TIME IS ON MY SIDE…

YES IT IS. Remember that song by the Rolling Stones from 1964?

“Time is on my side; yes it is”

I was 13 then, and time was on my side. Experience wasn’t, but time was.

Of course, the song wasn’t about the timeline of life and a person’s spot on that line at any given moment. It is apparently a guy warning his freedom-seeking girlfriend that he can out-wait her prodigal ways.

Now you always say
That you want to be free
But you'll come running back
You'll come running back
You'll come running back to me
Yeah, time is on my side, yes it is
Time is on my side, yes it is

I wonder if she ever came back, or if he’s still singing his cocksure prophecy to the wind?

Funny how we view life differently along our timeline. But as I compare say 70 (my current numeric point on the line) with 13 (the age I was when Mick Jagger was warning his girlfriend), one thing time-related is pretty much the same: WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE?

My Amazing-Missus has a grandfathers clock; not one of those tall wooden boxes with a big swinging pendulum and deep chimes and a clock face at the top. Hers is literally her grandfather’s clock. It doesn’t work anymore. Who knows how long it’s been stuck at its current time? As they say, even a broken clock is right two times a day.

It is on display in our house not as a way to tell the time but as a way to remember a time.

For many years we lived in a small town in western-ish Oklahoma. We loved it very much. There were a couple of barber shops in town. I went to Roy’s. Roy Chenoweth was one of the classiest men I’ve ever known. Here’s how I’m defining that: kind, happy, gentle, immaculately groomed, loved his wife dearly and always had a smile. Oh, and by the way, was grandfather to Kristin, the Tony-winning Broadway star of stage and screen.

On the door of Roy’s shop hung a cardboard sign, yellowed with age except for the area behind the little metal clock hands which were always at 2:00. Above the clock hands: “We’ll Be back at…” On the flip side: “We’re open. Come on in.”

Everyday Roy at noon, Roy would flip his sign on the door, go home for lunch and a nap and return at 2:00 sharp—except for the day he retired at 90.

I like 2:00p. It’s almost like a shift of gears. Morning is for exercise and chores and work. By 2:00, if you’re like Roy you’ve had lunch and a nap. Things slow down a little. There’s still plenty of daylight left if you want to do something fun or productive, but we’re coasting to suppertime.

Bedtime is another matter. I don’t like it. I never have. Apparently my imagination is as active at night as it is during the day. My Amazing-Missus says I’m never still at night. Always moving, twitching, kicking, flailing. It’s always been that way. I explain to her that I’m usually saving us from some nightmarish attacker. That doesn’t help her sleep any better. For me though, I awake rested and triumphant.

More and more I don’t care that the hands on her grandfather’s clock don’t move. I don’t care that I can’t remember what day of the month it is. The measure of time is more and more irrelevant to me. The measure of the quality of time is more and more precious. Don’t get me wrong: I am grateful for another 24-hour gift each day. I take it less for granted. I wish I still had the spunk, energy, carefree spirit of my 13-year old self. Maybe I do—relatively speaking. Maybe today I will shake things up and do something radical like NOT watch Wheel of Fortune at 6:30.

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Helen Seinfeld: Morty, what do you have to open this box for? There's already a box of cookies open.

Morty Seinfeld: I wanted a Chip Ahoy.

Helen Seinfeld: I don't like all these open boxes.

Morty Seinfeld: Look, I got a few good years left. If I want a Chip Ahoy, I'm having it.

O WORDS, WHERE ARE YOU

IT’S LIKE MY WORDS ARE QUARANTINED TOO. For days now I’ve written nothing in a journal. I’ve tried. I’ve doodled some. I want to write something, something profound that some day someone will find and say, “Look, here’s a journal from The Quarantine of 2020! Wait, all it says, page after page is, ‘the same as yesterday.’”

Numerous times I’ve sat, fingers hovering just above the keyboard, quivering, waiting for the brain to send a message to those fingers to type something. There should be plenty to say. There’s certainly time to say it. But, the words don’t come. And when they don’t, this kind of stuff gets published on a blog.

In my conceited opinion, there isn’t much good TV programming being created these days. There is no original Law & Order, no Seinfeld, no Parks & Recreation, no King of Queens, no Big Bang Theory… So I watch reruns. Actually I’m watching very little TV. YouTube, Yes; TV no. But when I do, it’s reruns. Recently I watched an episode of Frasier. (Where is a show like that when we need it?) In this episode, Frasier was going to be out for a time from his radio gig. So they were going to air the best of Dr. Frasier Crane for his listeners.

