WRITE RIGHT

AS FAR AS I KNOW each of my English teachers and writing professors have passed. I no longer live under the scrutiny of their red pencils. Comma splices, sentence fragments, dangling participles and run-on sentences are of little concern. Punctuation is more functional than rule-bound for me these days--I use punctuation to attempt to make a sentence read like I would say it; if you know what I mean. Hey, at least I use/misuse punctuation.

There may be a few regular readers of this blog who "grade" and judge my essays as they read; but as far as I know, there is only one actual English teacher who reads an occasional post. Apparently, grace takes precedence over grades for her. Her post post comments are always kind. I'm not surprised. She taught our boys, and I always sensed that she chose to value the beauty of words just above the rules and penmanship--not that she didn't have a red pencil.

[I hope you have a significant other, or four, or six, or more, who doesn't carry a freshly sharpened red pencil. You know that famous passage in the thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians that describes Love? One of the definitions of love is that it "keeps no record of wrongs." Red pencil wielders seem to also be scorekeepers. They put stuff in your permanent record.]

I'm not advocating for rule-lessness. Without some structure, order, agreed-upon guides, and a dose of accountability we're left with people like George Santos who has "padded his resume" to the point he's nothing but a laughable cartoon. I actually feel sorry for him. How horrible it must be to feel so inadequate that you become an ugly verion of Walter Mitty.

In my own over-inflated vision of myself as a writer, I'm making this declaration of being free from the shackles of the rules of composition. Now, I'm confessing. I still rely on those lessons-learned from my teachers past. I continue to use references and resources to strive to be a good craftsman of letters and marks and words and ideas. Hoping to write, as Hemingway said, "one true sentence," at a time.

these are always within reach of the desk where pops writes

One of the guidebooks that was required reading in my days as a journalism major at Tulsa University, where I was captain of the tennis team (not really: on the tennis team part) was The Associated Press Stylebook.

The keepers of the Stylebook recently offered this new guidance: “We recommend avoiding general and often dehumanizing ‘the’ labels such as the poor, the mentally ill, the French, the disabled, the college educated.”

This seems like good guidance for general conversation too. So stop it! Stop poking fun of The Boomers, The Elderly, The Etc., when we speak of going to The Cracker Barrel for breakfast, or to The Starbucks for coffee. [Actually I go to The Starbucks for the banana nut bread. Saying I go there for the coffee is kind of like the old Boomer who claimed he bought Playboy "for the news articles."]

I guess now I'm going to need to rethink the title of my memoir I've been working on: "The Bald and The Beautiful".

I can see where grouping folks together could be dehumanizing and maybe even marginalizing; at least stereotyping. If someone were to say, "The Bald are snarky," I might take offence. However, if someone were to say, "Obviously The Bald have better things to do with their hormones than just growing hair." I would concur.

It's funny how we try to soften the edge of being The Old. Does it help to be called The Elderly? No. But it is what it is. Should you assume that just because my joints creak, that I come bearing a Medicare card and an AARP card that I'm old? Yes, that's a good assumption. Go ahead and lump us all together. Just don't stand in our way when we're getting in line at The Braum's for The Fro-yo.

Should we be concerned about The Young throwing all rules of punctuation and grammer to the wasteland with their incessant texting? Heck yes. Give me a Red Pencil app and I'll go after them. Who am I kidding? I've got better things to do and, as a member of The Elderly, not a lot of time to do them /period/fullstop/.

AFTER THE "FALL"

I'LL ADMIT IT. The first words out of my mouth were not, "Help! I've fallen and I can't get up!" They were a rapid fire of the same mild expletive, repeated thrice; the same word I have heard uttered many times by my maternal grandmother. (As if that makes it acceptable.)

I quickly looked around to see if anyone had seen the wipe out or were holding the ears of their young to protect them from this wild old man yelling obscenities into the cold, wet night. Actually I didn't yell them. I couldn't even breath. The impact had knocked the air from my lungs. Fortunately there was no one around.

Quickly I gathered myself, found a way to stand up thinking: NO ONE SHALL KNOW OF THIS!

You see I'm sort of senior-adultish. Once a senior "has a fall", the assumption is that they will fall all the time. I can remember a few times being at the ER with my parents in their 90s. Along with the typical hospital bracelet with the bar code on it that they scan everytime they hand you a Kleenex or take your temperature, they would get a red bracelet that said "FALL RISK".

So concerned about being labeled a FALLER am I, that I don't want to even call it a fall. I can just imagine the others on the playground at recess yelling, "Fuller the Faller!"--sort of like the abuse Winnie-the-Poo must of felt just because of that one time.

Here's how it went down. We went to a basketball game to watch our oldest Grand-Girl lead cheers, which she does wonderfully. When we went in the gym the weather was nice. I was wearing shorts, a Tulsa Hurricane sweatshirt, Birkenstocks and boxers. As we were leaving a cold front had come in bringing icy temps and sheets of rain. My Amazing-Missus suggested I might go get the vehicle and pick she and the younger Grand-Girls up out front. So, as if I was twenty-something instead of seventy-something, I went racing across the dark, dark parking lot, hood up, glasses covered in rain. When WHAM. I tripped on an unseen parking curb that I swear had been installed since we entered the gym an a few hours earlier.

Apparently on the first bounce I hit my left knee and right rib cage. I think the best picture I can give is of the way we used to dive head first on a Slip N Slide when we were kids. I limped to the car and quickly checked that there was no blood and that all my joints were in place and working. Good! Other than being soaking wet, covered in parking lot soot and not being able to breath, there's no way My Amazing-Missus would ever know what had happened. My first senior Fall would be my own secret. Somehow though she caught on. Maybe the fact that I would moan with each inhale of air gave it away.

