Thoughts from the ammo line

Speaking demographically a la Paul Simon, Ammo Grrrll finds it TERRIBLY STRANGE TO BE 70! She writes:

In 1968, when I was 22, Simon and Garfunkel released their fourth studio album, Bookends. It contains the beautiful, haunting song “Old Friends” with the lyric about the two old guys who “sit on the park bench like bookends.” Wait, what? At only 70? No pickleball, no swimming, no travel, no volunteering, no commenting amusingly online? Well, heck, the motto on billboards advertising our ACTIVE Geezer-American Gated Community is “Retire Like You Mean It!” Here we DO stuff! Besides, sadly, I am NOT 70. I’m waaaaay past 70, much closer to 80! And I ask the question that every sentient person in such a circumstance does: HOW the heck did this HAPPEN?

The toughest number on the old odometer for me was NOT 70 – where I was just happy to still be here — but 50. I figured out that I had already lived longer than I was going to live and it temporarily made me sad. By the next year, I was over it. Now I was only in my “early 50s.” You know – a KID! And now this revoltin’ development. Last year a number associated with the number of trombones in a mythical band and now one which brings back distant memories of a long-canceled television show about Sunset Strip! If you remember “Kookie, lend me your comb,” you are pretty old.

But my whole attitude has been adjusted. Now I consider every year, every week, heck, every DAY an accomplishment, a gift. And a chance to do some good or have some fun.

Last year the medical establishment struck a blow to my ego from which I have spent a year trying to recover. It was the first time Nurse Ratched CLAIMED I had slipped under five feet, which is about the shortest acceptable size for an alleged adult! She wrote down 4’11.8” on her filthy, lying chart! Are you kidding me with .8? Well, every man over 5’9”, when asked his height, usually mumbles something like “about 6 feet.” And your columnist, dear friends, still considers herself “about 5 feet” tall.

People who used to see me on stage at my home comedy club, Dudley Riggs’s ETC in Minneapolis, claimed to be shocked when they saw a Munchkin shaking hands saying goodnight to people like a flight attendant. Many said, “You seem much taller onstage!” And like flight attendants, we would say, “Buh-bye, thanks for coming. Buh-bye, thanks for coming, tell your friends…”

I loved the late, great Dudley Riggs dearly, and owe my career to him, but his thrift was legendary. Why employ ticket takers when you can make the comics seat people and then beat feet down to the Green Room to wait for the curtain to go up? And then hustle people out of there for the second show! RIP, Dudley.

Though there are a few advantages to being vertically-challenged, such as being able to sleep on a Greyhound Bus or fitting relatively comfortably in a middle seat on a plane, there’s a downside, too. I can get no response at the fish counter at Sprouts because the fellas cannot SEE me over the racist, sexist counter. (Why racist? Cuz everything is…) Now, just for the halibut, I kind of blend in with the cod and the salmon. Eventually a taller person comes up to the counter and alerts the personnel behind the counter of my continued existence.

On the other hand, a rare piece of good medical news! Under extreme pressure from the Morbid Obesity Is Beautiful Folks, that same medical establishment has caved and “reworked” that ridiculous BMI calculation. So I’m doing fine now according to my doctor.

Even my bathroom scale is very excited about how well I’m doing. It doesn’t even feel it’s necessary to give the exact specific weight any more. It just says “Lo.” I’m not even making this up. Joe says it means the battery on the digital scale is LOW, but I know in my heart it is my scale saying, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Your weight is now ‘lo.’”

I always agreed with the I Love Being Fat Folks that the BMI calculations did not take every important factor into consideration. Okay, let’s say hypothetically two ladies are about five feet tall and both weigh 136 pounds, to pick a random number. Naturally, I mean a “true” weight which is always done without clothing AFTER going to the bathroom, but BEFORE putting on deodorant or makeup. Every woman knows that clothes and makeup add at least 15 lbs. But did you know that muscle weighs more than fat? Honest, it does – you can look it up! And ONE of those persons mentioned above has lifted weights for decades and also has a chest-feeding area worthy of Jeff Foxworthy’s best “you might be a Redneck …” joke:

To wit: If you think a 401K is your Mother-in-Law’s bra size – you might be a redneck.

Not quite there, but, I am a stocky, muscular little peasant woman built to pull plows and feed many babies. All I lack is the babushka and I could star in a Socialist Realist Mural. And, evidently, that adds up to 136 pounds. I would much rather be 118, which is what I weighed when Joe met me. Oh well. We don’t always get everything we want. But enough already about height and weight! It’s my dang birthday! Let’s think happy thoughts.

I bet you were hoping that by age 77 a person would be some kind of dispenser of great wisdom. My husband, the famous novelist, Max Cossack, reads and gleans wisdom from TOMES. The Torah of course, which he can read in Hebrew, the Talmud, philosophers, great thinkers and writers and obscure documentaries. Whereas I get most of my wisdom from t-shirt slogans, refrigerator magnets and memes. TWIP DAY is like college to me. A marriage really only needs ONE very smart person. And one good cook who loves the smart person and can make him laugh.

For my birthday gift to YOU, gentle readers, I will leave you with one refrigerator magnet and one inspirational thought cut out of a magazine. The magnet: “My favorite childhood memory is waking up with my back not hurting.” Okay, I have 10,000 happy childhood memories at a minimum, but lately that one on the magnet has been “top of mind.” And “lower of back.”

This inspirational thought has been on my fridge for many years now: “One of the secrets of a happy life is continuous small treats.”

Though attributed to a long-dead woman writer, I learned that early on from my dear Mama Dorothy. Mama grew up so poor that she was literally grateful for every good thing that ever fell into her life. Into her late 80s she would call me and say, “Oh honey, Daddy and I went to Taco Bell and we each had one Taco and then we went next door to McDonald’s and split a warm Cherry Pie and a cup of coffee and it was SO MUCH FUN!!”

She was happier than most showoffs who go to a restaurant like The French Laundry, spend $350 a plate on tiny food and add an $800 bottle of wine. When my parents finally sold the family home, their real estate agent sent Mama a refrigerator magnet with the Vikings’ season schedule on it and she was so excited that she called me to tell me about it. A late-inning Twins win could make her whole day.

I told her once that I had met a famous gazillionaire movie producer/director’s mother in the kosher restaurant she ran for fun. And that the lady had told me for her birthday her son had arranged to have a Very Big Deal Department Store in Los Angeles shut down to the public and opened just for HER to shop and buy anything at all that her heart desired. And she told me the punchline with a twinkle: “And I only bought one sweater. Feh, it’s enough.”

So after one particularly good year in comedy I paid a substantial tip to Mama’s favorite little dress shop in the Alexandria, MN Mall to open up late just for her. She bought one skirt (on clearance) and a matching blouse. But she told everybody in Assisted Living about the exciting experience.

To honor her memory going forward, I am going to use all my faculties, all my strength, to resist despair, to avoid Debbie Downers of both genders, and just to be happy even while fighting the good fight. The PURSUIT of happiness is one of our three major promised blessings and rights: Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. So, let’s pursue it already. Pursue hard enough and you just might catch it!