Thoughts from the ammo line

Ammo Grrrll considers THE AGE OF AGING. She writes:

Whether a friend of America or an enemy, every sentient being in the entire world knows we have a corrupt, degenerate dementia patient in the White House, grifting and grabbing as much as he possibly can for his extensive crime family, before his party can no longer afford to pretend he is FINE.

How do we know that that time will be sooner rather than later? Because long-sequestered information is finally being allowed to dribble out and a handful of “journalists” are even being allowed to question the spokes-cretin who would normally be protected from embarrassment by being a gay black woman. Bus wheels, meet Ms. Karine. No worries. Always room for one more at MSNBC. No loyal lackeys ever need to “learn to code.”

Clearly, whoever is actually in charge hoped that our Weekend at Bernie’s star would have checked out by now and Vice President Kackala could be installed. But “Bernie” hangs on, jogging jauntily upstairs on planes, falling off his motionless bike, stumbling over “sandbags” and taking elocution lessons from Fetterman. It looks like it’s not going to be possible just to let Nature take its course. The cat, as it were, is out of the clear plastic bag.

Not surprisingly, with this mortifying situation, plus inflation, plus degenerates coming after our children, plus unsustainable debt, plus the worst polarization since the Civil War, I keep reading that we are in a new Age of Anxiety. We all feel it. My doctor said she has never prescribed so many anti-depressants, anti-anxiety pills, and combinations thereof.

Oh, I’ve got plenty of ANXIETY, believe me, with a Systolic Blood Pressure that would make a competitive bowling score. But, mostly, for us “War Babies” and dreaded “Boomers,” the Age of Anxiety is overshadowed by the Age of Aging.

Hey, my peeps, remember BOUNDING out of bed? Yeah, me neither. Unless you define “bounding” as Lilliputians tying you down like Gulliver. I am thwarted from bounding out of bed by an evil gaggle of Lilliputians (related to the Kardashians, I believe). There’s Arthritis Lilliputian, Rotator Cuff Lilliputian, Sciatica Lilliputian, and a few cousins, Bad Lower Back, Trick Knee and Trick Elbow. And they aren’t even GOOD tricks.

You know how a lot of minor or has-been women celebrities have exercise videos? Well, here’s Ammo Grrrll’s patented way to get out of bed in the morning: Turn over on your stomach, slide legs to the edge of the bed and let your legs down easily until they touch the floor. We have a very high King Size bed, so if you’re as short as I am, this can take awhile. Patience. Now push off with your puny little arms and try to stand! Be alert for dizziness. Unless you need the bathroom really urgently, wait a couple of minutes before attempting to walk a few steps like Frankenstein’s less limber sister.

Say your Modeh Ani (a Jewish morning prayer thanking God for giving you back your soul which He was keeping safe for you while you slept). Locate your glasses and you’re ready to face the day!

Speaking of the bathroom, and we will glide over this quite quickly, remember when you were a kid having a good time outdoors and you could hold off on having to go practically forever? Good times, good times! The fellas could find a handy bush and unzip, but that was not an option for girls for a myriad of reasons, including propriety and the physics of girl plumbing. Even on a camping trip, where modesty was possible in the woods, it usually resulted in wet socks. Yeah, well, the days of casually putting it off are GONE.

As for the other bathroom event, to pass a brief time waiting for success, you used to have a magazine like “People” with short, puffy articles about tedious people you’ve never heard of. Now you’ve got the entire set of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

When we were kids, times were different and scars were interesting:

“That’s where my sister got mad because I cut her doll’s hair off and she threw an ashtray at me.” (Haha! Remember ashtrays in every home? You even got them as wedding gifts! It was considered rude for non-smokers not to provide ashtrays for guests who smoked. SOME people even provided loose cigarettes in a little ceramic dish with a lid.)

“That’s where my brother tried to shoot an apple off my head with an arrow.” Those were the days before Helicopter Parents. “Yeah, in that arrow incident, Mom was so mad she made us walk to the ER and buy a pack of Camels for her on the way home. She gave us a note which was good enough for Mr. Withers, the druggist. He was a relaxed guy and only years later did we find out he was so chill because he was helping himself to his inventory.”

The Age of Aging stories are WAY less interesting! “How’d you mess up your rotator cuff? Did you fend off a pack of Antifa thugs with the karate moves you learned 50 years ago?”

“Uh, no, although I do remember the Defense against the Knife move (see link at end of column. Don’t miss it. It could save your life.) “Okay, what happened was, I lost a fight with a closed sliding glass door I thought was open. And that was in 2016 when I was a mere lass of 70, and it still bothers me when I try to put the half gallon of juice on the top shelf of the fridge.”

Conversation overheard in a coffee shop between two Geezer-Americans: “How did you get that scar on your lip?” “Oh, man, I fell asleep at the wheel and in the collision banged my head on the steering wheel.”

“Goodness, were you on a sidestreet or the HIGHWAY?” “Neither, thank God. I was backing out of the garage.”

Here’s MY story about how I hurt my lip: I fell off a curb. That should be good for well over 15 seconds of sparkling conversation…I didn’t even trip – I just fell. I was upright. And then I wasn’t! We covered this a few weeks ago. It still rankles.

Everything changes; nothing remains the same, even things that were working fine. I used to be able to pay for things by check. Nobody takes them any more. Now I’m supposed to check my privilege while all the people around me in the restaurant are checking their phones.

And THANK GOD for the phone! I grew up in an age so primitive that unless you had a Polaroid camera with you, you couldn’t even photograph your food! And even THEN you had to wait for it to develop to show it to your friends at the table who had seen your food already.

Which was a vast improvement over your Brownie or even Nikon camera where you had to wait WEEKS or MONTHS to use up all 36 exposures and then have them developed in a camera shop or drugstore before you could show your food to your friends! “You went to the Grand Flippin’ Canyon and you wasted a shot on a picture of your CHICKEN FINGERS? What is WRONG with you?”

Yeah, the food wasn’t even interesting back then! No restaurants in MY hometown had Short Ribs of Beef Braised in Mango Reduction atop a Bed of Baby Bok Choy. We didn’t even know half the words in that sentence! The one “fancy” eatery in my little town had steak, burgers, Fried Chicken and Shrimp. With a salad of Limp Iceberg Lettuce and “French” Dressing, the first listed ingredient of which was sugar. No Frenchman had ever tasted such a sacrilege. The meal was served by harried but good-natured waitresses named Midge, Madge, or Marge, with nary a nose-ring or tattoo in sight.

I will say this about Midge, Madge, and Marge, who called everybody “hon” and weren’t even fired – they were WOMEN and knew it. The only thing “fluid” about them was the way they could shlep five meals to the table plus coffee and never spill a drop of anything. Boy, do I ever miss waitresses like the seasoned pros at Murray’s Steakhouse in Minneapolis. Murray’s opened in 1946 and, when I moved in 2010, still featured their original waitstaff, far as anyone could tell. With the prices at Murray’s, they all probably had numbered Swiss bank accounts.

Well, hope you enjoyed this Anti-Anxiety trip in the Wayback Machine. I have to lie down for a while now. Oh, I was GOING to talk about memory issues too, but I lost my notes on that. Probably in a secret hiding place along with my Amazon password.