Yesterday

One day last week, I was sweating on the elliptical machine at the health club when I saw an old guy with a Beatles shirt coming up to join me. My first impression was , "What is that old guy doing with a Beatles Shirt?" Then, smiling to myself, I realized that he was probably my age. The Beatles. I remember exactly when I first heard of them. It was 1964 and I was returning one Sunday evening to my dorm at UT . The normally empty lobby was packed. Everyone was looking at the TV and I was sure someone else had been shot. “What happened?” I asked? About twenty guy chimed in “The Beatles are coming on!!” Beatles?? Did we need an exterminator? Someone commented that I must have come out from under a rock. The rest is history. Had that group arrived ten years earlier or later, they would have probably not been much more than a footnote. As it is, you would be hard pressed to find anyone from that era who didn’t have a Beatles song that fit something in their lives. I was in boot camp when “Yesterday” was on the top ten: “Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away, Now it looks as those their here to stay” That summed up perfectly my first days in the military. I dismounted the elliptical machine and stopped to complimented the old man with the Beatles shirt. His smile told me that we shared a common past . For just a moment, he didn’t look old at all. I’ll have to get me one of those.

1984

When I went to college in 1963, George Orwell’s “1984” was required reading in the English classes. The futuristic book had one overriding thought and that was that “Big Brother is Watching You”. They say only a fool makes predictions about something that will happen in their lifetimes. Orwell was safe, he died a year after the book was published in 1949. We are a long time past 1984 and Orwell was right and it hits home just about every day. If I search for an item on Amazon, an ad for the item or a similar one will show up on facebook a few minutes later. We have a Amazon Alexia and my wife insist we leave it unplugged. Other wise it will be listening to us 24/7. A friend swears that Alexia was listening to them when they were discussing a possible new purchase and a few days later they started getting soliciting emails for that product. I doubt it. This morning we were backing out of our drive when my wife got a pop up message on her phone. “You are 11 minutes from 24 Hour Fitness”. What?!! How did the phone know where we were going!? The last few weeks I have been getting email solicitations from a Cremation service. Do they know something? Should I be worried???

Blame

It was 1994 and we were living in a small town west of Houston. We had no plans on a Sunday afternoon, so we decided to catch a movie in a new theater West of Houston. Positioned right on the freeway, it was less than an hours drive away. I checked the movie ads and a half page splash caught my attention. “ Pulp Fiction”. There was a photo of John Travolta and numerous quotes from reviewers surrounded his photo with words like “ Exhilarating!”, “Great Story!” ,”Memorable!” . We didn’t know anything more about the film, so we decided to go. We had seen the notice of the “R” rating. As we sat down in the theater, We were surprised to see so many families with small children. The movie started with Travolta and another bum , walking down the street discussing their laundry. They proceeded to a low rent apartment and the movie turned violent. They were there to mentally torture and kill some other bums. We looked at each other and agreed to leave. We found the manager and got a full refund. The manager didn’t object and commented that the violence was worse during the rest of the movie . A while back, in Florida, a troubled, young man murdered seventeen people in a school. Protest broke out all over saying its the Presidents fault and something must be done about gun violence. I could not help but remember that day over twenty years ago when the theater was full of families with small children watching a horribly violent movie. ....and the protesters are blaming the gun.

Machine Banking

I opened my first bank account when I got my first paycheck for $1.99. (believe it or not, the missing penny was my withholding for Social Security) While opening that account, I was treated with the same courtesy as someone depositing a thousand. The teller, pulled out a new little green book and in a penmanship almost forgotten today, noted the date and the $1.99 deposit. I used that little book for many years and doubt that I ever had more than a hundred dollars in the account. I wish I still had it. I remembered all this a few days ago when I went to my “bank”. I do almost everything electronically and seldom have a need to actually go in the bank. When I do go, it’s mostly because I enjoy the social interaction. The last time I was there, several years ago, They had six teller windows. In addition they had four or five glassed in private offices that always had a young person sitting behind a fancy desk shuffling papers. Today was a different story. . All the teller windows were closed. The offices were all dark. There were three futuristic looking ATM machines positioned around the room. While I only went in to withdraw some cash, and inquire about converting some currency, I was looking forward to the social interaction with a teller. A young lady approached me and explained that all banking transactions could be performed on the machines. I greeted the ATM machine, but it did not respond. All it said was, “Please insert your debit card into the slot”. Penmanship and little green bankbooks are no more.

Elderly

A while back one of our granddaughters came over and brought along a survey that her teacher had given all her students. She had to survey an “elderly” person. Wow! Something like that really makes you face reality. I am elderly. This past week I had to get my vehicle inspected. I was waiting in the customer area when an “elderly” man came in. He also needed a vehicle inspection , so he left his keys and insurance papers at the desk and sat down by me. He had had a WW2 Vet hat on, so I started a conversation with him. He let me know that he was ninety-four and was getting tired of all this kind of stuff that he had to do. He had just renewed his drivers license (has to renew every two years in person) and the person at the DPS “gave him a hard time” as though he was trying to disqualify him. He said if they do disquilify him in the future, he will just drive without a license like all the illegials. The day before he had gone to HR Block to get his taxes done, but they wouldn’t do it because he had not received his wife’s 1099 from the SS. He said that maybe he just wouldn’t file his taxes this year. “What are they going to do...put me in jail?” He asked. I enjoy talking to people like this. It makes me feel less elderly.

Could Have, Would Have, Should Have

My oldest brother passed last week. At the service a slide show of events of his life stirred a bunch of memories in me. Six years difference in age is nothing when your seventy, but for an eight year old, he was a giant. He was a star baseball player and I loved shagging balls he hit into the pasture near our home. I think he paid me a penny a ball. I had to run till my tongue was dragging. He left me stand around when his friends would came over for a nickel poker games. Thats how I learned to play poker.(I never did learn how to win). When he ran track, I was proud to take his warm-ups at the starting line and then run like crazy to get to the finish line before he did. He let me go along when he and his friends went frogging. I got to carry (actually drag) the bag of live frogs that they had gigged . He didn’t even get mad at me when I dragged the bottom out of the bag and twenty-five or thirty frogs escaped in as many different directions. When he went to Rice , I was able to stay with him sometimes when his roommates were away. On several occasions, I hitched a ride at four in the morning On a truck from the local freight company to their terminal in Houston . Then I walked the four miles from the terminal to Rice.(Can you imagine a thirteen year old being allowed to do that today) When I got out of the service and was struggling with going to school and working nights and weekends at Churches Chicken, he offered me a job that allowed me to spend my nights and weekends with my young bride. At that time I had no idea that I would work for him for nine years. After that I got my own business and he stayed at his. During the last forty years I only saw him on some holidays and funerals. This past November I called him on his birthday. It was then that I found out that his health had been in decline for a year. A few weeks later, my other brother visited him and informed me how serious his condition was. Since my own health issues five years before , I had spent hundreds of hours researching health issues and planned to go see him to see if I might help. Before I could, he collapsed and was admitted to the hospital and never regained consciousness. Too little, too late. I don’t know why he never reached out to me and feel badly for not reaching out to him. Families, friends drift apart. Its a common problem in our hectic world. While I can’t go back, I can look forward. I don’t ever want to be thinking, Should have, Could have, Would have again.