Personal stuff
In case anyone here has been asleep for the past couple of decades, and just in case I haven’t been clear enough in the past (pictures say it best): 
Any questions?
Oh, and by the way: for the past week, I’ve been wearing a kippah every time I leave the house. Pity the fool.
Not the 1960s, this time, but the time when you enter your sixth decade of life. This article talks about it, somewhat superficially, but number of items had me nodding along. Here are a few examples:
By age 60, you should have acquired almost everything you need, or learned to live without it. Possessions start to feel like an albatross, so you don’t blow as much money on dumb stuff like clothes, makeup, new phones, and cars.
Very true in my case. Just about every thing I own is old and still works. I don’t remember the last time I bought a new shirt, for instance — even though I take considerable pride in my appearance and always make sure I look presentable. New Wife has almost given up on making me wear short pants in public, and thank gawd that fall and winter are coming so that this clothing choice becomes less viable. I have too many pairs of shoes, certainly “dress” shoes (a hangover from my time as a corporate executive / business consultant) and considering that I have only one suit left, I can’t see any reason for owning more than one pair of my old black Johnston & Murphy toecaps. I practically live in Minnetonka moccasins — I own three pairs in moosehide tan, dark brown and black, and just replace them as they start wearing out, about every three years or so. I hardly ever wore denim jeans after my twenties because I found denim less comfortable than gaberdine or even linen trousers. New Wife has prevailed on me to start wearing them again because she says I look good in them. I discovered Target’s stretch jeans and now have a pair each of “washed out” (light blue) and normal dark blue, so these are my “go to the supermarket” choice nowadays. Also, the belt loops are wider than my “dress” trousers, which is a Good Thing because it accommodates my 1911’s holster better. I never wear T-shirts except around the house — that habit, like wearing denim, disappeared once I left my teens, and I have (too many) short- and long-sleeved cotton and linen shirts. Even those… sheesh, some of them are close to twenty years old, although they don’t look it because when I find a shirt I really like, I buy three or four of them, in different colors if available, and rotate them so that they don’t wear out.
Sorry, that’s all TMI and getting boring so let me get on with some of the other stuff.
You get smart about people. I can now tell far more easily whom to trust versus who is trying to take advantage of me. These were things I was oblivious to when I was younger, but now I see things a lot clearer.
When I was younger, I pretty much always took people at face value and trusted them to be decent. This was reflected in my circle of friends, which was vast. Now? I’m a lot more suspicious — sometimes incorrectly — of people and their motives, and this is reflected in a much-smaller number of people whom I can truthfully call friends. I don’t care about that, especially; I have about a dozen people (scattered all over the globe) whom I consider good friends, but even among them, only half or so are people whom I would allow to show up at my front door without warning and be welcomed into my house.
There’s a certain, almost dangerous, level of personal liberation. Kind of like, “I’m only gonna live for a few more years, so what could anyone possibly do to me?” This liberation in me, at least, has manifested in almost extreme levels of mouthiness. I say what I am feeling and thinking, I am NOT sensitive to anyone’s attempts to hurt my feelings, and I don’t really care if I hurt their feelings, either.
I will admit that this didn’t come to me in my sixties: it’s been my attitude pretty much my whole life. I have absolutely no concern about other people’s opinions of me, to the point where I literally don’t care if I offend someone and they never want to talk to me again. Frankly, the only people whose opinions I care about are those of my family and very close friends. Interestingly enough, my friends know this about me and indulge my occasionally-thoughtless outbursts. Strangers, I don’t care about and never have.
Knowing that you are fully formed. You don’t have to take on any more self-improvement projects, even though you surely can if you really want to. But I don’t need to improve my posture, my vocabulary, or my attitude; I can do whatever I want now.
By 60, I felt as if I had my life figured out. It wasn’t perfect, and it wasn’t exactly what I wanted, but I no longer had the feeling that I had missed the ‘life manual’ everyone else seemed to have.
