told them that I’m gonna pick my own ‘P‘, word. And it isn’t going to be that.

Oh, man. Come to think of it. ‘P‘ is only two letters away. I better start thinking about it.

Let’s see. First thing is to create a Runner’s Up list of possibilities. And once that’s done, pick the best one out of the bunch. If there is a bunch. There won’t be a bunch of ‘X‘ diseases, or ‘Y‘ concerns, and ‘Z‘ anythings. Haven’t got there. But I am concerned. Not diseased. But concerned. Not yet fixated. Just concerned. Just a whimper of a concern. Really, I’m not concerned at all. Just trying to get ‘N‘ done.

But as far as ‘namonia’ vs ‘pneumonia’ goes, it all goes back to the same roots. It’s one of the primordial links between all mankind. No kid, absolutely zero of them, thought that ‘namonia’, started with a ‘p’, when hearing it for the first thirty-two times. It’s even more for the kids that don’t hear too good. Even on try number thirty-three, when you ‘know’ there is a ‘p’ at the beginning, it’s difficult to hear the ‘p’ in the pronunciation. I can hear it sometimes. Not every time. But I have 20/20 hearing. So it’s quite good.

When an individual has pneumonia, the alveoli are filled with pus and fluid, which makes breathing painful and limits oxygen intake. Pneumonia is the single largest infectious cause of death in children worldwide. But not in America. Our kids die from gun shots.

Lots of famous people have died from pneumonia: Peter Falk, Leslie Frasier, Sean Connery, Jerry Lee Lewis, Stan Lee, Geronimo, Bob Hope, Fred Astaire, Harry S. Truman. Lots of famous people have died from gun shots: Abraham Lincoln, JFK, MLK, Harvey Milk, John Lennon. Then there are the people that become famous for pulling the trigger: John Wilkes Booth is arguably at the head of the class.

O: Old Age

The implication of Old Age is that the bumpy road we navigate called ‘life’ will be coming to the final stop sign. Yield signs are no more. Instead, the final toll booth is just Up Ahead. The bridge to safety is washed out. Gone. Bobbing away down stream. Swallowed by a giant snapping turtle or by a white whale. Not even a single memory will remain inside the dead person.

We say that someone had a nice life if they reach ‘Old Age’. But a person reaching Old Age does not always view it through such rose-colored, corrective bifocals, held together by zig-zag papers and Scotch tape. And Gorilla glue. If we could only delay this inevitable ‘Old Age’ a little. For just a handful of years. Is there anything that can be done about ‘Old Age’? Can’t it be slowed? Isn’t there a pill? Even if only available as a slow-release suppository? Or how about a powder to pour into a morning smoothie? But it can’t be any grapefruit in it because too many of us are taking statins.

Bio-study labs have developed remarkable drugs that limit the effectiveness of some diseases that kill human beings. Some deadly diseases. Vaccines have been developed that have eradicated, or come close to eradicating, many such diseases. Polio was eradicated in the United States in 1979. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), smallpox was eradicated worldwide in 1980. The smallpox eradication is the greatest eradication success in history. Smallpox was the first disease to have been eradicated because of the development of a vaccine. Generally speaking, these advances have the effect of allowing many humans to live longer. But although we are ‘all’ generally living longer, we aren’t aging slower. I find that troubling. Don’t you?

The rate of aging of different species is quite varied. And the lifespans of different animal species is immensely broad. Some animals live but a single day (Mayfly)… to… ‘forever‘? Really? Yep. A jellyfish called an Immortal Jellyfish. Has it all figured out. No brains. No heart. No lottery scratchers. No card tricks. Nothing hidden up its sleeve. Just eternal life.

Another block

P: Plague

Since the 21st century Coronavirus jumped to center stage in China in late 2019… and exploded into a worldwide pandemic in the first quarter of 2020… it’s understandable to compare and contrast it to the plague of the mid-14th century. That Plague, aka The Bubonic Plague, aka The Black Death, aka The Great Mortality, aka The Great Pestilence, was a terror that killed half of the entire population of Europe from 1346 to 1352. 50 million dancing, breathing souls, died; most of them in the first few years.

The origin of The Black Death found its locus in northern China, where the Mongols ruled. It was the tail end of the Mongolian Dynasty that had grown to immense size over 100 year earlier, led by the extraordinary leadership and military genius of Genghis Kahn. A Mongol ruling horde, the Tatars, attacked the financially strategic Genoese trading port city of Caffa, in today’s Crimea, on the Black Sea, in 1345. Caffa was so located as to be the primary Gateway to Asia when traveling there from Europe, and the essential Gateway to Europe when bringing goods from Asia to Europe. Whoever controls Caffa had significant advantage and regional dominance.

The Siege of Caffa began in 1345, and one year later, as the Tatars were about to take back complete control of Caffa, the raiding hordes, seemingly out of the blue, began dying at an alarming, precipitous rate, not seen for 800 years. You have to go back to the years 541-542, and the Plague of Justinian, to find bubonic plague raging in such a destructive way. As an eyewitness chronicler reported in 1346 during the mid-14th Century crisis, ‘The whole army was affected by a disease which overran the Tatars, killing 1000s upon 1000s, everyday. The Tatars died as soon as the signs of the disease appeared on their bodies, swellings in the armpit or groin, caused by coagulating humors followed by putrid fever.’

The swellings, or lumps, in the armpits or groin (or throat) are called buboes. And from ‘buboes’ comes the familiar name: bubonic, as in bubonic plague. But just as the Coronavirus pandemic of our time in 2020 mutated into different strands, there were several mutations of The Plague in the mid-14th century. None of those mutations proved to be a good thing for the victim. In fact, being consumed by the bubonic form of the plague gave its victims their best chance for survival: about 15% to 18% of those afflicted lived to watch their family members and neighbors die painful, excruciating deaths. If you were to die from the bubonic form of plague, it usually occurred within 10 days. If the afflicted person were to miraculously be alive two weeks after symptoms were evident, they had a good chance for survival. But the majority of those that were attacked by the bubonic plague, 82% to 85% of them, died within just ten days.

The other two most common plague variants of the 14th century, pneumonic and septicemic, killed their ‘hosts’ more quickly. Painfully fast. There was no chance for survival. The pneumonic variant was the only one of the three that was transmitted person to person, by breath, yet this variant killed its victim within 2-3 days of the arrival of the symptoms. The third variant, the septicemic variant, killed its victims within just 14 hours. Or fewer. A person could be happily eating toast in the morning, be ill at noon, and dead by early evening. Large excavation pits were dug to bury the dead, but the bodies just piled up and up and up.

One failed method to combat the disease was to lance the buboes. To rid the body of the pus masses growing under the skin; to drain and shrink the buboes. It didn’t work. The stench from the diseased pus was unbearable. To smell it was to get sick, vomiting without control. Those who performed the intended aid to those afflicted had to wear thick fragrant nose patches or ‘plague masks’ packed with sweet smelling herbs and flowers, to combat the reeking pustule’s leakage from the slicing draw of the surgeon’s lance. And many, many of these same benevolent practitioners that tried to ease the pain by eroding the rages and ravages of the dreaded disease, exposed themselves to all the dangers, and often became infected, and died.

