Feeling ....

Thanks, Skittlesbrain, for you comment about the expression "I don't care" -- when expressed with feeling. Shandor Feldman, a long time ago, comment similarly that most often when the word "just" was invoked, that it represented a denial of "much more."

So, maybe we could offer up a general hypothesis about admitting to hurt or any sense of being moved by something a great deal.

One of my most frequently brought-to-mind examples has to do with mourning. One is in the midst of burying someone or saying goodbye to someone near and dear, and someone comes up and says one of two things:

A. It was a blessing that the died so quickly and didn't suffer.
B. It was a blessing that Mortimer hung around long enough for you to say your goodbyes.

Apparently, there's C., but I don't know that that would be that Old Mortie hung around not long enough to suffer but long enough to say 'ta-ta'  or that he stayed just long enough to suffer but missed good-bye by a couple of hours.

OK, OK ... I'm beating up a Dead Mortimer on a Blog about getting Old.

In any case, the older I've gotten, the less likely I am to answer questions cavalierly, as if I wanted to express a wish for more substantive communication. Someone comes to my office with the requisite "so, how are you?" It's become my habit to think about it briefly and to tell them.

So, SkittleBrain, I appreciate your reaching out to me; Indeed, just a moment ago and as M is still sleeping, I told GuntherDog how good it was to have responses from the world. BTW, his only response was to call me a schmuck and to go back to sleep.

Any case, folk .... I'm off to play Old Man Racer with my oldest child who is, also, too old for playing Bumper Cars in serious race cars. M is coming to watch and if I don't come back, it's been, what to say, "just right." Life is -- to my way of thinking -- a canvas that we are given when we arrive ... with the option to paint; I feel blessed to have had and to have taken some opportunity to paint upon it.

There are tricks, by the way, to not disintegrating against the wall on a racetrack .... But foremost among them may be not abandoning a decision to follow a certain line around turns. Decisions must be made and some of them kept to ( even if it leaves a preposition or two dangling).

Vaia con Dios!