Reminiscences of the Old Days

If you remember these, you're officially old.

March 23, 2022

I don’t know what this is going to turn out to be.  I’ll keep writing and see what comes out.

I’m sitting here in front of my computer, typing this.  Across the room, my TV is playing an old Jack Benny program.  It’s early in the morning, and a couple of cable stations are playing shows to benefit us old enough to remember them.  That would be me, among others.  The Jack Benny Program is one of my favorites.  Others are Dragnet, Leave It to Beaver, Dennis the Menace, Father Knows Best, and Hazel, all of which play on cable TV, one after the other, on weekday mornings.  It is a cornucopia of reminiscences.  Perry Mason also plays on weekday mornings, but that one requires attention to a plot.  It’s not good background TV.

It amazes me how normal life on those programs seems to me.  There are no computers, cell phones, laptops, or tablets in evidence.  People talk on old-fashioned dial telephones, and sometimes they have party lines.  Texting is unknown.  If you call someone and the line is busy, you’re out of luck.  You have to keep trying until someone hangs up.  To anyone born after 1990, this must seem like a nightmare scenario.  To someone like me, who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, it’s life as we knew it.  We didn’t know any better.

Old hairstyles and clothes fashions are something else.  Seeing those on TV can elicit laughs as well as sighs of recognition.  They also bring back memories of the discomfort we went through to look good and be in fashion.  Anyone who has ever tried to sit modestly in a pencil skirt or, even worse, a miniskirt knows what I mean.  The memory of the torture we females had to go through every night to set their hair on rollers and bobby pins then try to sleep on them brings on a case of the trembles today.  Handheld hair dryers came out in the 1920s, so they were nothing new.

How did I find that out?  I just now Googled it.  Back in the day, we couldn’t do that.  If we wanted to find anything out, we had to go to a library or an encyclopedia and look it up.  How’s that for time-consuming inconvenience?  Again, we didn’t know any better.  I hate to seem like an old fogey, but you youngsters have it easy, at least as long as the new technology works well.  That’s a subject for a whole other essay, though.

 

Journal Entry for March 8, 2022

 

March 8, 2022

I don’t know what to say here.  My life isn’t exciting.  I never competed in the Olympics.  I am not a CEO of a Fortune 500 company.  I don’t travel the world and write about my adventures.  I don’t have adventures, at least not deliberately.  If I have an adventure, it is strictly by accident and probably not something I wanted to happen.  So why am I bothering to write about my life?

The funny thing is, other people find my life more interesting than I do.  For example, when I tell people I used to sing opera, I get a reaction like it is a fascinating thing.  It was a lot of work, rejection interspersed with some acceptance and a good deal of loneliness.  However, when I gave a good performance that went just right and got a good response from the audience, there was nothing like it.  So yes, I guess that part of my life can be considered interesting.  Most people don’t sing opera for various reasons, and I did.  I still would if anyone wanted to hire a 76-year-old former soprano who doesn’t have a High C anymore but still has the rest of the voice well intact.

I do sing in church every Sunday and whenever they have a funeral or a wedding.  People in the neighborhood have been known to stop me on the street and ask me if I am the lady who sings in church.  Apparently, they like my voice.  That always gives me a lift.  It makes me feel good to know that I am reaching people with my singing, even though it is easy music and not always very inspiring.  I try to sing it in a way that will move people.  It’s nice to know that I sometimes succeed.

In the meantime, though, mainly being retired, I sit in my apartment almost every day and try to find something to occupy myself.  This isn’t easy.  I take that back.  It would be a lot easier if I would pay more attention to things, like online exercise programs offered by my local senior center.  When I do pay attention and attend these, I feel better.  The problem is getting myself going.  Exercise is a dirty word.  I don’t even like to walk to church anymore, although my church is only a couple of blocks from where I live.  I usually take an Uber car.  This not only keeps me from exercising by walking, but it also revs up my credit card balance.  That doesn’t keep me from calling Uber every Sunday, going and coming.  Sometimes, I think I singlehandedly keep the Uber company going in The Bronx.

If, after all this, you still think my life is interesting, go ahead.  I don’t find it as interesting as you do, but maybe with a bit of help, I’ll stir it up a little.

Journal Entry for March 7, 2022

March 7, 2022

Here I am again, sitting and writing whatever comes into my mind.  If this turns out to be a decent piece of literature, I will be happy, but that is not necessary.  It is essential that I am writing again.

My blood sugar level continues to give me enough concern that I monitor it closely.  I should also be concerned about my weight, but I haven’t hit bottom on that yet.  If the pictures taken at the restaurant where we celebrated my late birthday last week don’t cause me to stop and go back on Weight Watchers, I don’t know what will.  I was the biggest thing in the room, especially compared to my friend Joan, who had been sick and looked thin in the pictures, and I looked like an elephant next to a meerkat.