There was no magic. One half of the population dead. One out of every two breathing souls. Dead. Often entire families, and entire villages. All dead within a few weeks of the arrival of the pestilence. It was the most profound watershed moment of two thousand years, bookmarked by the day that Jesus was anointed Messiah by the Apostle Peter, some 1300+ years earlier, and the present day 20th century creation of the atom bomb. Each a watershed. ‘The Big Three’ is how they ought to be described. Yet the Plague, the troubling middle watershed, is the only natural occurring watershed of the three. The other two are, of course, and quite obviously, man-made. A fourth watershed moment on equal scale to The Big Three was the six mile wide asteroid that smashed into the Yucatan peninsula 66 million years ago that deep-sixed all the dinosaurs, and a lot of birds, and a lot of fish, and stopped the growth of the Tongo onion, which grew to the size of a European 17th century townhouse. The asteroid whistled at 45,000 miles an hour when it came to rest, causing a lot of destruction. That’s faster than the fastest Chevrolet Corvette.

The name of Asteroid the Destroyer should be ‘Watershed‘. Instead, some asshole called it the Chicxulub impactor, apparently randomly picking letters out of a Scrabble bag, giving no consideration as to whether or not the human tongue can perform pretzel calisthenics to even pronounce it. No wonder no one knows the name of that asteroid! Actually, the name was applied from some old nearby Mexican town that you’d think wouldn’t be there anymore if it was that close. But if the people that run everything these days could rename that bummer asteroid, ‘Watershed‘, people would remember. They could even rename it, ‘Dino-Destroyer’ and we’d all remember.

It was believed by most of the population throughout Europe that The Plague, that unimaginable horror, was occurring because God had unleashed this pestilence on man because of mankind’s continual sins. One response to the plague included large processions, like parades, like Macy’s Day on Thanksgiving without skyscraper sized Big Bird and Snoopy balloons, of loin clothed, half-nude men whipping themselves for hours to atone for man’s sins. They were called flagellants. No receipts or notes have been discovered that support claims that baton twirlers led the processions. This ‘preventative’ atonement measure of flagellation didn’t work. God continued the torture like he wasn’t even paying attention. He didn’t care. He had other stuff going on.

One similarity between The Bubonic Plague and Covid-19 is that people in both cases wanted it to end quickly. Makes sense. We are brothers in that regard. Another similarity between the two plagues was the desire to find someone to blame. And it was not allowable to assign ‘blame’ to god. God was blameless. And the Church had no clear answers. So the Medieval blame-generals and Medieval church pew-sitters turned to the standard blame bearers, the Jews. And lepers. And heretics. Each of them were marginalized groups. But significantly more so, they blamed Jews. They were already practiced at doing that. As recently as 1290, all Jews had been expelled from England by King Edward I. It wasn’t the first time. They didn’t return until 1650.

Rumors grew in strength and popularity that the Plague was caused by angry Jews poisoning city wells, and other water sources, in order to kill all the Christians. This, even though Jews were dying at the same rate as non-Jews. Arrested, and by means of effective torture measures, Jews confessed to poisoning the wells, and confessed to anything else for which they were charged. Torture makes those being tortured lie. Makes them make shit up. Agree to charges that are unfounded. Standard torture practices in the Medieval days included thumb screws, the rack, the wheel, and many many more. Threats. Boiling oil. Skull crackers. A lot of the torture sessions took place in what is today’s Germany. No surprise there. History repeats, as they say. I don’t think that teachers that rely on ‘History repeats’ give enough examples of history repeating. There could be a whole course examining examples of history repeating. So that more people ‘get it’.

The ruling elite of Cologne (now part of Germany) at first thought that the charges brought against the Jews was suspicious. They offered protection to their Jews. Temporarily. After all, the Jews of Cologne were a pillar of Cologne’s economic structure. But when push came to shove, the ruling elite of Cologne later followed contemporaries of neighbor towns, and also blamed the Jews for the Plague. The toll exacted on the Medieval Jewish world from the Plague has only been surpassed in all of history by the holocaust in 20th century World War II. Again by the Germans. Achtung. Achtung.

Strasbourg, another German town, rounded up and murdered all of its Jews in February 1349… in advance of the Plague even reaching the town. This was another not well-thought out preventative measure. In July of the same year, only four short months after the blasphemous Jewish mop, Strasbourg was one of the most heavily hit towns in the region, blasted by the Bubonic Plague with a kingly ferocity. It was Pope Clement VI (1291-1352) who voiced his observation that the Jews seemed to be dying at the same rate as the Christians, and because Strasbourg was hit so hard by the pandemic after the town was laid free from Jews through the town’s murderous actions, the accusation that the Jews were to blame for the Plague became more uncertain. That blame had been simply assigned in error. No big deal.

In an ironic twist, as punishment in some towns where the Jews were shunned and forced to stay behind their high-walled Jewish ghettos, so popular during the era, it was noticed that the Jews did seem to do better surviving the pandemic than their Christian brethren who lived outside of the high ghetto walls. This gave support to the notion that the Jews were to blame. However, today we know that the reason that the Jews that were forced to live only behind the high walls of their ghettos survived better because of the unintended quarantining, and the resultant social-distancing that ensued.

Fortunately, we have vaccines that help control the effects of the Covid-19 and it’s variants in today’s world. But the toll from the 21st century pandemic was still significant, often finding its prey amongst the anti-vaxxers. One person in America died from drinking bleach as a remedy, as suggested by the embarrassingly ignorant President of the United States.

Q: Quasimodo Syndrome

Yep. Quasimodo. Quasimodo Behavior. Aka Quasimodo Syndrome. An old age issue never discussed. It’s through a skeptical prism that a personal reflection and personal internalization is based on resentment of ones own self for growing grotesque in appearance, or manner, or behavior, while getting old. Aging without grace. It has many forms. Many of us exhibit it on more than one occasion.

For some, Quasimodo Syndrome manifests itself by belonging to a person worried that their personal secret, dark and ugly sins, whatever they happen to be, will be discovered before the person’s life charade is over. They are worried that what they’ve been doing that is questionable may get found out. By someone. They are afraid that someone other than themselves will figure out, by going the next step, that their life has been less than honest, or uneventful and poorly lived. That they blew it. Or like you blew it. Your entire life. Now that you’re old, you look back at what you’d done, where you’d lived, who you had become, how you responded to innocence, and it hits you that you didn’t live your life the way you’d feel proud. You look into the mirror and see Quasimodo. That guy, below. He looks familiar!

But you can also attain an old age and be of the opinion that you don’t give a damn anymore, and so you let your weird idiosyncrasies get revealed. You don’t have to hide anything. Unfortunately, not enough older people do that. If they did, if more old people just said ‘fuck it’ as the big dirt nap comes into view – the realization that they actually are going to die at some point – you may see them hooting and hollering while running down the city streets. Flailing their arms out all over the place. Singing! Akimbo going nuts. A lot of uncoordinated off-beat dancing. These old fogies could even allow fall leaves to pile up on their winter lawns. It’s okay to yell at the ice cream truck to STOP and then squiggle on over to buy two old fashioned ice cream sandwiches. One vanilla. One chocolate.

Hitchhiking is dangerous, I guess. Was kinda a cool time back in the 70s when we felt comfortable doing it. And everyone did it. One time in Oregon, with Willard, he and I hitchhiked from Portland to San Francisco. Stuck out our thumbs and got picked up right away. It was a 1968 orange and white VW bus that had seen better days; had met a couple tree branches and a stump along the way. This particular instance being picking up as hitchhikers occurred in the summer of 1972. It was already crowded inside of the 1968 orange and white VW bus. Everyone was in their 20s. Close in age. Willard and I crowded in.

The driver drove down I-5 to the Baseline Exit in Eugene and took us to their community house. We’d only gone about 90 miles from where we were picked up. The driver and the other kids together invited us to go inside. Willard and I stayed overnight; slept on the living room floor. They tossed us some sleeping bags that they had. We slept like doornails. Or at least, I did.

