Wednesday

8 March 2017

— My mother’s 106th birthday!

Good Morning All, 

You should feel free to blame the following on my Peace Corps friend Fred, who made the mistake of saying he enjoyed my inanimate pants rant.

Very briefly, and just to wind this topic up: Glasses and keys, as I am sure you know as well as I, are not age discriminant. They’ve been pushed around and twisted around so much, they take their revenge whenever and wherever they can get it. I take off my glasses only in the shower and when I go to sleep. Well, in truth, I do not always remember to take them off before falling asleep, such that if I begin to have my being-fried-on-a-spit-above-coals dream, I know my glasses are now under me and digging into me. There then follows the legitimately sad moment when I sit up and see them there, looking steamrolled, looking accusatory, one flattened armature pointing due east and the other—just as flat--disconsolately heading south by southwest. During the day, I have sat at this computer, wondering why the screen looks a bit fuzzy, only to discover that my glasses have gone off somewhere. Two favorite places are between the sofa cushions and in the kitchen trash basket.  

Keys: you also know this as well as I: if you are standing at your front door with a sack of groceries cradled in your left arm, and your left index finger is hooked around the wire handle of a gallon paint can, you know for an absolute certainty which pocket your keys are in. You also know that trying to reach around with your right hand to gain entry to your left pocket will cause the groceries to cascade down the steps. So you put the groceries and paint down, only to discover your keys are not in your left pocket, or, for that matter, in any pocket. If you are lucky, you’ll eventually find them still dangling from the car’s ignition. If you are unlucky, they are under some sodden leaves between your car and front door, or else—somehow—under the illicit Mounds bars in the bottom of the grocery bag.

I would like to say here that my hearing aids are the exception that prove the rule. I think that—given their clientele--they were probably provided with some oldster-sensitivity training. God knows the ones I have now work a lot better than those of a friend, whom I asked one day if he could hear me, and he answered, “Not too good, but those guys out their on that fishing boat are coming through loud and clear.” My first ones were not much better. Esther used to have to roll up a newspaper, put the wider end over one of my ears, and shout at the top of her voice, “Is there anyone home in there?”

The less said about modern packaging the better. Take a modern Cheerios box. It used to be a thumb under the flap did the trick. Now I find that either my saw-all or my African machete is required. I have a friend who puts the box flat in the driveway and runs over it with the lawn mower. I am told that you can have the same success by very carefully extending the box up towards the rotating blades of a helicopter. 

And even then, you still have to contend with the hermetically sealed plastic bag inside. General Mills should put a warning on the outside of the box, something along the lines of: “Opening is best carried out with the use of  military ordnance, such as a bazooka.” The last bag I opened required a rush of adrenalin roughly equivalent to giving me the strength to lift the back end of a car to free a child’s foot trapped under the wheel; the bag, which had put up a valiant effort, suddenly burst open with such force I felt like the guest of honor in a ticker-tape parade.

I will stop in a minute, I promise, but this report would not be compete without mentioning my blood pressure pills. Each is about the size of a grain of salt, but not squarish like a grain of salt. Rather, they are sort of football shaped, doubtless to give them more mobility and less predictability. Sometimes I get them in sheets of ten, each one inside a clear plastic bubble. The idea is, you poke the thin aluminum backing, and the pill falls gently and placidly into your palm. Fat chance. They can and do come out of there with enough force to crack a windshield, if you are foolish enough—as I am--to try accessing them while operating a moving vehicle. 

Or I get them in small jars no larger than thimbles and too narrow to go fishing around for a pill with a finger. I must tilt the bottle, speaking soft words of encouragement to get one to emerge. At first, I will have no success, and then see a dozen or two merrily piling out like clowns from those little circus cars. Some remain in my palm, but most  scurry off in all directions, bounce off the table, and seek hiding places behind chair legs, under mats, and in the corner behind the potato bin.

If it happens to be the very last blood pressure pill I have, it is capable of extra and prodigious feats of accomplishment. Just last week, this final pill managed to roll four feet across the kitchen floor, seem to lose power, but—apparently sensing the vibrations of my hasty advantage towards it--found a second wind, made a turn to the left, and disappeared in under the refrigerator. I had to get a flashlight (torch) and a ruler, and flatten my cheek on the floor. The pill was tucked cozily in amongst the dust mice, just out of the reach of the ruler. “You bloody blood-pressure pill,” I muttered, feeling that artery in the top of my head throbbing.

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron