Observations of an Aging Baby Boomer

Aging Baby Boomer Observing

1.   Archaeologists have discovered an "Elixir of Immortality" in an ancient Chinese family tomb. This is possibly the first example of a scientific experiment gone wrong because everybody in the grave is dead.

2.     The length of time it takes a package to reach your house is in reverse ratio to the importance of the package.

3.     Never trust anyone over 70.  We’re old enough to know all the tricks if we can remember them.

4.     Never judge anyone until you have walked a mile in his shoes.  If the shoes don’t fit, you’re screwed.  Being screwed gives you the right to get mad, which provides you with the right to search out the owner of the shoes and clobber him.

5.     Early to bed and early to rise can make a person really grouchy, especially if everyone else is having fun while you’re in bed.

6.     Yes, your dog or cat loves you, so stop wondering about it.

7.     Scientists are finally figuring out that procrastination can be good for you.  I could have told them that myself, but I kept putting it off.

8.     Historical facial reconstructions are showing us, more and more, how ugly some of the famous people were.

9.     Old age is a lot of fun – for the manufacturers of canes, walkers, orthopedic shoes, and support stockings.

10.  Never sneeze at senior discounts.  Those $2 will buy you half a coffee at Starbucks.

8 Things I Will Not Do Today

1    I will not poke fun of Donald Trump.  It’s too easy to poke fun of a vain, vulgar, stupid, racist narcissist whose mental and emotional development probably ended in the fifth grade and who has all the physical attractiveness of a slug.  When it’s too easy, it isn’t fun.  Besides, he isn’t funny.  He’s America’s worst nightmare.

Worse than this one!  (I think that's him on the right.)

2.     I will not complain about having Writer’s Block.  I’m sitting down right now and I’m writing.  Words are coming out of my head and onto my computer.  Therefore, I will shut up and write something and stop whining.

3.     I will not sell my apartment and move to the farthest reaches of Outer Mongolia.  Donald Trump has not yet been elected President.  (Sorry.  I couldn’t pass that one up.)

4.     I will not go ice skating.  It isn’t that I don’t think it would be fun.  I think it would be great fun.  I just can’t ice skate.  That’s pretty important if you plan to go ice skating.

5.      I won’t win a Pulitzer Prize for my fiction.  I’ll wait a couple of years for that one.  I have to write a novel first.[*]

6.     I will not walk to Boston.  I will walk to the supermarket and back.  That’s all.  The only reason I will walk to the supermarket is that I live in New York City, where almost everybody walks because operating a car in this city is like trying to steer an ice cube through a glacier.

7.     I will not do my laundry.  I haven’t done it for a couple of weeks.  Why should today be different?

8.     I will not make Donald Trump jokes … OOPS!  I already said that.  Sorry.

Kathy Minicozzi is the author of Opera for People Who Don't Like It, available on Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle.

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[*] And it has to be a good one.  That might be a problem.

Things I Will and Won't Do

Things I Will Never Do in My Lifetime

No need to lobotomize.

1.  Get a lobotomy.  Everyone thinks I'm spaced out enough as it is.

2.  Run a marathon, even if I get to eat a ton of spaghetti the day before the run without feeling guilty.  With my luck, the spaghetti would cause me to get a cramp and fall down, and all the runners after me would pile on top of me and crush me.  On second thought, it is highly unlikely that there would be any runners behind me.  In that case, I'd survive the race but die of embarrassment.

3.  Go swimming in the Hudson River between Manhattan and New Jersey.  That would be like swimming in a giant toilet.

4.  Get a tattoo on my butt.  To do that, I would have to let the tattoo artist see my rear.  Then I would have to go to Confession for letting a stranger see my butt and disguise my voice so that the priest wouldn't know who he was laughing at.

5.  Ride any roller coaster, especially the Cyclone at Coney Island.  Well, maybe if you offered me enough money to live in luxury for the rest of my life ... even then, I'd have to think about it and get someone to hypnotize me before I got on the thing.

6.  Walk a tightrope between two skyscrapers.  I leave that to thrill-seeking idiots with a death wish.

7.  Be a Bond girl.  I'm too old, I'm too fat and too many of them get killed.  I’d also hate to get stuck with a name like Pussy Galore or Honey Rider.

8.  Be elected Pope.  I have too much estrogen and no Y chromosome and I don’t look good in white robes.

9.  Enter a beauty contest.  I could ace the talent part, but don’t ask me to wear a bathing suit in front of an audience.  Ever.