In the morning, I heard Willard’s low gravely voice. It was like the bass speaker in a blown stereo system. Low. Rumbly. I lifted my head and there were two 20-ish fully naked girls in the kitchen ten feet away talking to Willard. One had red hair and the other one didn’t. I mean didn’t have any hair. Anywhere. It was the Rainbow Family that had picked us up. I guess they were nudists of the day. I could have killed Willard for not waking me earlier.

But hitchhiking is taboo nowadays, at this point. 2024? No way. So any of today’s older people who wanted to really let loose and hitchhike and take a chance, probably would be ill-advised to do so.

All this possible freedom of expression that could be coming from the old fogies is a wasteland. You just don’t see it on the streets. It is not hardly considered. ‘Don’t you want to be a kid again, and just goof off?’ Shouldn’t that be what we should be hearing?

Too much of this possible gaiety is being denied us. We don’t get to watch this unfold. Instead, many old age folks crawl into the darkness and settle into Quasimodo Syndrome survival mode. To continue their life in the shadows. They are not out in the sunlight, breathing deep and warm, marveling at life. No. It’s window shades drawn, porch light bulbs surrendered to cobwebs, and their roof gutters go unattended. The water spills over like droplets of hope. The hinge on the garden gate turned to a brown, flaking rust.

I, too, have a connection to Quasimodo. He and I bonded the instant I watched Charles Loughton carry his black & white, religious bell-ringer story to the cinema. Except that I saw him on a 27″ teevee screen in our teevee room when I was a kid. I didn’t see him projected in imposing King Kong dimensions on an actual cinematic big screen.

Our teevee room was really a bedroom that my parents used as a teevee room. There was no bed in there. There were two couches. The one that my dad laid down on every night of the year and the other one. The one that the remaining ten people used. Along with lying on the floor. They didn’t even try to embellish the teevee room with words like ‘a conversion’. It wasn’t ‘converted’ into a teevee room; it just was our teevee room. It had an end table with a lamp on it and a drawer where my dad kept his toenail clippers. They were monsters. They looked like orthopedic toenail clippers. Which made sense, I guess.

But Quasimodo still delivered a wallop even on that small screen. Made an impression. We had similarities. We had a kinship. He and I. Me and Quasi. He could have been me. I am part-Quasimodo. So was our high school classmate who won the vote as Senior Class Male Leader. He wasn’t our clock tower bell-ringer (although our school had an impressive clock tower with large impressive bells wanting to be rung), but he was our varsity high school quarterback. And he was also Quasimodo-like. Especially one episode late in his life when he became a virtual single-day Quasimodo. A dead ringer. The whole thing. It can happen. People can fall into and out of Quasimodo Behavior. For him, it was at the time that he embarrassed himself, and shamed our class, by voting for Donald J. Trump. That’s when he momentarily stopped being a leader, and someone accustomed to admiration, and turned into a mistaken Quasimodo, like most of us do at one point in time or another. I can’t even count the number of times I have exhibited Quasimodo Behavior. Realizing his mistake, our class leader recovered from his Quasimodo voting error with a sadness for having pulled the wrong voting lever. Good for him. Unfortunately, he passed on tax day 2023. Which happens to have been the ten year anniversary of the bloody, murderous 2013 Boston Marathon Bombing, as well as the 111th anniversary of the historic, ill-fated, icy plunge into the Atlantic Ocean ending the maiden voyage of White Star Lines’, R.M.S. Titanic… and the date also happens to be my wife’s birthday. It’s called a trifecta. Remember: two negatives make a positive. Okay? But now a fourth leg is to be added to the April 15 trifecta, creating a trifecta+1 or a chair, taking up the seat, as it were, by our former Class Captain and former quarterback of our football team. R.I.P. Al.

The R.M.S. stands for Royal Mail Ship, as the Titanic was the most expensive mail carrier ever built at the time of its being built. It was a mail ship with passengers. And one of the survivors that became quite famous who was passenger-ing on the Titanic that April 15th was the Unsinkable Molly Brown. Lived in Leadville, Colorado. Early 1900s mining town. She was the richest woman on the Titanic. Her husband had bought a lot of stock in a mining company that went on to strike GOLD. Literally. She was a socialite and quite a close friend to John Jacob Astor; who was also on the Titanic that day, and was by wide margins the richest person on the boat. Richest man: Astor. Richest woman: Brown. Luxury traveling on a mail ship. Astor unfortunately did not survive the terror. That’s why he’s not referred to as the Unsinkable John Jacob Astor.

R: Retirement

Each of us grew up with a Book of Life: Guidance Rules. Except it wasn’t in the form of a book… or an instruction guide… or even a crummy paper handout. It was an understanding between our parents and ourselves. The ‘rules‘ went something like this:

Go to school, get good grades, graduate

Go to college or technical school or join the military, graduate, get a job

Do a good job, make money, great promoted

Get married, make more money, have children

Raise the children, become financially stable, RETIRE

The problem with this ‘understood agreement’ with our parents was that there was no clarity or ‘texture’ around the final stage: RETIRE. There was no direction as to what retire meant, as far as ‘actions to take’, other than quitting your last job. Which, let’s face it, only takes an hour at most, and then you’re ‘retired‘. (Some claim that the follow on plan to retiring continues as: pain, illness, death. Not my favorite tripod or trio or threesome.)

Life continues beyond the one hour on the last day at your last job.

What do you do with your time now that you’ve ‘retired’? The reason that there was no ‘direction’ for retirement given by your parents is because they had not yet reached retirement age themselves, so they had no actual experience figuring it out. They had done all the other things on the Book of Life: Guidance Rules. Unless they were parents who didn’t follow their own ‘rules’. Which happens. We’re all just going through this thing called life at the same time. Parents are just on a different part of the same curve than their kids. Some kids figure out that their parents make mistakes along the curve, and forgive them. They get past it. But then there are those kids that angrily hold those parental mistakes against their parents. Sometimes understandably. Often not.

My friends could all retire financially right now. But they don’t. I know other folks that can’t retire because of financial inadequacies. So they don’t retire. Or they do, and they barely scrape by. So there is a finance hurdle, or thought process, to retiring. ‘How much money do I need before I run out of it – and croak living in a makeshift tent on the street?’ Or. ‘How much money do I need before I run out of it – and have to sponge off my kids?’ A question from a more positive angle, ‘How much money can I spend each month so I can live until I’m 90?’ That question is a better one right there.

Here’s how to know how much money you can spend until you’re 90. Its been proven. So. There’s that. For each member of your family that are alive, or lived, beyond the age of 90, add one year to the base of 90 years. So if your Aunt Fanny lived to 93 years old before being put down for her dirt nap, add a year to the base of 90. You’re at 91. Also, if distant Uncle Harry died at age 94, then add another year to your new base of 91, and now it’s 92. If you had eight close relatives that lived past 90, cap your addition to 5. The largest life expectancy age that any of us are allowed is 95 for these scientific calculations.

So, if you’re 73 years old now, then you’ve got 19 more years to live to your adjusted base age of 92. (If you were adopted, just stick with 90.) Next, there are some simple calculations.

• Multiply the current balance in your savings account by 1.3266. Then;

• Divide that number by 1000.

Write the number on the back of your hand. We’re going to come back to it shortly.

• Add together the value of all of your stocks and all of your bonds and your real estate and your jewelry and your stamp collection (if valuable), as well as the value of any Picasso’s on your wall and in your drawers and under the bed. If you have a farmer’s silo filled with corn, add the value of that into the pot, too. Throw in an additional $100 if you ever raised turkeys.