I came to terms with myself at about age thirty: my character, my flaws, my strengths and so on. I also made the decision that I could live with my flaws, which is a little dangerous. I can be very cold-hearted or indifferent at times, for example, and that I do try to temper but without much success. Frankly, it’s one of the reasons I don’t do well living by myself: I need what’s been called the “gentling effect” of a woman in my life, and fortunately I have been blessed by having two of them for the past couple of decades. As a single guy, I tend very close to the psychopathic, but as a married man I’m not too bad a guy.
Anxiety. At least for me, I’ve gotten quite better at managing the anxiety of the unknown and keeping it in its rightful place.
In his wonderful TV series After Life, Ricky Gervais’s character and actions are shaped by the fact that he literally does not care if he lives or dies after the death of his beloved wife. As I’ve lived my sixties, I’ve become accustomed to that fact — not because of loss of a partner, but because I know that my time on Earth is going to end at some point in the foreseeable future. I have little fear of that, so should catastrophe come calling — say, in the form of an incurable illness — I know that I’ll always have the option of popping a few tabs to relax me, and climbing into a hot bath with a bottle of gin and a razor blade. The only thing that gives me any pause is that unlike Gervais’s character, I have kids who would miss me and might even be horribly saddened by my passing. So I do want to spare them that, but at the same time, if things really got bad and my life truly turned into total shit, I’d hope they understood my situation — especially my absolute resolve never to be a burden on them. I should point out that New Wife shares my attitude completely.
I’ve had a full, satisfying and very exciting life, and I have few if any regrets about it. Stuff that other people only dream about doing or experiencing, well, I’ve done most of it myself and other than a few things I’ve missed out on and wouldn’t have minded trying (e.g. skydiving), my life has been pretty complete. I’ve never been competitive, and always had a lazy streak to where “good enough” has never been the enemy of “perfect”; I simply lack the drive to be “the best” at anything, and to be honest, I’m not sure that my capabilities would have been sufficient anyway. And that’s one of the things that came to me much earlier than my sixties: understanding that “nothing is impossible” is total bullshit. Often, striving to reach the impossible involves making compromises that to me at any rate are not only unsupportable but insufferable. As the saying goes: nobody ever lay on their deathbed thinking: “If only I’d spent more time at the office.”
I was a competent (occasionally more than) as a businessman, ditto a bassist, ditto a writer and ditto just about anything I’ve ever done. My goal in life has always been “as long as I don’t make a fool of myself, that’s good enough.”
And that’s enough about me.
Over the past year or so I’ve become increasingly concerned about some of you, O My Readers, most especially among the most ahem senior of you (chronologically speaking).
The fact is that we’re starting to drop like flies, and as much as I hate to admit it, just having someone disappear from one’s life is unsettling. Here’s an example.
Bobby Kushner (Bob K) was an old Chicago buddy; one of my earliest Readers, many was the time we shared war stories and opinions on guns, politics, life in Chicago and such. We only ever met in person on three occasions, mind: once over dinner at a lovely restaurant on Clark Street, once when he very graciously put me up overnight at his apartment in Lincoln Park, and once at a friend’s farm (belonging to Scott S, then and still a friend as well as a Longtime Reader). On that last occasion, Bob brought a couple of very large duffel bags, both filled to the brim with old handguns — good grief, some models I’d never even heard of, let alone fired — along with a plentiful supply of ammo for each, and that entire day was spent shooting all of them.
Of course, we kept in touch over the following years, sporadically as so often happens, and then… silence. Emails went into the pit, and I never heard from him again. Bob was of advanced years and in poor health, but I only learned about that from his wife (confusingly, also Bobby — Roberta). So when he went dark, I had to assume that he’d popped his clogs — he’d always responded promptly to my “LTNS” letters in the past. Worse still, I didn’t know how to get in touch with his wife, so I never did find out.
So, to all my Old Fart Readers — and you know who you are — please drop me an email occasionally so I know how things are going. It’s not an obligation, of course, but having lost Bobby so suddenly and unknowingly, I really don’t want to experience that again. I do have a bond with you guys — sorry, but there it is — so please keep in touch now and again.
From Alert Reader Ray G in Colorado:
Hi Kim,
I know you’re a grammar nazi. Don’t know if you want any feedback on your own English usage. But anyway, it’s “to wit”, not “to whit”. You can look it up…
To say that I was confounded by this gentle rebuke is to make an understatement on the scale of “Kelly Brook has decent boobs”…
…because Ray is absolutely right: it is “to wit” and not “to whit”. And I have no idea why I’ve been doing it wrong all these years.
So what to do? Of course, I went back into my archives and corrected as many of those malfeasances as I could find (thank you, Winston Smith). And here’s the reference to the above understatement:
You may consider that penance for my mea maxima culpa.
And by the way: thank you, Ray — and anyone can correct me, at any time, if you think I’ve screwed up in similar fashion.
Grandson #2 just put in an appearance, over in Johannesburg. Everyone is doing fine.
Yes, I think a little single malt is called for.
Last night I suddenly developed the most excruciating pain in my lower abdomen. Came out of nowhere: one minute I’m searching for pics of Carol Vorderman’s extensive superstructure, the next I’m doubled up on the couch and moaning like a Democrat forced to sing the National Anthem.
So did I go to the ER? Silly rabbits, I’m a MAN — of course I didn’t wimp out and seek medical attention.
Now before anyone starts yelling at me — especially those Readers of the Female Persuasion — lemme ask y’all this:
What if it had just been gas, somehow bottled up and unable to be released? You’d feel like a proper Charlie if the ER doc were to look at your CAT scan, shake his head sorrowfully and say, “Take two Gas-X and call me in the morning”, with the unspoken corollary: “What a total pussy.” That was not going to happen. So I waited overnight.
However, by this morning the symptoms had not abated — got worse, actually — so I girded up my loins and went off to the local Doc-In-The-Box to get a CAT scan. But the nearest one had closed down for good. So I went to another one close to the apartment, and they were open but — their CAT scan machine was broken.
By this time, the combination of frustration plus pain in my gut — I was driving bent over like a Florida geezer — made me say “Fukkit!” and so I ended up at GlobalMegaHealthCorp LLC, at the other end of Plano, FFS. I went in promptly at 9.15am, was seen promptly at 11.15am, had the CAT scan promptly at 2.30pm, and was on my way to CVS promptly at 4.05pm.
Which is why I always try to go the the little ER clinics for visits of this nature: in, scanned, diagnosed, prescribed and out in generally less than 90 minutes. If they’re a little busy.
Anyway, I suppose you want to know why I’m still doubled over in pain, waiting for the Blessed Medications to kick in?
Diverticulitis (non-complicated), treated with Cipro and some other antibiotic. According to Doc Russia (who diagnosed me correctly over the phone while I was waiting in the ER room), I should feel better by tomorrow.
Let’s hope. In the meantime, I’m debating whether to pop a Tylenol-3 (the one with codeine) to help me get through the night.
Of course, I’m also counting my blessings. This pain could have pointed to something really foul like a hiatal hernia, appendicitis (even though I’m too old for that shit) or the Evil Cousin of diverticulitis, a perforated bowel (which can seriously fuck up your weekend picnic plans). Not to mention all the other shit down there that can creep up on Olde Pharttes and kill us like a smackeroo-blurdy. That part of the body is like a WWII German minefield, with stuff just waiting to kill you. But it wasn’t any of that.
Oh, and one small piece of other news: my weight has gone down from 265 to 240, in just under two months. My goal: Army weight (205-210), or maybe even less if I can stick with it. Here’s me, in approved SADF browns, circa 1977:
So there’s that, which is good.