This Month’s Featured Article

Hey man, what’s the plan, what was
that you said?
Sun-tanned, drink in hand, lying there
in bed
I try to socialize but I can’t seem to findWhat I was looking for, got something
on my mind

Teacher – Jethro Tull

Up into the attic we go to see what the cranky old guy’s whining about this time. With any degree of luck, we’ll get through this without the need for multiple stitches or impossibly costly reconstructive surgery.

• Old people health shenanigans. And they say the excitement in life begins to wane as one goes over the hill, but no, not at a time when the seemingly simple act of climbing out of bed can present its own set of challenges. How am I supposed to know if that sudden sharp pang in my leg or the swift but nasty headachy thing is normal Old People Stuff (OPS) or if I should plan on keeling over any second now? Heyyy, why is the doggy looking at me like that?!?

• It may not help that I buy the cheapest ones in the aisle, but you know how when you rip a paper towel off the roll and a partially torn section from the next sheet comes trailing along with it? Why is that so annoying? I mean, in the grand scheme, who in hell cares? But apparently something somewhere inside me does. Do I know why? I do not. Could be it bubbles up from some ancient place way inside that also chimes with nagging dissatisfaction when you mis-measure (on the low side, thus resulting in a congealed blob rather than a useful dish) the amount of water that goes into your bowl of oatmeal?

• Harry and Meghan.

• Professional sports. What has happened to me? This began, insidiously enough, worming its way in when I dropped the CTE League, errrrr, World Wrestling National Football Entertainment, nooo, I mean Goodell’s Goons. Dropped it flat. Loved the sport. Decades of New England Patriots season tickets. Multiple annual pilgrimages to Shea Stadium/Citi Field for the New York Mets. But around a decade or so back, it all began to feel less like athletic competitions that had a grip on my hard-earned geetus and more like manufactured pageants, which are easy enough to find on the nearest TV screen while not leaving the comforts of home.

• Confrontation as a default style. Maybe stop watching so much TV, folks. Everything is not a fight for a fight’s sake. 

• Self-checkout. Don’t do it! In fact, try not to do anything specifically designed to separate normal people from a normal job. We can’t all be rocket surgeons or trust fund victims, after all. 

• Cheese. To be fair, this is not about cheese itself. Cheese itself is perfectly fine (okay, most cheeses are fine). It’s the recent propensity of food-preparing folks to over-enthusiastically ladle it onto any dish or sandwich or whatever in quantities that would satisfy even Andrew Jackson on his way out the White House door. Let me guess. “The algorithm” had something to do with this bit of modern lunacy.

• Algorithms. Really? The answer to my issue at hand is that it’s “the algorithm?” I’m picturing telling my World War II Navy vet dad the reason I arrived home at 2am with the back seat on fire is in “the algorithm.” Though you didn’t know my dad, I’ll bet you’re familiar with the look of “whut?” at which most parents excel. See next for “back seat smoldering.”

• Myself. Face it, my friends, don’t you annoy yourself at times?

• Late model cars. This one is going to take a minute. Weaned as a driver on a 1965 Rambler, it’d already been around the block more than once before my dad, no doubt anticipating the possible mayhem that his young-un might cause, or what might be imparted to him, ever-so savvily snagged it as I made the move to being an on-my-own driver, and he seemingly bore an interest in seeing my continued development as a walking-about, functional being of sorts. A brilliant move, as I would later come to understand, when I first enabled my very own progeny to go sailing off onto the highways and byways of our world and learned just precisely how long one could hold one’s breath.

Here’s why the Rambler was such a resourceful idea. My friends and I referred to that beautiful Rambler, light blue with one prominent patch of black Bondo, as “The Tank.” And a tank it was. For one, we could achieve a top speed of maybe 55 mph if four occupants focused on rocking back and forth (try it – it works!) down a long, downhill straightaway or maybe 60 with a stiff tailwind, although at 60 the vibration factor came into play. I doubt you could kill the Tank, other than maybe to shake it to death. Secondly, while I’ve never been inside a military tank, I’ll bet they have nothing on The Tank. Now are we going to discuss the night I arrived home from a party with The Tank’s back seat smoldering? No. No, we are not. 