My hair is another thing.  I have the I-haven’t-been-to-a-hairdresser-in-two-years COVID-19 look, with hair hanging halfway down my back.  I look like a late 1960s hippie.  I am nervous about going to a hairdresser for two reasons:  (1) I’m still afraid of COVID germs; and (2) I don’t know what kind of haircut I want.  Number 2 is quickly settled.  Number 1 will take some doing.  If I trust myself in someone else’s hands, I want those hands to be COVID-free.  Since I cannot guarantee that, I might have to table any plans to cut my hair soon and look up some long-hair styles.

The hippie look is complete when I decide to wear a tie-dyed blouse like in those pictures in the restaurant.

This reminds me.  I am now seventy-six years old.  If sixty is the new middle-age, I am getting well enough past it to be entering into old lady territory.  I am not ready to be an old lady yet.  If I live to be ninety or one-hundred, I’ll be an old lady, and even then, I’ll think about it.  I hope the march of middle-age will keep up with my aging so that I will always be a younger woman, even when I am white-haired and in a wheelchair.  I know, this doesn’t make sense.  Neither do half the things I say.  I’m like that.

In the meantime, here I am, sitting and writing journal entries and editing a building newsletter every month.  At least that’s something.

Journal Entry for March 5, 2022

March 5, 2022

Well, here I am again.  I have a feeling this is going to be short, although I could have a lot to say if I wanted to say it.

This has been a tough week, starting with Monday, when my blood glucose levels were higher than usual, and I couldn’t get them down.  I did the logical thing.  I called my endocrinologist’s office.  Talk about frustrating and weird.  The secretary kept telling me she was busy.  I kept telling her my blood sugar level was up, and I needed to talk to someone.  I finally got to speak to a nurse(?), who told me the doctor would call me “within three business days.”  WHAT?!  I argued with her, of course, and she finally told me the doctor would call me back the same day.

Of course, the doctor didn’t call me back.  I was only experiencing a crisis, after all.  Phooey!

I called my primary care doctor’s office and spoke to a medical assistant, who calmed me down and gave me advice.  The doctor was not in the office that day, but I was able to get ahold of her on the phone, in person, the next day.  Again, she gave me decent advice and reassured me I wasn’t dying.

My blood sugar level went down, praise God, although it is still not going down as far as it was.  At least it’s on a decent level now, and I know that I can adjust the level of my insulin injections if I have to do that.

The endocrinologist finally called me, but it wasn’t because of my glucose problem.  She wanted to tell me that she would be leaving the office soon and setting up private practice in an office too far away from me to be convenient.  I say good riddance.  I was going to fire her, anyway.  Now it will happen naturally.

I sang the Ash Wednesday Mass at my church and got the ashes on my forehead like a good Catholic.

I also sang two back-to-back funerals this morning at 9:00 and 10:00 AM.  I was in reasonably good voice and sang well, praise God.  I got a $6 tip for the first funeral.  The lady gave me and the organist $12, which we split evenly.

Later, when I tried to call my friend Joan, I couldn’t get through to her.  I ended up helping her out by getting in touch with Optimum on her behalf and getting them to fix her problem from their office.  Of course, trying to get a live person to speak to was a Herculean task, but I did it, and it worked.  They restored her phone connection.

This is turning out to be longer than I thought it would be.  That’s fine.

Journal Entry for February 26, 2022

 

February 26, 2022

Today is Saturday.  When I was still working full-time in the old days, that meant something.  Now it only means that all the morning television shows that I turn on during the week are missing, and I have to search to find something good on TV.  Since I tend to use the TV as background noise, this should not be important, but it is.  I am very spoiled.

I have chosen a Harry Potter marathon as my TV-in-the-background choice today.  That is always safe, except for the later Harry Potter movies, which are more complicated than the others, and I can’t just look in on them occasionally and know precisely what is going on.  Of course, I could stop whatever else I am doing (such as writing this journal entry) and concentrate on watching the movie, but that would involve actual concentration, which is work.

Somebody (Voldemort, I think) just yelled “Avada Kedavra” at someone in one of Harry’s dreams.  That was dramatic enough to get me to stop and look.

These writing exercises are working, at least to the extent that they get me to sit down and put words into the computer.  They also inspire me to try to be at least a little bit funny.  Now I just have to find a suitable subject and write a real piece of literature.  Literature is challenging, especially if you are not inclined to be a “literary” writer.  This is the kind of writer that does well in creative writing classes because the teacher thinks they are so talented and so ... well ... literary.  I can’t write that way to save all the money in the world and my life.  When I write a short story, it has to have a decent plot, strong characters, and a lot of humor.  That might get me a grudging A-minus in a creative writing class, but it won’t get me a spot in a literary magazine.