Then it hit me. I’ve been writing this blog sporadically like five years now. That’s pretty long in blog years. Surely there is some “best of” stuff I could re-air. Fortunately the blog utility I use offers all kinds of analytics including “Most popular posts”.

The most popular ever was a post about selling our first Airstream, Bambi. That post was listed on a highly-trafficed website so it’s popularity is skewed somewhat. So, we’ll eliminate it. Other than that one, here are the top three. You can click on the title to see the post if your self-quaranteed and bored out of your mind. I noticed these are from 2017, 2015, and 2016 respectively. Apparently the oldies are the goldies.

CHECKING THE BOXES

THE PEACOCK VOW

LOVE STORIES

So, there you have a few reruns you can check out. In the meantime, so I have something thought-provoking to share here and also to write in my journal, and while my own words fail me, I’m using the words of others.

Here are a few quotes for our time in the Big Q.

“If you are solitary be not idle.”

— Samuel Johnson

“If you’re lonely when you’re alone, you’re in bad company.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

“I have let myself go and am less strict with myself.”

— Leo Tolstoy

I had written these quotes down on a scrap of paper and I don’t remember the source. It was probably The New York Times, The New Yorker or The Atlantic, or Fox News, but probably not.

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In The Third Place

I just finished reading a story titled, Logging and Pimping and “Your Pal, Jim” by Norman Maclean, the man that wrote, A River Runs Through It. The story tells of a contentious relationship between two guys who work together as lumberjacks. The older one is pretty much a career lumberjack, the other, the narrator of the story, is a student who works in the logging camp during the summer. The older seems intent on breaking the younger one by wearing him down, but the younger is determined to stick it out until his set quitting date. Day after day they each worked the end of a saw without speaking. At the end of a particularly long hard day:

After Jim disappeared for camp. I sat down on a log and waited for the sweat to dry. It still took me a while before I felt steady enough to reach for my Woolrich shirt and pick up my lunch pail and head for camp, but now I knew I could last until I had said I would quit, which sometimes can be a wonderful thing.

One day toward the end of August he spoke out of the silence and said, “When are you going to quit?” It sounded as if someone had broken the silence before it was broken by Genesis.

I answered and fortunately I had an already-made answer; I said, “As I told you, the Labor Day weekend.”

This blog, About POPS is written by a guy, “Pops”, who is now 65. It’s theme is about living the life of a “man of a certain age,” or what I like to call my Second-Coming of Age. Now that I’ve reached that chronological point when, in American culture we think retirement, I’m asked that question from time to time: “When are you going to quit?”

I assume that those who ask are talking about vocation, cutting down trees so to speak. The answer is, I don’t know; yet. I have the privilege of working in a role, for an organization, and with people that I enjoy a great deal. And while there are likely some in that company who will feel some jubilation when I do retire, for the most part, at least to my face, people seem to enjoy having me around or at least tolerate me; something I struggle with myself from time to time.

The truth is though, as the end of the workaday world draws near, I find myself more easily frustrated and sometimes discouraged. Sometime my thoughts run like this:

I could fix that if I still had time.
What does it matter now?
Let the youngsters worry about that.
I won’t have to put up with that crap much longer.
Is there still time to leave this in good hands.

I love this line from Maclean’s short story: “It still took me a while before I felt steady enough to reach for my Woolrich shirt and pick up my lunch pail and head for camp, but now I knew I could last until I had said I would quit, which sometimes can be a wonderful thing.”

Mostly now I try to imagine what my place in life will look like after the job is done.

Several years ago, a friend introduced me to the concept of “The Third Place”. She explained that while we have home and work, we need a third place. I first thought of the neighborhood bar on the long-running TV show Cheers, a place where “everybody knows your name”. For some people their third place might be church or Lion’s Club. I’ve been observing the behaviors of old geezers some. Apparently, McDonalds or any place that has cheap coffee can be a third place. Somewhere to hang out, piss and moan about politics, tell stories, and remember the past better than it was.

Pops' Amazing-Missus at our Third Place

Starbucks, unofficially proclaimed themselves the third place several years ago. And really it is for a lot of people. In a recent article in Wired magazine about Starbucks opening a place in Italy, the home of the latte, the reference came up. The writer, in trying to explain why Starbucks might actually succeed in the birthplace of espresso struck a resonant chord with me.

It’s because Starbucks performs such a service for its customers, because it essentially provides a vessel into which they can pour themselves and then buy themselves back, that Starbucks has been so successful. While its coffee may actually be better than most Italians are prepared to give it credit for, it’s nonetheless likely that this coffee is incidental to the paying for the privilege of going somewhere in public where we’re able to relax and be who we think we are. Thanks to its reputation for furnishing its patrons with “atmosphere,” Starbucks has become a global “third place” away from work and home. — From Wired Magazine.