Ergo, when climbing into a new set of wheels after 12 years spent thoroughly enjoying the relatively sane 2013 model, I was gobsmacked. What do I consider a relatively sane vehicle? One that does not do things like pop up a “Consider taking a break” notification after I’ve driven about three miles. I love that one. That warning comes complete with a little graphic of a coffee cup, a steaming coffee cup, no less. Then there’s the yellow curve symbol that appears on the display when a, well, curve approaches. This is helpful in what way? For it to be anything other than a distraction, I’d need to be paying more attention to the display than the road, which has never seemed a terribly useful way to arrive intact. If I need my attention span interrupted by some inane facet of modern life, I’ll switch on the TV news for five minutes.

Okay, y’all have conditioned me to check the backup camera (something useful, for once) when backing out of the garage as a helpful tool for not running over one of the doggies, but that, and the ding-dong thing that wigs out should a fellow motorist stray too close to my precious conveyance, were clearly envisioned by a semi-genius. I could go on all day about modern cars, but instead let me ask this: Who, when they look back at 2026 and their first car, will one day wax poetic about it when chances are daddy-o has handed them the keys to a new or newish luxury vehicle that requires the skill of a NASA engineer to even think about trying to repair?

• Drivers. Whenever it comes time to take my life in my hands and head out in the machine, I make a point of addressing the doggies in my life. “Hope to see you later,” I tell them, and then commence to risking my life in the attempt to successfully reach the grocery store a few miles away. For now, when it comes to fellow drivers, let it suffice to say that hitting the highway and spending the next 25 miles parked in the far left-hand lane while mindlessly sailing along, thoroughly mangling the flow of traffic around you, is not a viable strategy. Quit it! Similarly, the use of turn signals is not some vanity thing. To use one is not unmanly nor unwomanly. I don’t care if you’re exiting the Taconic State Parkway, for instance, in the dead of night with no one seemingly within two miles of you. Surprise! Then there’s the altogether thrilling driving habit of crawling up someone’s tailpipe and remaining there for the duration of the drive. Why?

• GoFundMe. Not the idea of GoFundMe, but what’s behind the idea of GoFundMe and the seeming necessity of it in this stage of our country’s devolution. Oftentimes, a GoFundMe appeal will pop up for someone who’s experienced one calamity or another, be it a house fire or some physical disaster or whatnot. And no, I’m hardly against extending a helping hand. Perhaps this is idealistic of me, but what makes me nuts about the GoFundMe mentality is this: There’s no reason a hypothetical – or even a real – well-meaning, filthy rich country cannot see to it that such fundamental things as health insurance, for instance, fail to adequately cover, if they cover at all, these things, as opposed to someone essentially being forced into the position of relying on the kindness of strangers to get past this particularly unpleasant time in their lives without a lifetime of financial ruin ahead of them.

• Go into an inconvenience store. Buy something. Clerk never says a word. No thank you, zip, other than perhaps the recognition you forced them to look up from their phone for a split-second. A grunt if you’re fortunate. “No problem,” you may be told. Clearly, there’s a disconnect between their paycheck and what helped generate it in the first place. Or did mom and dad omit that whole distressing, angst-ridden, soul-crushing thank you-you’re welcome thing? I know, I know, OK Boomer, or whatever other attempt at disparagement we can think of delivered to folks who had the audacity of being born numerous decades prior and have since lapsed into irrelevance. Occasionally, I find myself reflexively saying “thank you” when change is handed back, followed by the immediate head-flash, head-scratching inquiry of myself. For what? 

But now it’s naptime and, let’s see, chances are that’ll wear me out, which in turn will call for extended naptime. Experience pays. •