How did I go from Harry Potter movies to literary magazines?  Talk about meandering!

At any rate, here I am, sitting at the computer, actually writing something, for the third day in a row.  This has to be a record for me.  Now I just have to keep it up.

Journal Entry for February 25, 2022

 

February 25, 2022

Here I am again, sitting, trying to write anything to get the words flowing.  So far, so good, although I could find myself stopped anytime.

My birthday was three days ago.  I didn’t get any presents or phone calls or anything, but I got loads of good wishes on Facebook, which means something.  My actual celebration will take part on Sunday late afternoon.  I will go out to eat with Andrey and Joan.  Andrey couldn’t make it on an earlier day because he and his wife went out of town on a well-deserved mini vacation for a few days this week.  I hope they had a good time and good weather.

Speaking of weather, we have miserable weather today, with snow and sleet.  I put in an Instacart order for some groceries and felt guilty about bringing my “shopper” out on a day like this.  I gave her an extra $10 in cash to add to her tip.  I also gave her a good rating and compliments and tried to make her look good to the Instacart people.  A shopper has to do something pretty wrong to get me to give less than five stars because I don’t want to make trouble for anyone on their job.  I guess I’m an old softy at heart, or I feel responsible for the world.  I’ll have to figure that one out.

I feel responsible for the world, and I think that is my old-fashioned Catholic school upbringing.  Catholic guilt has more than one facet to it, and I think this is one of them.  In addition to being guilty of sin and, therefore, guilty of causing Jesus to be crucified, we are responsible for the world.  It’s a lot to put on a person’s shoulders.

I have now gone over 300 words.  Three hundred words is not a magic sum, but I seem to have made it into a self-imposed limit because of the Corlear Gardens Newsletter, for which I try to write something every month.  To avoid making the newsletter too long, I limit my contributions to 300 words.  Besides that, I’m not sure the attention span of my building’s readers could stand more than 300 words, along with all the other stuff that goes into the newsletter.  I have no way of knowing how well or not well the newsletter is being received by the people of the building.  Nobody tells me.  I have to hear second-hand from Valerie or Jimmy, the people who work with me on the newsletter, when anyone says anything to them about it, which isn’t often.  Maybe I should conduct a survey and offer a prize, or something.  Nobody wants my George Forman grill when I offer to give it away, but perhaps if I make it an award, it will seem more attractive!

Again, I am not writing a masterpiece here.  I leave that to when I write something that I want to bother editing.

Until tomorrow.

 

Journal Entry for February 24, 2022

 

February 24, 2022

So here I am, sitting at my computer, typing what will probably turn out to be a journal entry.  I don’t know what this will turn out to be, and it probably won’t be a masterpiece, which is disappointing but not unexpected.

I am trying to cure myself of a very long period of writer’s block.  I don’t know if I have real writer’s block or I’m just being lazy and depressed.  If I manage to cut through it here, I’ll be happy.

I turned 76 two days ago.  This is frightening, and it means that I’ll be 80 years old in four years.  Where did my life go?  It didn’t take very long to get to be 76 years old.  Wasn’t it just yesterday when I was walking the campus of Eastern Washington State College, away from home for the first time in my life?  Didn’t I just write a cliché?  Oh well, I’m entitled to one cliché here.  Those are the rules, which I made up myself.

Well, I just managed to stray from the subject.  I am getting older, and this is scary.  My finances are not strong, and I am terrified of ending up old and poor.  My therapist suggested that I take some action now to see if I can apply for Medicaid and other forms of help for seniors.  That’s a good idea.  I think I will call the Riverdale Senior Services center and see if I can talk to the social worker there.

I was right.  This is NOT turning out to be a masterpiece.

Why do I care about having my writing be correct and polished the first time around?  The thing is to WRITE.  I can edit later if I want to.  In the meantime, most likely, nobody else will read this, so my reputation as a writer is safe.

It isn’t as if I haven’t accomplished anything in the last few days and weeks.  I put in an application for food stamps, complete with documentation.  I did my taxes (hooray!), and I will get a substantial refund from the federal government and a little one from the State of New York.  I am not missing any good television programs.  I brought an empty box downstairs for disposal.  I sang at a funeral on my birthday, two days ago.  March’s Corlear Gardens Newsletter is ready to go.  I’m still bored as hell, with time on my hands.

I will try to get out of the apartment for at least a little while today, and maybe that will help.

In the meantime, I can always sit and write.