When will I “quit” the 9 to 5? Maybe not until I find a place “to relax and be who I think I am.” In other words, how can I quit my second place (work), until I have a legitimate third place?

For while my Amazing-Missus is truly amazing, if I don’t find a third place after leaving my second place, she might become so weary having me around the first place that she’ll find me a fourth place.

And they lived happily ever after.

WHEN ARE YOU REALLY AN (A SENIOR) ADULT?

In 1964, Mick Jagger wailed, “Yes time, time, time is on my side, yes it is!” in a song The Rolling Stones covered called, “Time Is On My Side”. And at 14 years-old; that’s how I felt.

Today, as I turn the Big Six-Five; I have different feelings.

Back in college, I wrote a paper called “Adolescence: A Social Construct”. As I was thinking about adulthood and more specifically, “senior adulthood”, that paper came to mind. It dawned on me: don’t despair old man, you’re not being put out to pasture, this is nothing but a social construct (“a social mechanism, phenomenon, or category created and developed by society; a perception of an individual, group, or idea that is ‘constructed’ through cultural or social practice." —The Dictionary)

There are some points of time in our lives that seem more significant or notable than others: milestones, rites of passage, coming-of-age moments that we really look forward to and celebrate. For new little humans, we mark as important all their “Firsts”: first words, first steps, first tooth, first birthday. From there we sort of jump to things like the first day of school, then kindergarten graduation, complete with a ceremony, “diploma”, and a minature cap and gown.

Before long we’re finishing grade school and life throws us a mean curve ball: puberty and Junior High, and more firsts—first shave, first zit, first kiss, first dance, humiliation, awkwardness and all. Soon though, we get a handle on all of that and get on to the work of establishing our freedom and independence (sort of like when we were two).

From here we can see the adolescent holy grail: the driver’s license. Is it the license that makes Sixteen so “sweet”, or is it another social construct. I think if I could roll back the clock and do it again, I would go back to Sixteen, in the 60s, not now! I would not want to be a 16 year-old in 2016. I wish teens today could know the joy of being a kid without a mobile phone. But I digress, that’s what 65 year-olds do.

Soon we reach the “age of majority” where we are no longer minors. My age group was one of the first to be able to register to vote at 18 as opposed to 21. The main argument was that if we were old enough to be drafted and go to Vietnam, we were old enough to vote. In Oklahoma, in my day, only girls could buy beer at 18. Guys had to be 21. 

High School graduation! This is a big one. In a recent article I read in The Atlantic Magazine, called “When Are You Really An Adult”, the author likened the ceremonial “moving of the tassel” to flipping a switch assuming people move instantly into some form of adulthood.

“In fact, if you think of the transition to “adulthood” as a collection of markers—getting a job, moving away from your parents, getting married, and having kids—for most of history, with the exception of the 1950s and 60s, people did not become adults any kind of predictable way.

Karlee in her Mimi's shoes.

And yet these are still the venerated markers of adulthood today, and when people take too long to acquire them, or eschew them all together, it becomes a reason to lament that no one is a grown-up. While bemoaning the habits and values of the youths is the eternal right of the olds, many young adults do still feel like kids trying on their parents’ shoes.”

Some of us feel like adults who would love to try on our kids’ shoes. Not that I’m having regrets or have resigned, retired and given up. Not at all.

But, sometimes I feel like I’ve checked the boxes, like I need another passage to look forward to, other than the big one that is. You know, the one that goes through the valley.

This year I resolved to not make new year’s resolutions, but I did make a list of things I plan to do everyday this year. Maybe if I reach my goal, I’ll have a graduation event of some sort. If I do, I’ll invite you to the after-party. We’ll party like it’s 1969!

Oh, here’s my list if you care to join me:

• Walk
• Eat properly
• Pray
• Laugh hard
• Love
• Meditate
• Stretch
• Do something good
• Do something well
• Read
• Hug & kiss
• Turn off the TV sometimes
• Drink
• Play
• Sleep
• Learn
• Be amazed

While time may not be on my side, I wouldn’t trade the journey I’ve been on for all the joy and angst and hormones of youth again. Social construct or not, I’m embracing my senior-adultness (sort of).

And now a quote from one of my favorite fellow travelers, a senior herself:

“It’s funny: I always imagined when I was a kid that adults had some kind of inner toolbox full of shiny tools: the saw of discernment, the hammer of wisdom, the sandpaper of patience. But then when I grew up I found that life handed you these rusty bent old tools - friendships, prayer, conscience, honesty - and said ‘do the best you can with these, they will have to do’. And mostly, against all odds, they do.” 
― Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith