Time Passes Slowly .. or once did!

A little ditty of mine is to appear in a local rag ... an informal journal for therapists in the Philadelphia area. I received an e-mail from one of the Editors asking if I could provide a picture to accompany it. No problem. I sent a picture -- without thinking much about it -- that was taken in 1998 of me leaning on my 3rd Quarter elbows, looking a bit sullen with hints of annoyance. I gave little thought to the fact that it is now 2015.  What's 16 or 17 years? Yeah, right! Well, I'll tell you. I have too frequently quipped that my hair loss is a product of driving in my roadster with the top down. Truth be told ... that many years is the difference between a little flesh showing through on the back of my head ... out of sight, in fact, when I looked in the mirror, in those days ... and a picture I remember from barbershops 60 years ago ... the one that was called "the wide part." Yeah. I'm a wide-parter, now, though with some wispy stuff in the 6" part!

I might have not given all this another thought, had the Editor not explained that she needed it in JPEG or PDF format ... and ... had I not only seen the JPEG. See, my MAC can, indeed, save things in PDF format ... whatever that means. So, absent the PDF possibility, I asked my youngest child (still not quite 40 years old) who grew up in the World of Cybers and Cyborgs if she would do it for me. She sent me a picture of me from 1999 holding her daughter -- the same teenager/writer who is in the process of re-editing a book that I wrote in 1994-1995 and published in 1997 -- 2 years before she was born. In this picture, I'm wearing a summery shirt ... look tolerably young holding a maybe 6 month old who now is responsible for getting Grandpa's convoluted writings ship-shape! Damn! Maybe I exist only in the past? Ah, well. We Fourth Quarter folk do perseverate a lot on and get stuck in repeating as we meet with other aging Boomers:

Where HAS the time gone? 

or 

W(here)TF did the time go.

If these years and numbers and characters in my everyday-tragedy are turning your head like you were the subject of an exorcism, they've been doing a job on mine, too. I'm no denizen of the Cyber World ... I can't tell my you-know-what from a JPEG ... and don't have a clue of what JPEG abbreviates. I can't figure out how to word process headers on alternating pages -- at least, not half as well as any of my Grandkids except the 5 year old (afterthought) who tried to show me how to use a smart-phone. Oh, yeah! I got lost on the way to a meeting 3 weeks ago and asked a young couple how to get where I was supposed to be going, when through the open window of my car, I heard:

"DON'T ... YOU ... HAVE ... a ... SMARTPHONE?"

'Well, yeah," I whimpered "I have one but don't know how to use it.'

They, looking appropriately sympathetic, gave me directions from their phone. There but for the kindness of strangers I could be like the Kingston Trio's Charlie on the MTA. 

Back to New Wine in Old Bottles ... or somesuch. The pictures of me -- at least those that were readily available -- are all 3rd Quarter pics or else pictures of an older guy surrounded by grandkids and the one I've been using has an ancient story attached to it. Indeed, the story wraps around with my daughter, my grand-daughter and the passage of time.

The picture was taken at an awards dinner. I just heard disheartening news about the book that Grandspawn is now editing, the one whose back page has an earlier picture of me taken by her Mother in which I look like a Mafioso sitting on a fainting couch. The killer look? I just heard that the person across the table from me had been awarded the Gradiva Book of the Year Award ... LOL I was sweetly glaring at her ... as if she -- whom I had never met before -- had stolen it from me. 

The Purloined Gradiva Award.

In my betimes cheeky manner, I had, at that very moment the photographer was documenting my disheartened look, leaned over the table and noted: I'm having envious fantasies of doing you in and stealing the award! So much for silliness and attempts at youthful humor.

Any case, this is what I looked like contemplating a dastardly deed against a stranger at a rather civil awards dinner in 1968 ...

and that's the way I'll look in the local journal alongside my ditty!