LIVING WITH ADVERSITY

This year I decided that my new heros were all those blue-haired, little, old ladies I see in shopping malls. They shuffle along pushing walkers with those "funky-assed" green, day-glow tennis balls on the legs.

Once you reach a certain age, getting up in the morning becomes an Olympic event! If you are lucky enough to survive and claim your senior citizen status, it becomes probable that you will face more pain and adversity than an NFL quarterback! You won't care, because the mission now is to wake up vertically in the morning; rather than to be found by your wife in the horizontal position.

Your tongue will be hanging out, like that deer you shot in Vienna, Illinois, when you went on that hunting trip with your drunken buddies, years ago. Much of my day consists of reading the obituaries, watching the weather channel, and making countless numbers of phone calls to other geezers to discuss various diseases, hospitals, and locations of funeral homes. Older people visit endless numbers of departed friends and enemies in these funeral homes. We get fat, because we eat a lot of pastries and sandwiches there! Many of us finish our day by watching The Wheel of Fortune, while we eat a large bowl of Premium ice cream. This ice cream advances the clogging of our arteries. The closest we get to pornography is Vanna White. Some of us fall asleep in our chairs before 9 p.m., watching banal episodes of Murder She Wrote, on the Hallmark Channel.

(I've given up the control of the TV clicker to my wife). I will never see Rambo movies again! These are the so called "Golden Years", dudes! I think they suck!

God willing, I hope I make it to 61. A man has to hope for the best!

from: "The Journey...Memoirs of a South Side Chicago kind of guy"...available on Amazon.com