• Take that sum, do a double check, and divide by 100/19 years left to live.

• Divide that number by 6.

• Divide that number by 12.

• Multiply that number by .75. (Write it down in black ink.)

• Add that total to the number you wrote down from the savings account calculation.

• Divide by 12 (2/3 of 19 (years left to live) x .75, and round down if necessary).

• Finally, add in the monthly Social Security check you get.

That final sum is your monthly allowance. It works every time. And you get real piece of mind. And it’s real simple to do.

Now that you have the gained the security knowing the secret to calculate retirement financing, you may want to turn your focus to your health. That means staying active. Which means walking around or going to the gym or playing golf. And could include going to book club, if your book club meeting provides treadmills. And that’s about it. Playing gin rummy with neighbors does not count. Sure, you could piddle in the garden if you’re not too overweight such that you’d tear your meniscus if you bent your knee too far. And you could pick weeds on the hill in your yard if you are careful not to fall and twist your leg. (See ‘Knee Replacement‘ under ‘K‘.)

There is a club of wispy old ladies in town that ride bicycles. Dangerous! I also know that there are a lot of exercising pet owners that walk their dogs in the morning. And then the dogs go with their ‘exercising’ owners to get coffee at 11:00a. Sometimes it’s 11:15a. The doggies wag their tails (unless they are tail-removed boxers) while they four-leg it back toward home after getting coffee with their exhausted owners. So their conscientious owner gets some steps in. And that’s this generation’s version of a good thing to be doing. On the backside of the coin, I personally know two older people that tripped over dog leashes. Ka-splat! Ka-splat! One of the fallen was in traction for months and months, and still had an infirm shoulder over a year later. He was a man. He wasn’t a woman. I have no knowledge as to how brittle his bones were before tripping. Coulda been a factor. Probably was a factor.

The other person that I know who tripped over a dog leash was a woman. She tried to break her fall by landing on the facial part of her head. In response, her entire head, including her head’s face, ears, hairline, cowlick, chin, neck parts, and all around the skeletal globe of her head itself, the hard, sort-of-rocky-part, was severely bruised for many more months. Her face was particularly puffy and red. And purple. Like a big purple facial Marion berry. Like a big purple bumpy swollen facial Marion berry. Down the neck a bit, too. Part way down the stem of the berry. She autonomously resorted to Quasimodo Behavior by hiding in dark shadows. (See ‘Quasimodo‘ under the letter ‘Q‘.) I fully understood it. Eventually, the brain protector of her head (the hard bony globe), and the nose support portion (the face), returned to normalcy.

Let’s see? What insights did Clare Davenport reveal about Retirement? Wow. With apologies to Clare, that was not good. Is she a card carrying member of the Debbie Downer Society? How did she get an invitation to present at TED? Here’s the problem. Her transformed ROI’s are not memorable, not fun and don’t conform to what ROI even stands for in finance. ROI in finance isn’t a three letter acronym for three different actions or considerations. But that’s what Clare is doing with her adapted version of ROI: Reframe, Optimize, Ignite. These are three major steps, each with considerable considerations to consider. Maybe it plays well in Provo, Utah, where the crowd clapped. Maybe they clapped because her ‘Talk’ had concluded.

ROI (in finance) stands for one action: Return on Investment. The ‘O’ is just taking up space for the word ‘on’. Clare made her ROIs three times more onerous. And her friend that she calls Jenny (like it’s a fake name to protect whomever she is) who had two jobs to make it all work out while her husband Jeff had one job, sounds a little goofy. Clare doesn’t say where Jenny worked. Did Jenny work at Rite Aid part-time in the evenings? Was she a daytime waitress at Hatch’s Drug soda fountain? Did husband Jeff have a 30 year long job at the same metal plant, pounding aluminum? And how can Jenny miss her ‘soon to be grandchild’? The Talk just needs a little cleaning up.

FYI: When Clare references a rumor regarding German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck starting the first ‘retirement’ program in 1889, 19th century ‘Social Security‘ for those 70+ years old, she failed to mention that life expectancy at the time was 47. Otto wasn’t offering anything significant. Today, it would be like having a social subsidies program for citizens age 90. Not much of a program. He didn’t need to fund it. But the sentiment was there. The feelings were there.

Feelings: still probably not the best song ever. Just follow the intense upbeat guitar picking. And the mid-song harmonizing. Not a great dance song, however. If you watch the turntable arm in the picture while the notes pour out of your ear buds or computer speakers, you’ll notice that it doesn’t even move. The arm is stationary the whole time. The entire thing is a lie. It’s bogus…. Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Feelings! I think Clare wrote her TED speech with Feelings playing in the background. It’s the only thing that makes sense. The pace of her speech and the pace of the song are equivalent. They are equally valent. Which I guess means the electrons move about the neutrons in the same pedantic pattern.

You better start paying more attention to your feelings because we’re all going to be worm food soon. ‘Cheer up. You might become famous after you’re dead.‘ That’s plagiarized wisdom right there: Mr. Henry Charles Bukowski, aka Henry Charles (Hank) Chinaski. Mark it down. Letter ‘R‘.

S: Stock Market Collapse

There are a lot of us that one time or another had invested in the Stock Market. It is, as my father used to say to me, a form of gambling. I use the term to include other monetary investments, like bonds. Which I THINK are supposed to be quite safe. Maybe bonds are not so much a form of gambling. But the stock market – investing in companies – is a gamble.

The company that you bet your hard earned dollars can fail, decline, have a bad quarter, have a bad year, hire the wrong people, promote the wrong manager, miss critical deadlines, inflate sale’s forecasts, lose their distribution advantage, lose key personnel, be outbid by their competitors, get sued for something possibly suable, have the copy machine go on the fritz at an inopportune time (perhaps a paper jam), fail to come to a consensus in an exec meeting, be rocked by an internal sex scandal, be hacked by a foreign government, a tree could fall from a storm and block entry to the parking lot, there could even be internally planned malfeasance. Bad press. Shoddy PR. A worldwide shortage of available silicon chips could develop. The Datagraphix 4440 camera lens could become fogged. A tire could blow while out on delivery. The customer files a complaint. The company name could change so all the letterhead must change… but it wasn’t budgeted. There could be a nationwide recall of their product. OSHA could file a case study looking into questionable practices. Hell, social media can take a business down in a day. The hot girl in marketing could have a bad reaction to a bee sting or a peanut, so she goes on leave, and morale dips. Production slackens. A small team working together on deadline could get the flu. You could even be as unfortunate as to have a poorly filmed TikTok. Or a pandemic could strike. Yes. Really. This isn’t an exaggeration. A pandemic could actually erupt. These are all just some of the possibilities that those of us that invest in companies through the Stock Market seem really good at ignoring.

I’ve had, and continue to have, stocks. I don’t look at them because I just don’t. They aren’t fun. You can’t play with them. You can’t hardly even touch them anymore since they don’t give out Stock Certificates any longer without jumping through hoops, requiring multiple, multiple requests along with a lot of following up and follow through. Which sucks. There was a time when the Stock Certificates themselves were the attraction. There was a time when the Stock Certificates just arrived in your mailbox. Look at that Monkey Ward stock certificate below. Isn’t that thing gorgeous?

The investment headlines at one point were about the Green Bay Packers football team, and what happened when the team became a publicly traded company. Lots of sports nuts, thousands and thousands and thousands of them, especially football fans, wanted to own 1 Share of Green Bay Packers stock just so they could get the cool-looking Green Bay Packers Stock Certificate. They imagined it with Packers green and Packers yellow, and real fancy lettering with embossing, and the certificate paper was high quality, and you get to be a part-owner of an NFL football team. Like a big shot. I myself wanted a Green Bay Packers Stock Certificate. I did. I wanted one. Absolutely. I wanted one of those Stock Certificates and be a big shot. I still do.

I still lament the fact that publicly traded companies are no longer required to mail out those cool certificates. When I bought a pack of baseball cards as a kid, I bought them for the gum that broke like glass in your mouth. I threw the cards away. Right into the trash. Screw the cards! Not really. But I wish that companies still sent out Stock Certificates now. It became too expensive to mail them. That’s what I was told. I don’t know if it’s true or not. I don’t know the actual reason they stopped printing Stock Certificates. Now, of course, the certificates are electronic. Maybe it was the Green Bay Packers fiasco. I didn’t follow them that closely. They weren’t my team. I saw them get their asses kicked by Denver in the Super Bowl. SB XXXII. San Diego. Elway vs Favre. 31-24. Final score.

Here’s another Stock Certificate. This one is from Sear, Roebuck and Co. Isn’t that thing a beauty? I love that certificate even though I’m conflicted as to what exactly a “Depositary Receipt” is. I THINK it’s a stock certificate for a company buy issues in a foreign country. Don’t hold me to it. Whatever the hell it is, it’s a damn good looking certificate. I wish I had it.

Timing the market. We have rented out our home in Canada for years. Fifteen years. To families. It’s a large house. And so are the families. One of the families that rented our house had sold their own home just prior to renting ours. Their house, so their logic curdled, had appreciated slowly over the years, and the ‘head’ of the family, the husband/father, got the notion in his noggin that the home values in Vancouver, British Columbia were going to collapse. He wanted out of the real estate market ASAP. He wanted to acquire his equity before the collapse. He had lost money during a bearish stock market downturn, freaked out, sold low, and didn’t want a repeat performance with his real property. He wanted to be out of the real estate market. He had plans to jump back in a few years later. Once the dust had settled and the carnage was over. He would wait for the collapse of the real estate market, wait for the bottoming out, and for property values to diminish. And in the meantime, he would just rent our house and be happy as a clam. Which is an incorrect abbreviated version of ‘happy as a clam at high water’, which is when clams are safe from fishermen collecting them, and selling them on shore, and the purchaser busting their shells and eating them. That’s when the clam is happy.

Prior to putting his own home on the market, our future renter genius paid to repair some of the home problems that he’d ignored over the years. He needed a new roof. His refrigerator was old. The irrigation system for his yard was faulty. And more. Much more. Paint here. Paint there. Patch this. Patch that. Replace the fogged window in the back room. Figure out why the driveway lights don’t work. Dig out the stump in the front yard by the street. Pay an arm and a leg to spiff up the garden; which became more spoofed than spiffed, due to trying to save a little bit here and there. While spiffing and spoofing, a decision about taking out the dying arbutus had to be made: ‘Yes’. Should the carpet in the family room be replaced? Again, ‘Yes’. The railing on the outdoor stairs was loose and wobbly from years of neglect. Who handles that? Keep going? Or stop here? Fix more stuff? Or are we done? What about the fireplace soot accumulation on the cheap mantle? Looks bad. Can’t hide it. Funds got low. Costs were increasing. This was getting out of control. ‘Caroline! Should we borrow some money against our equity?’ So it was going. So it went. And our future renter’s house went up for sale.

After a few weeks, not a long time, an offer came in with a contingency to have the house inspected. That used to be a standard request. The offer was below asking but it was getting late, so they accepted the lesser money than they had hoped for to keep the momentum. The inspection came back with termite damage reported. And black mold. $8000 fixed the termite damage. $4500 addressed the mold. Another house down the block sold below asking. Our genius future renters were well up over their skis by this time and hoped to stick the landing. So they paid the commission to the real estate agent, and paid all the closing costs that sellers generally paid. They spent even additional unplanned for money to make the move to our house, spent time enrolling their children in our schools, and engaged in meeting their new neighbors. Phew! Got out in the nick of time. They felt they had nailed it! Out before the real estate collapse.

They figured that they would rent from us for two years before jumping back into the market, after the certain collapse. Then it grew to three years. Then four years. Then five years. The real estate market didn’t behave the way they had the scenario played out in their heads. ‘Dammit,’ the man said. It did not succumb to his diagnosis. ‘Dammit,’ he said again. Instead, Vancouver became a real estate hot bed. Values jumped. For the entire time this man and his wife rented our house, Vancouver was measured as the hottest real estate market in the world. He timed the market, and failed miserably.

He and his family eventually moved back into his wife’s parent’s house after draining their finances paying the rent to us for five years, and leaving the lights on accruing higher and higher electricity bills. Month after month. He heated our 44,000 gallon swimming pool when it was still cold outside. The pool is shaped like a grand piano with no cover keeping any heat ‘in’. The steam rising from the pool was witnessing dollar signs floating up into the air before disappearing. The gas bill in April was $1200. About $1100 more than what a normal April bill would have been if he’d just waited til May before needing a daily swim.

People who ‘time the market‘ often fail at timing the market. And it’s not like they are just placing a $5 bet on red on the roulette wheel, which they believe gives them something like a 50/50 chance of winning. The stakes are much higher (selling your house) and the odds are much much worse. But market ‘timers’ use the wrong analogy. They use the one we’re using right here… the 50/50 flip of the coin. ‘It’s going to be red, or it’s going to be black.’ ‘Property values are either going to drop… or they aren’t.’ The head honchos of this family ‘thought’ that the real estate market was going to collapse, so they jumped off. Kinda committing a type of suicide. Financial suicide. Real estate ownership suicide.

Market timing is not a binary flip of a coin. It’s not those 50/50 odds. It’s not that simple. The odds are much worse. It’s more analogous to throwing a pair of dice down onto the green felt, with 36 possible outcomes. Real estate market timers are betting their families largest asset on one of those 36 outcomes. But they think there are only two possible outcomes. And that’s what happened to our renter. At best, he bet on 1/2 of the 36 rolls of dice, and it came up one of the other 18 possible outcomes. So he lost. Just like almost all the other Market Timers.

T: Thanks, Before It’s Too Late

We rarely know how long we get to forage around the planet. Here today. Dead tomorrow. Or next Tuesday. There are many things we may have intended to get done. But didn’t. Thanking people, for example. Thanking those who were closest to us. Thanking those who supported us. Thanking those that made our lives happy. Thanking those who helped us when we needed help. Thanking those who taught us, served us and waited on us. Thanking those who cooked the turkey and applied their skills to make marshmallow turkey pops.

And thanking those who were important to us in so many other personal ways. Your family. Life-long friends. Co-workers. Co-collaborators. Doctors, perhaps. Clergy. The list is long but not infinitely long. Sometimes includes oral surgeons, too.

Another group to thank are those who we never met but who brought us so much joy. Musicians. Artists. Athletes. Below are a few videos intended to recognize some of the musicians that were of such importance. And a couple comedians that helped grease the path, making it easier and more enjoyable.

This list of musicians and comedians won’t be the same as your list. You’ve got your own. But maybe you could expand your own list. The performances below start with the Grateful Dead followed by the Jerry Garcia Band. Throw in a Mark Knopfler take… end with Ricky Gervais. Plus, a bonus track.

Bob Dylan was a longtime fan of the Grateful Dead. He toured with them in 1987. He considered Jerry Garcia to be a good friend. ‘There’s no way to measure his greatness or magnitude as a person or as a player,’ Dylan told Rolling Stone magazine when learning that Jerry Garcia died. ‘I don’t think eulogizing will do him justice.‘ Jerry died August 9, 1995. It was devastating for many of us. A hiccup in a long strange trip that endures today.

