Happy Groundhog’s Day everybody!!!!!!!!One of my closer friends, Kaleb Vanderbilt, still works for NIKE, where I was employed so entertainingly .
I was more entertained than my boss, it turned out.
Thirty years later, I still can’t bring myself to wear any other brand.
But I refuse… I refuse to pay retail.
Which brings me to my good buddy Mr. Vanderbilt.
“Help a brother out”, I said in an e-mail. “Size 12, something both studly and cushy.”
End of e-mail.
Not long later. Your shoes have been received.
“You can see the color I ordered for you. Matte silver/black & red.”
Which was good to know. One time he sent me the latest design. In Fluorescent Mango. Even I have my limits.
“So cool. Those are my colors. Truly. Thank you, sir.”
Couldn’t come at a better time. I just realized I have been – I knew but I didn’t know, you know – depressed, not a little about getting old. Then, once I evaluated how lucky am I, well, I am fine.
Which is my advice to almost everybody. To get up, look down.
So many people look up at those with more, forgetting how many people are not as fortunate.
Everybody I love, and many I am close to in my heart, suffered too badly last year. I took it inside. And held it there.
And don’t get me started about mandatory sentencing or the Greek economy or political pandering or multiple wars or PTSD or cuts in health care to poor children or low testosterone or Ted Cruz’s birth certificate. Stugots!!!
Unfortunately, that process – I Am Fine – took from I-Don’t-Know-When until right up to this past Monday.
But I must admit, I am certainly enjoying Medicare, which provides me with no co-pay health care while saving me $225 monthly. The Social Security check is direct deposit. Ha! No wonder senior citizens get all ugly when they hear about “entitlement reforms.”
A recent diagnosis of severe arthritis is pissing me off, but then I think of, ummmm, anything else.
Looking forward to those new kicks. There’s no snow. I have legs. I can walk.
And listen to my MP3 player. I have ears. I can hear. And I have a wife who knows how to download books.
I am listening, by the way, to Sun Tzu’s Art Of War. I predict it will become a classic.
Aging isn’t a battle, but staying healthy is. Fight on, I say, fight on….
I’ll never be this young again.
Written shortly after I became a senior. Life has only gotten better. And walking manages to be as much fun as a year-old Frankenstein thought it might be if he could only get it right. – JDW
