wearing our trousers rolled

  I haven't fallen on my head since the last time over a month ago.                          

I reckon it's a good thing to not hit your head, a lot going on in there, or so I hear.  I used to hit my head way more often than I like to admit back when I liked yellow beer way too much and would ride my bike back from the bar.  "One plus one is two, two plus two is four, four plus four is eight," was my mantra picking up myself from the bar, and that arithmetic sounded correct to me so I reckoned that I must be okay.

I can only think of twice that I have hit my head since I came back to Chicago in 1987.  Ice was the culprit both times.  Both times my feet swung up almost as high as my head.  The lower part of my body hit the ice first, but since my head, connected to my neck, swung in an independent arc and it hit like the end of a whip.  And then bounced once.  But four plus four was still eight so I guess I was okay.  

I guess I still am, though I instantly forget whatever was in my hand as soon as I set it down.  And names and nouns, they are on the tip of my tongue and then vanish before I can speak them.  I hem and haw a bit, but it usually doesn't come and then I have to say something like, "You know, Whatshisname, the guy who always wears the Sox hat."

Very embarrassing because we both know that I should know the name, but usually I am talking to another old person, and they do the same thing all the time, so it is not a big deal.

And it seems like mostly I am talking to old people.  At the Ten Cat I think I am the oldest guy in the bar, but the younger guys, are not really all that young.  In my senior citizen activities of course they are old.  In my Saturday watercolor class I wasn't all that old when I started it in 1989, but me and my five or so regulars have grown old in place.  Right now we have a younger couple (between thirty and forty) that appears to be settling in as regulars and we oldsters are doing what we can to encourage them to stay so that we can suck up their youth like vampires.

Same thing with some of the younger people in our Marina City social activities, almost always oldsters are in the majority of our clubs and whatnot, but we are always trying to get youngsters.  I have to admit that in my youth I really didn't like old people in general, too slow and too square and they are always trying to act like they are so wise because they have been around so long.  So that makes me a little nervous about trying to act hip and with it around them.

It's retirement.  When you worked there were always young people around but then after you retired you didn't see them anymore. and you increasingly start to hang around with other people who have nothing to do also.

So you know what it is, you are chatting with some young person and in the normal course of conversation all of a sudden it comes out that they have (gasp) a job.  Poor bastard.  And they are surely thinking this guy is not so much longer for this world.  Poor bastard.

BREAKING NEWS...BREAKING NEWS...

The radio is now going over Biden's physical, sounds an awful lot like me.