There are few musicians for whom the American flag was ordered nationwide to be flown at half mast following their death. This only occurs at the behest of the President of the United States. First, there was Elvis (President Jimmy Carter). Next up? Jerry Garcia (President Bill Clinton). Republican Presidents apparently don’t listen to enough music. I think that’s right.

In case you don’t think you know Mark Knopfler, here is an old, long long time ago, bonus performance. From 1983. You will know who he is.

Mark Knopfler, Dire Straits lead guitar player and songwriter, grew up to become the doppelganger of one of my most-favorite childhood chums, Miles Kubly. And let me tell you. Miles is a virtuoso of his own making. Miles Kubly is at heart a rescuer. Always there when needed. Ask Bob Willard (a little late for that). Ask Beth Fisher. Ask the 1000s of people he saved from fire. A roll-his-sleeves-up courageous human. The best kind! Thanks, Miles. From my heart!

U: Urinary Incontinence

No one I know wants to have a health issue that includes the word ‘Urinary‘ in its name. Also, no one I know wants to have a health issue that uses the word ‘urinary‘ to describe it. At least none of the guys I know. I can’t speak for girls, or women. Never could. I just never got the hang of it. To me, girls are nature’s enigma. But I know that women aren’t as much against the word ‘urinary‘ as men are. Guys don’t want the word ‘urinary‘ around them, anywhere, and we don’t want its root word around us, either. Or any of its derivative forms as currently known, or any new forms forged in the future. None of them.

‘Bowel‘ isn’t a first choice, either, if the truth is to escape. But we escaped ‘Bowel‘ as the entry for the letter ‘B‘, by going with ‘Broken Bones‘. Could have gone with ‘Bladder Leakage‘, but we’ll wipe the floor clean with that right now.

I have had a couple dribbles with urinary incontinence. Just after turning 70. Yikes! But I’m not going to put it anywhere on my Reveal Shirt. (see ‘Diabetes‘). I’ve only had a few dribble ‘mishaps’, is all its been. Not much. I can almost say it didn’t happen each of the three times. Or all four times. Less than ten times, is what it is. I have definitely not had a double digit number of leakage episodes, yet. It’ll happen. I suppose.

Supposing is an unpublicized, fabulous, natural escape that gets no credit, little attention, and should be exalted. Supposing should be studied. It’s such a warm solitary thing. Calming. Staring out. Not really seeing. Not looking. It’s all internal. Just staring off. No commitment. That’s the key. No commitment. Just supposing. Wondering. Silent. Totally consumed. Day dreaming. Just supposing. It’s a magic process… and experience. It doesn’t require an answer. It’s not seeking a solution. It’s a rare time when you aren’t looking for results.

Supposing is like wearing ear buds, but without any ear buds. When you’re supposing, there are no external interruptions or consequences. Anything going on outside is blocked out. Supposing has no audio. It’s just a cool thing to do with no instruction needed as to how to do it. Babies are born with some natural abilities, unlearned, like suckling. Later, we all have a natural, instinctive ability to suppose. It is not taught. It’s not really, even, technically, thinking. Thinking occurs in the brain. In the middle of the gray. But supposing doesn’t even need to reach the brain. It’s more basic. It’s more crucial. Supposing occurs lower down, like in the neck, near the home base of the brain. Early man thought that the tonsils were where supposing had its headquarters. Early man thought that the tonsils were the brain. Early man didn’t know.

I don’t spend much time thinking about my rare, quite unremarkable, bladder leakage. It was like having a dry cough. Not really a cough at all. But when I do think about it, I know that I don’t want to be placed in a home because I can’t control myself. That’s what I heard they do to people. Enroll them in an institution, throw them into a diaper, escort them to their room, shut the door. Forget about them. Talk behind their back. Screw up their meds. That’s not what I want for me. But that’s what happens to people with urinary incontinence. Every one of them. Eventually. Unless it goes undetected.

Incontinence can even be an issue at age six. Gary O’Block was held back from first grade after he peed in his pants on the very first day of school in Miss Ritchie’s class. He was already a big, chubby kid, even then. There was noticeable blubber. Gary had a round head. Round shoulders. Glasses. No one even got to know him. Although I had a skill, like a super power, that let me make a decision about liking some other kid or not within 30 seconds. It was like having a gift. The ability to size someone up just by looking at them. Like when I saw a girl across the street with big breasts. I instantly knew I liked her. I didn’t even have to really ‘meet’ her. Didn’t even have to hear her speak. That’s how talented I was. I guess that I sort of developed this skill. I don’t recall having this skill at all in elementary school. It started more like in junior high and really took off in high school and went on from there. I was just happy believing that when a girl with big breasts looked at me, she ‘usually’ couldn’t even tell if I had a urinary incontinence problem… unless I just had one, and I wasn’t wearing a shirt with long untucked shirt tails that reached down beyond my knees.

Gary O’Block was only in our class for less than the entirety of first period. Which was too short to really get to know him in any meaningful way. I never even talked to him. But I was in the other first grade class, so I didn’t witness any of it. Willard met him. Willard knew who he was. I heard about it from Willard. Willard used to tell people about Gary O’Block peeing in his pants on the first day of school, and getting held back. And he’d laugh real loud about it while telling it. You see? Urinary Incontinence is shunned, marginalized, and scolded, at all ages beyond baby. From Gary O’Block to old age, you’re not allowed to have it without consequences. Incontinent consequences. It’s one of nature’s constants.

It’s such a problem and an embarrassment that the video below and the .gif above are cartoons because the producers couldn’t find anyone to do perform live, and wouldn’t dare ask one of their family members or first cousins.

Producer on phone: Hi, Uncle Jerry. Would you like to be a star in my next video?

Uncle Jerry: What’s it about?

Producer: Well, it’s part of a medical journal. You heard about what I’m doing. Right?

Uncle Jerry: Yeah, I heard. Sounds dumb. What do you want me to do?

Producer: I want you to talk about one of the medical conditions. I think you’d be real good at it.

Uncle Jerry: Do I have to know anything?

Producer: No. Of course not. I’d write everything out for you. The whole thing.

Uncle Jerry: Do I get paid?

Producer: No. Of course not. C’mon Uncle Jerry. It’s only for a few minutes.

Uncle Jerry: What do I have to talk about?

Producer: I have you picked to explain Urinary Incontinence.

Uncle Jerry: Call someone else. I’m not doing that! [click]

V: Varicose Veins

Varicose Veins aren’t the worst thing in the world. But when you can’t help but notice them on some people, big thick rope-like bulging bands of rebar, it tends to make you feel grateful not to have varicose veins. I had a cohort at Electronic Arts named Steven R, a buffoonish incompetent jerk with six consonants in a row in his last name. That concentration of consonants is perhaps his best quality. He had varicose veins so bad that he had varicose vein leg surgery. The surgeon performed the surgery on the right leg. But his even more-seriously varicose veined leg was his left leg. That leg was the one the doc was supposed to operate on, but Steven R forgot to write ‘other leg‘ on his good leg. So the surgery was a failure for all of us: Steven R himself, who had the affliction, and the rest of us that had to shade our eyes to prevent them from directly seeing those bulging monstrosities. He wore shorts in the summer! While he still had rope-like distracting ugly varicose veins in the infirm leg. That hairy varicose leg was u-g-l-y. You didn’t want to choose him to be on your summer softball team. You wanted him to be chosen by some other summer league softball team so that you only had to face him one time on your summer schedule. He couldn’t run for crap and was a lousy fielder, yet he was the assigned producer of EA’s baseball video game. In-game slow motion replay revealed that, one year, the video game batters, never actually touched 1st base when they got a base hit. Or a home run. Or a double. Or a triple. They ran over 1st base, or right by it if they headed toward 2nd base. That base running was also u-g-l-y.