10.  Travel in a spaceship.  I have enough trouble just getting from The Bronx to Manhattan.

This brings me to:-

Things I Would SO LOVE to Do

It would be fun to surprise these people.

1.  Walk up Broadway from Times Square singing "Lullaby of Broadway" or "O mio babbino caro," really loud so that everyone turns around and looks at me and tourists take pictures of me.  Alternatively, I could stand in front of The Olive Garden and belt out some of my extensive repertoire of Italian songs.

2.  Learn to ride a motorcycle.  Buy a really cute helmet and some stunning boots and wear them every time I take the bike out.  Become known in the neighborhood as Harley Kate.

3.  Ride a carousel, like a little kid (but without an adult standing next to me).

4.  Finish that novel I started, finally.  Make it really funny.  Even though it’s about ancient Greek goddesses and gods in modern times, make it believable.  This isn’t as easy as it sounds.

5.  Take part in a flash mob.  This is something akin to No. 1 above, but with a bunch of other crazy, fun people, not just me.

6.  Sing a recital in one of New York’s classy concert halls, with just me and an accompanist.  Blackmail all my friends into coming and bringing all their friends, too.  Give them a crash course in recital etiquette a couple of days before the performance (i.e. “Please don’t applaud in the middle of a group of songs.  Wait until the group is finished.  Thank you.”).  Make sure to sing things they will enjoy, so they won’t suffer.

7.  Travel to Italy and, among everything else, visit my father’s family’s hometown.  Try to find some relatives and some family records.  Hope I don’t find things out about my family that I would rather not know.

8.  Take a Mediterranean cruise.  Buy so much stuff in every port that I won’t be able to carry it through customs when I get back to the U.S.

9.  Take a motor trip across the United States, like John Steinbeck in Travels with Charley.  I don’t have a camper or even a Winnebago and I don’t have a poodle, but that’s okay.  I can still write a bestseller about all the people I meet along the way and all the adventures I have, and my cat can come along if she wants to.

10.  Buy a bicycle and ride it all over The Bronx.  I could become a local celebrity.  “Hey, have you seen the old lady on the bicycle?  I’ll bet you 5-1 she falls off it today.” would become a daily neighborhood activity.

The Ten Best Uses for an Unwanted Fruitcake

Judging from some of the reactions I have seen, the majority of the human race in the Western World either hates fruitcake or thinks it hates fruitcake.  In the meantime, the giving of fruitcake is a Christmas tradition that goes back many centuries.  Such venerable customs are hard to stop, so most of us are exposed to fruitcake during the holiday season.  Those of us who like it (including this author) are thrilled.  Others are not.  Here are some ideas of what to do if you hate the stuff but someone sends it to you, anyway.

10.  Cut the cake into pieces, let the pieces harden to the consistency of large gemstones, paint them in bright neon colors and use them as paperweights.

9.  Leave the cake in the cupboard until it hardens to the point where it could break bones.  Use it as a decorative holiday doorstop.  You can cover it with pottery glaze if you want, but why bother?

8.  Use it for discus throwing practice.  Of course, this only works for the round-shaped cakes.  The rectangular ones can be used to play fetch with the dog.

7.  Re-gift it to that obnoxious cousin who borrowed your laptop and returned it with twenty different pieces of malware on it.

6.  Did you ever see the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding?  Remember the engagement party scene?  Well, a round fruitcake makes a lovely centerpiece when you stick a plant in the middle of it.

5.  Extract all the liquor from it and use the rest of it as mulch.  You probably don’t know how to extract the liquor, but the very act of trying to do this will give you many hours of holiday fun, especially if you are sampling a nice bottle of Kentucky Bourbon at the same time.

4.  Donate it to the office Christmas party.  When half your co-workers are too drunk to know the difference, offer it to them and tell them it’s chocolate.  After Christmas, tell them what they really ate.  You can all have a good laugh.

3.  Mash it into a powdery mess and add it to the cat’s litter.  Warning:  this might cause the cat to go on a litter box strike.  Just saying.

2.  Cut it into small pieces and put each piece between two chocolate chip cookies.  Feed them to the kids, telling them it’s a new kind of Oreo.  Kids eat grass and paper.  They will be sure to eat these.

1. Eat it!  It’s good!  Really, it is!  Would I steer you wrong?  Just add whipped cream.