Now's the time of year we bore readers with New Year Resolutions, in which talent-free columnists promise to lose weight, learn a foreign language, volunteer at the library, join a health club, go vegan and go solar.
I've only been doing professional journalism-ish stuff since 1969 so forgive my not having previously posted a bunch of New Year's rubbish no one wants to read and I don't want to write.
But here are some of the challenges I plan to thwart, ignore, obliterate or at least not die from in 2024:
1) Drive an 18-wheeler. Not even in a parking lot. Not even a flat stretch of wilderness with no traffic and no cops. I'd want jumbo size Depends and a 12-pack just to start the engine. If I had to pilot a great big truck cross-country I'd strap myself to the roof of the cab instead. Naked. I don't care if it's snowing.
2) I'll also never drive a Rolls Royce.
3) Or a Yugo.
4) I doubt I'll ever spend another two weeks with Paris Hilton in a cozy cottage on the shores of Lake Erie. But (sigh) that one sparkling time, celebrating her 20th birthday and my 65th, will forever live in my heart.
5) I'll organize a Neighborhood Watch Program to make certain drumming circles and yoga stuff aren't allowed to infest our block.
6) What's a Life Coach anyway? Never met one who wasn't socially deficient, needy and unemployed. And unemployable.
7) Or an Influencer. What does an Influencer do for a living? Would you want your kid to yearn to be a Life Coach when she grows up?
8) Some Bucket Listers hope to climb Mount Everest. I'm proud to have never hiked to the "U" on Ukiah's western hills.
9) Every guy wants to experience the joy of driving a Maserati, Corvette or Ferrari in a challenging course at exhilarating speeds. Except me. I get enough trouser-watering excitement having my wife drive us down State Street. It couldn't be more thrilling if she were blind, on acid, and with the dashboard on fire.
10) Retirement Home "activity directors" are always in a sweat to get gaffers to embrace new challenges. "Now's the time to learn a new language!" they chirp. Learn a language, my wheezing lungs. Let me know when they offer Esperanto out at Mendo.
11) More advice for seniors: "Go somewhere you've never been!" sidestepping that if there was a wonderful place I wanted to visit I sure wouldn't have waited until now. But yeah, book me a bus to Estado Sinaloa so I can score some fentanyl.
12) Popular choice for those who ought to know better: Bicycle across Europe, pausing to sample jellied escargot in France and boiled octopus bladder in Sicily. I haven't ridden a bicycle in 40 years and I'll only get on another if I'm drunk and blindfolded. Make sure it has training wheels.
13) Yet another: persuading frail and elderly to read Great Books, as if it's going to do any good to browse Mendo Book Co's Self Help section for an hour.
14) My kids will one day shove me through the doors of a rest home and drive away, fast.
FIRST make sure they're cut out of the will, and NEXT come to my rescue. Don't bother looking for me among the old folk bingo tournaments, birthday singalongs or anything in the Community Fun Room.
Instead I hope to be tucked away in a linen closet with a cute little 65-year old nurse sipping Geritoladas and Nyquila Sunrise cocktails.
15) Getting old guarantees you'll get bullied into the world of crafts. Here in Ukiah you'll have to learn macrame, quilt-making, pottery and make colorful tapestries of your family history.
Next the Daily Journal runs a front page story by Carole Brodsky with a big photo of a dozen loopy quilt-making seniors, along with me in the back row, toothless, holding up a potholder. O the indignity.
Please charge my (disinherited) children with felony elder abuse.
16) I promise to never write another one of these New Year resolutions stories, and I guarantee I'll be around next year to decline the assignment.
See you here. Don't be late.
Is now a good time to think about 2025 and how many of us aren't going to be around to share the joy? There is probably a way to plan now to make it more fun and adventuresome. Tom Hine says he'll give it some thought, and TWK promises to stay out of the way.
No comments:
Post a Comment