I came clean and finally decided to go to the ER to have things checked out. A few hours later I left with my bar code scanned for a bunch of x-rays and a single pill that would help me rest, which I had to take with three witnesses watching.

Thankfully, I escaped without a FALL RISK bracelet, which I'm taking as the official word that I am not one--yet.

It's been a few days now. I've faithfully iced the knee and ribs and done my deep breathing exercises although inhaling is still like a kick in the ribs.

The good news is that I can still be counted on to walk on my own, to go get the car on cold, wintry nights and trusted to carry the eggs from the store to the car. Just give me a few days for these old ribs to heal.

I have to say, I'm rather proud of myself that I took the Big Wipe Out (which is my name for the incident), bounced hard, learned not to run in dark, wet parking lots, and I'm still standing and limping just a little.

YOUNG & OLD

A PRIVILEGE OF BEING ONE of the "snow-crowned age" I've looked forward to is the ability to speak without filter, or at least a filter with really big pores. It's not that you reach an age where you earn a higher protection from the First Amendment, it's not that I'm necessarily getting crankier and meaner with age, there just seems to be a cultural acceptance that when old people say stupid stuff, it can be dismissed because: well, he's old. The same privilege belongs to the very young (let's call them the "bright youth").

One of our Grand-Girls turned 8 recently. Her name is Nora, which might mean: one who speaks her thoughts out loud. The other day her Mimi was taking her to their neighborhood pool. Her Mimi tied a bandana over her hair.

Nora: "Are you wearing that?"
Mimi: "I thought I would."
Nora: "You know there will be other mommies and grandmothers there. Don't you want to look fabulous?!

Sunday's sermon came from the third chapter of James, the verses about the power of the tongue and the challenge of controlling it. James doesn't offer an age-waiver for the young and old to speak their minds more freely and forthrightly, but culture accepts it, so let's take advantage.

Why do the young and the old get a pass? For some reason in our early years and again in our waning years a lot of things are just understood; but for different reasons. If a toddler has ice cream dripping from its chin as she's eating her cone, we think: isn't that cute?! If a senior-ly gent does the same, we think: bless his heart. In neither case is there much surprise.

Still, there are stereotypes, and in those, the young and the old are somewhat genderless--not in the sense of the gender discussions du jour, but in the fact that gender doesn't seem as important. Consider this line from a hymn of the late 1800s:

Bright youth and snow-crowned age,
Strong men and maidens fair...

[Rejoice Ye Pure in Heart. Words by Edward H. Plumptre. 1821-1891.]

See how the "bright youth" and those of us of "snow-crowned age" get bunched together while the "strong men" and the "maidens fair" get to have gender, and stereotypical gender roles at that.

Not that I'm complaining. I'm fine with gender not being such a big deal at this point of life. I'll admit that during my first coming-of-age, gender was all that mattered; or at least it was always in the top three, and always just a few thoughts away. At 70-something, I'm still grateful that My Amazing-Missus and I are of different and traditional genders. I'm also richer for having deep friendships where gender is irrelevant, as is race, age, nationality, economic standing, and religion or the lack thereof.

I hope I haven't confused or offended. If I have: I'm old; that's my ticket to ride.

I'm here everyday offering unsolicited life advice; and Nora, my Grand-Girl is giving fashion advice. Don't you want to be fabulous!?

APPEASEMENT

GO AHEAD; PATRONIZE ME. Recently I found a pair of bookshelves on sale. Reluctantly I purchased them. Resentfully I put the first set together myself. Regrettably the project derailed. Respectfully I called the store to say one of the boxes of bookshelf parts they sold me had clearly been opened before. Parts were damaged and some were missing.

Apologies were offered. Offers to ship me a new bag of nuts and bolts were made. With relative calmness and composure I explained to the young "associate" that when I was his age if we paid a premium for furniture from a reputable store we didn't have to put it together ourselves (unless it came from Denmark or Sweden). I also noted that delivery was made to his store and not to my home and was delayed a couple of weeks beyond the original ETA. Additionally I explained that I now live an hours drive and about $57 in gas from his store. Pretty sure I could hear his eyes roll.

More apologies. How about this I offered, "You have a set of these bookshelves on your showroom floor. How about I pick up one of those and you can wait another month or so for a new bag of parts? I'll drive over to your store and pick up the shelves and you find out if you can give me a couple of nice pillows that match our sofa and that I can scream into?" This exceeded his pay grade.

My Amazing-Missus used to work for an affiliate of this store. I think it was started by a guy named Williams that lived in Sonoma. They sell really expensive measuring cups and spatulas. The also have a business that may have started as a pottery shop in a barn. Anyway, I know from her experience that this group of stores have what's called an "escalation desk", a place that handles twisted-off old men and cranky women.

I'm sure he didn't mean to be patronizing. And, I'm sure that when, in his customer service class, they taught about handling the lunatic fringe they didn't intend for them to actually use the word "appeasement"; nonetheless, he said to me, "I will talk to someone to see if we can find a way to offer you appeasement. "Why you condescending little..." I thought to myself. BUT WAIT;

Later that day, I got a call from the escalation desk with an offer of a gift card for $215. Color me appeased! Apparently there is a price at which I welcome condescension. I guess, as with bookshelves and stuff, MAN also needs on going assembly and tweaking—always a work in progress.

I will make sure that we use the token of appeasement to buy something that comes fully assembled.

yes, I added a bit of modesty type to Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man.

If you happen to be on I-40 roughly 44 miles east of West Elm, drop by and see our new bookshelves.