I’ve never had varicose veins: a medical issue known to be predominantly a leg problem. Right below the surface of the skin of the leg. By far the number one elongated spot. That’s where varicose veins reside. That’s where all the varicose veins pitch their tent. That’s what I thought. And unless you are a real Mr. Smartypants, you thought the same thing. Same with Mrs. Smartypants. And probably the Smartypants children and cousins and aunts and stepsisters and adopted siblings. And the neighbors of the Smartypants clan probably thought that, too.

So I investigated varicose veins and right at the start, in the first source that I chose without giving the choice much thought, in the second sentence no less, it said that hemorrhoids are varicose veins of the rectum. I did not intend to write about that. I admit it. I was caught off-guard. And it gave me pause. It made me question whether there are more people with varicose veins (in their legs) than there are people with varicose veins tucked up between their legs (rectum hemorrhoids). So I investigated further. Continued the pursuit. I felt like a soldier. I was on it! Not excited about it, really. More of a duty. I was prepared to give my duty a couple of minutes.

Turns out 20% of adults are predicted to develop varicose veins. Hemorrhoids? 1 in 20. It’s a surprisingly low figure. If accurate, 4x more adults will suffer varicose veins in their legs than will enjoy hemorrhoids in their rectum. I was surprised to learn that. Why? Because I don’t have experience with varicose veins in the legs but I do know a thing or two about hemorrhoids.

You see, I have a brother-in-law who once asked me if I had any hemorrhoid cream he could use. This had never been asked of me before. And I never did the asking! I said I didn’t have any Prep-H. If I did have Prep-H, I would have said that I didn’t. So would you. I answered the same way all of you would have answered. What kind of person asks another person if they have any hemorrhoid cream that they could borrow? Maybe I’m just an uptight asshole. The derivation of the word hemorrhoid, with the phony-as-hell ‘rrh’ middle, comes from Greek (of course it does) and it means ‘liable to discharge blood’. Yuck.

So I really didn’t learn much about varicose veins. But if the chart below has any accuracy, then it’s just Stage 2 of 5 stages of vein diseases, and I wouldn’t worry about that too much. But I would suggest that even as a Stage 2 problem, please wear long pants all year. (P.S. ‘Varicose Veins‘ is allowable as a Reveal Day shirt entry (see ‘D: Diabetes‘)).

Just be happy that I didn’t select Vulva Sec as the ‘V‘ issue entry. My better judgement won the battle against my normally poor judgement that Readers wouldn’t want to read about old, dry vaginas. Any more than they would want to read about shrinking, shriveled penises with sagging testicle sacks. We have old age issues to deal with, not non-functioning liver spots romances.

W: Weight Gain

Many of us spent too much of our adult lives watching our weight climb. And slow down and plateau. And climb some more. And never crest… nor even hint at beginning a descent. Knees hurt. Back aches. Can’t run. Barely can put on shoes. Reminds me of Charles Bukowski: ‘When I wake up in the morning and put my shoes on, I think, Jesus Christ, now what?‘

If you aren’t familiar with Bukowski or haven’t read him, you might give him a try. You’ve still got time. Begin with his first book, Post Office. I remember it’s length to be similar to The Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway. Maybe a tad longer. Short novels. Bukowski is dead. So is Hemingway.

Bukowski lived a long time for someone who was drunk for a lot of it. He was a professional drunk. Died at age 74, and was a damn good writer/poet/author for the important parts of it all. He was a gambler. Not cards. Not casinos. Not blackjack nor craps. He was a real gambler. A life gambler. He also was a womanizer. Loved to go to the track and bet the horses. Hung around neighborhood bars drinking cheap beer and cheap Scotch. Settled down with cheap wine, cigarettes and Schlitz beer while he wrote late into the night. Too drunk to write in the morning or at noon or 1:00p or 2:00p.

His first job was a part-time postman delivering mail in LA. An occupation he returned to several times at the start of his working life. Until he didn’t return to it anymore… instead deciding to pick up the pen, and write. His account of being a mail carrier in Post Office is hilarious. It took him three weeks to write it. It is a first-book masterpiece. He began his writing right after the final time he quit his job at the post office; this last stint as a mail sorter. He was no longer out in the field where he should have been. Where he comes to life. So he walked off the job.

Then he wrote a lot. Brash, simple sentences that you hoped would never stop when you started reading them. He was a writer who’s style of writing captured you, and wouldn’t let go. He sucks you in and you can’t help but notice how good a time you’re having reading his books. He makes you laugh while you admire his brutal, bare-naked honesty. He didn’t have to make anything up. He just had better eyes than most of us, watching the world and internalizing.

Someone once asked Bukowski what makes a man a writer. He answered, ‘Well. It’s simple. You either get it down on paper, or jump off a bridge.’ I know what he meant. It isn’t what it seems at first glance. It isn’t that he had to record his misery and get it down on paper, to free himself of it, as if it were some sort of ritual or healing or gestalt. It wasn’t the misery. It wasn’t the pain. It wasn’t the booze. Those were his allies. It was the addiction. The addiction to writing. Of having something alive inside you that had to get out. An addiction that’s always in you once it grabs hold. It keeps you sane. And drives you crazy. Writing can create an addiction so strong that you don’t dare let go. Or can’t. Like being captured by the current of a hot electrical wire.

The New Yorker magazine called Bukowski, ‘The man who occupies the most shelf space of any American poet‘. Yeah. He wrote a lot. He got paid to do readings from his works on a lot of college campuses, too. He should have toured with Timothy Leary:

The Wisdom of a Drunken Writer and the King of LSD… On Stage… TONIGHT!

That’s a ticket I’d buy. Probably a little more for Bukowski, even though I had spent an entire day with Timothy Leary, just the two of us, in his home above the Beverly Hills Hotel. It saddens me that I never saw Bukowski perform. It makes me smile that I got to read his words.

Bukowski didn’t write about weight with any concern. He didn’t dwell on it. His weight would not make a shit to him. He wasn’t Jack LaLanne. But he was so keenly analytical and self-deprecating and realistic and honest. Almost bludgeoning. Definitely bludgeoning. Absolutely raw. But he didn’t care enough to exercise or pursue weight reduction programs. That would have to have been someone else. Not Bukowski.

The gentleman in the video below combines his chemistry and physics backgrounds to establish a weight loss chemical formula diagnoses. This he did in Australia, of all places. If you watch and thought it seemed like this occurred in Northern Borneo, you’re off by a continent or so, and too far north. The video has some burps. It’s not perfect. Think of it as sediment in a bottle of fine wine.

X: n/a

Y: Yellow Fever

Not a lot of choices for ‘Y‘. Not a single thing to fixate on in the pre-bedpan years that starts with ‘Y‘. Not really. Well, there is Yeast Infection. Never had it. Seems like a drag to have it, but tolerable. Not trying to diminish it. You don’t really hear many women complaining about it late in life, do you? Do you? Not even from the women that seem not to mind revealing personal things about themselves that many of us would never consider revealing… especially to someone that you barely know. I haven’t been in the ‘older’ category for that long, so I have yet to hear any ‘older’ women complaining about yeast infection. Maybe they do. I don’t know. But I’m not picking Yeast Infection for ‘Y‘.

I didn’t pick Yellow Nail Syndrome either, since I’d never heard of it. Doesn’t sound that bad from the name. But when you look it up, it’s a doozy. Thankfully a very, very rare doozy. Your toe nails and/or finger nails curl and turn yellow and get real hard and stop growing out and can separate from the nail bed. That’s not fun. But worse, there can be a dangerous accumulation of fluid in your lungs, including on-going tearing and destruction of the lung membranes. Not fun. Not good. Plus, your arms and legs can swell up. They don’t know a damn thing about it other than the most important thing — it’s thankfully really, really rare. Let’s move on.

Yemenite Deaf blind hypopigmentation syndrome? Of course I didn’t pick that! Here’s a copy-and-paste from a website describing this bad boy with the long fancy words. I’m making a claim here that I did not write the following. I wrote, poorly, all the rest of all of this, but not the following about Yemenite Deaf blind hypopigmentation syndrome:

‘It’s an exceedingly rare genetic disorder with characteristics of cutaneous pigmentation anomalies, ocular disorders and hearing loss. The syndrome was described in 1990 in two patients from the same Yemenite family. A brother and sister were described as having cutaneous patchy hypo and hyperpigmentation on the trunk and extremities, gray hair, white brows and lashes. Ocular manifestations were microcornea, coloboma and abnormalities of the anterior chamber of the eye. Both patients had severe hearing loss and dental abnormalities. Intelligence was reported to be normal. Their parents were unaffected and possibly consanguineous. The cause of this syndrome has not been determined. The inheritance pattern appears to be autosomal recessive.’

Okay? All right. I don’t have much to add to that. Other than for some reason the ‘D‘ in ‘Deaf‘ is capitalized, yet the ‘b‘ in ‘blind‘ is strongly lowercase.

Yusho disease was not picked by me, neither. It is much too Japanese-y sounding. Although it is interesting that this disease can be pinned to those unfortunates that ingested a specific rice oil in February 1968. However, I endure a white guy’s travels to the final ringing of the bell. Not a Japanese person’s path. I’m sure they have a very nice path all figured and mapped out, and I’d bet we share similarities, and I am not knocking their journey at all. I’d probably LOVE their path. I am being selfish here, however, and decided to pick ‘Yellow Fever‘ because at least I’d heard of that. (Well, I’d heard of yeast infection, too, but didn’t want to cut out half of the population, so I went with something we can all experience together: ‘Yellow Fever‘. If you go back and look, none of the Fixation alphabet choices are directed to one sex, eclipsing the other.)

Yellow Fever is a virus acquired by humans via blood sucking female mosquitos that carry the antigen. Usually, this is transmitted by day-time biting mosquitos. There is no cure. But there is an effective vaccine. It is rare in the USofA to get this disease, but if simply ignored, it can kill you. That just doesn’t happen very often here in America. But if it kills you once, it’s usually enough to take a toll. You are more likely to have your eyes turn yellow than to die if you have the Yellow Fever virus hitches a ride, traveling around your blood stream.

Is it okay to throw in a Neil Young video? You know. Just to end the letter ‘Y‘?

Z: Zika Virus

We have reached ‘Z‘. Our final letter. Our ‘Judgement Day’ letter. Might as well go out with Zika virus, right? Yep. It crept into the news in recent years and we’ve all heard the name. It returned as a serious problem in Africa in 2015, but not here in America. So Americans felt safe because it wasn’t happening particularly nearby.

Zika virus has been known since 1947 when it was first isolated in the Zika Forest in Uganda. Remember the rhesus monkeys? It was from them that Zika was first discovered. And initially it was considered to be a relatively mild virus with mild symptoms: headache, rash, tiredness. An infected person could also be asymptomatic. In fact, most of the infected persons are asymptomatic. Even today. Estimates say 80% of those infected are asymptomatic. Of the other 20%, symptoms may include fever, headache, achy joints, muscle pain and sometimes a rash. And red eyes is a common symptom. This is all the good news. So what’s the big deal? Well, the good news ended soon thereafter.

Zika virus shares its genus with yellow fever, dengue, West Nile virus and Japanese encephalitis. All are transmitted by, you guessed it, the female mosquito. The horrible flittering twit that Noah could have prevented from flitting onto the ark, buy he didn’t see it fit to do so. What a bitch mosquitoes seem to be. They are referred to with negative connotations all the time.

Zika virus demonstrated an impressive spread in 2007 over on the side of the world that includes Micronesia. Over by Indonesia. Pretty far South of Japan. Above Australia a bit. More specifically, the island of Yap. Alarmingly, 3/4 of the population got Zika virus. That’s 7500 of 10,000 Yaps. That’s a lot of Yaps. Then, in 2013, Zika spread southward to French Polynesia where 11% of that population got bit by the bug. The mosquito carrying Zika.

The first MAJOR alarm occurred three years later, in 2016. An International Warning was issued when it was discovered that Zika virus caused neurological disorders in some of those infected in Brazil. This was a bad thing. Some of the disorders are seriously dangerous and alarming.

Pregnant women bitten by a Zika virus carrying mosquito began giving birth to what has now become known as Zika babies. Major problem. Serious symptoms. The babies heads don’t develop fully in the uterus. They are small. Angled. Affected. The babies brains don’t develop fully, either. They are small. Angled. Affected. A Zika child’s life can be permanently impacted with no capacity to perform even the simplest tasks. You don’t want your children to have Zika virus babies leaving you with a Zika grandchild.

Women intending to become pregnant, or who are pregnant, need to stringently avoid visiting countries with Zika virus outbreaks. Period. End of story. End of Issues.

Bonus music video. ‘Polo’, our moderator, shares his first experience listening to the Grateful Dead. He hadn’t heard the name Jerry Garcia. Didn’t know of Bob Weir. Didn’t know Phil Lesh. Hadn’t heard of Bill Kreutzmann. Didn’t know either Godchaux. Mickey Hart? Just didn’t know the Dead. Then he did. Then he couldn’t stop listening.

This concludes our Alphabet of old age Issues. And this exercise.

The following Runner’s-Up Old Age Issues are presented to you, Dear Readers, to do what you like with them. Add your own. Tell your friends. Issues, in bold, that were the selected alphabetical choices, are also included.

RUNNER’S-UP

A – Airplane Crash, Alzheimer’s Disease, Amnesia, Amputation

B – Baldness, Bankruptcy, Blindness, Bone Fractures

C – Cancer, Cavities (teeth), Chickenpox

D – Death, Dementia, Dentists, Diabetes, Doctors

E – Earwax, Encephaly, EpiPens, Evangelical Cults

F – Falling Down, Financial Failure, First Dates, Flying

G – Gambling Addiction, Graves’ Disease, Gout, Gum Disease

H – Heart Attack, Help vs Harm, Hospitals, Hypnosis

I – Idleness, Inactivity, Investments

J – Joint Replacement

K – 401K, Kidney Disease, Knee Replacement

L – Life Insurance, Losing Loved Ones

M – Measles, Medical Emergencies, Mental Illness, Mutilation

N – Namonia, Needles, Neuropathy

O – Old Age, Oral Health

P – Parkinson’s Disease, Peripheral Neuropathy, Plague, Pneumonia

Q – Quasimodo Syndrome, Quarter Swallowing

R – Rabies, Republicans, Retirement

S – Shingles, Sleep Disorder, Stock Market Collapse, Stroke

T – Thanks, Before It’s Too Late

U – Urinary Incontinence

V – Varicose Veins, Vengeance, Vulva Sec

W – Weight Loss, West Nile Virus, Whooping Cough

X – n/a

Y – Yellow Fever, Yellowstone National Park

Z – Zinc Toxicity, Zita Virus, Zlotogora Syndrome

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