Listening to Old People

Listening to Old People? and being one, at the same time? It has its advantages. ............ We are not of one fabric, we Players in the Last Quarter ... but that shouldn't surprise. Some of us get boastful ... one oldster, yesterday, went into his typical tirade about how many famous people he knew. Some of us speak from atop ... from overhead ... one up ... homiletics of source ... "And the Lord spoke unto me, saying ... and I quote." Some of us piss and moan. "I told that waiter to bring me coffee and it was cold by the time I began drinking it. Didn't he know to bring it at the END of the meal." Some ask question after bloody question. "Is that what you meant. I just wanna make certain I understand exactly what you're saying." ............ I write sometimes as if I weren't part of the walking brain-dead ... but I am. ................. Well? Not quite brain-dead. Nor are these others that I keep bumping into in cybergroups and in restaurants and in my office. Hey, people over 60, 65, 70 .... have you considered your relevance to the culture? When you were 20, you didn't trust anybody (well, most anybody) over 40 and now that you've turned your weed into weed-whackers and sold those on ebay for two point canes and wholesale generic fiber supplements ... Now that you're no longer surprised when you walk into a room and have forgotten what you had intended to find and, instead, have learned to be surprised by what IS there ... "Hey, look at this ... I didn't know I had one of these" ... now that it takes a full three seconds for the words spoken to you to be parsed into sensible thought units ... now that finishing a 10k 4th means ... 4th from the guy who fell over and was trucked off to the hospital in an emergency vee-hickle ... now, that all that' and more has transpired, to whom DO you feel relevant? ........ ??? .......... Well, that's depressing, Howard! ............ Maybe not? Yesterday, I listened to a conversation about whether Buddhism (in its varieties not specified) and psychotherapy (in its varieties not really specified, either) were comparable or incomparable. I found myself thinking to myself "Hey, get a life ... or a bike." While the twenty and thirty and forty and fifty somethings are raising their kids and turning the wheels of industry and original thought, my brethren and sistren are arguing about the price of toilet paper on Greyhound Busses in Thailand. And I'm reading it and criticizing the discussion. ............. Spring has arrived in the Northeastern parts of USA and I'm going riding on my 1974 Raleigh International and watch "The Living" ... at least, after I go see my Doc, today. If I don't come back ... well, if I don't come back, consider this Blog part of an invisible past. .... LOLLaBFLaB (Laughing Out Loud Like a Big Fat Laughing antiquated Buddha)