LET THEM EAT MUSH!

Some 60 years ago, when I was a child, and long before I became a certified geezer, I would spend the weekends with my grandparents on their five-acre vegetable roadside farm. Some of my earliest memories of those overnight visits were the heavy hand tied quilts made with squares from my grandparents shirts and dresses. The quilt was so heavy that to lay under it, it was difficult to even turn over.

At daybreak, I could hear my grandfather rustling around in the kitchen getting the wood-fire stove hot enough to make oatmeal. He had a small pan that was just right for his daily preparations of mush. Silently he would eat his breakfast and then slip out into the field before the rest of the family was awake. Of course I enjoyed grandma’s bacon and eggs with toast. Sometimes we would have pancakes with real syrup. But I don’t remember ever eating oatmeal like grandpa. Only grandpa would eat the oatmeal before his morning of weeding and harvesting in the field.

As a young father of seven sons, I would try to steer my boys toward healthy living. When Halloween came around, I would offer each a dollar a pound for their candy and allow them to keep 25 or 30 pieces of candy. Each boy could earn $5-$10 for their Halloween booty. Somehow the word got out and the older boys began to encourage the younger ones to turn down the money and keeps the candy. Eventually, I wrote a letter to the editor suggesting that trick-or-treating should be abolished in the city. That definitely got a rise from many citizens as they wrote in to call me a communist and other derogatory terms.

The following week a good friend looked at me and laughed and said, “I bet you feed your kids oatmeal for breakfast.” How he knew that I will never know but he was right.

Now as I grow into full bloom as a certified geezer, I prefer, I select, and I choose oatmeal with a dash of cinnamon, topped with fruit, and a few crushed walnuts for my daily breakfast. Even on the road at hotels with a continental breakfast, oatmeal is my stay.

One may ask what have I learned in the past 60 years that I would make that a daily practice. Intellectually, I realize that Ayervada medicine, written some 5000 years ogo in Sanskrit speaks of foods that balance the body such as oatmeal. Scientifically, I could refer to studies that speak of the fiber and oatmeal’s ability to bind fats and oils to help reduce cholesterol. But all that is just chatter and talk-talk. What it really comes down to is that if I listen to my body I feel better on a breakfast over oatmeal then I do on a “truckers platter” of sausage eggs and hash browns.

I have no idea if any of my sons choose oatmeal for breakfast. I will give them another 40 years to figure that out for themselves.

But for myself, as I board a cruise to Alaska on a line that prides itself in food par excellent with eggs Benedict and Belgium waffles with strawberries and whipped cream, I will probably surprise the waiters when they asked me what I would like for breakfast. Oatmeal! The breakfast of champions and geezers!

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A CRIP!

In my youth I loved to ride motorcycles. I read everything I could about the various models in the 60s. Over the years, I owned five different kinds of motorcycles. And even though I no longer ride, I sometimes like to tell my family I am a member of a motorcycle gang called the Crips. They even keep parking spaces near the front door of our grocery store for “the Crips”. The blue sign however looks like a stick man riding a single large wheel rather than a motorcycle.

Even with my physical limitations from 23 years of arthritis I like to think of myself as independent, self-reliant, and able to fend for myself. However that is not entirely accurate. Let me explain.

My wife had an opportunity to spend five days in Oregon with her sister and sister-in-law. I encouraged her to go. She left plenty of meals in the refrigerator.  I had plenty of clean pajama bottoms, and pans and dishes laid out that I could reach. I had a son in town who checked in daily so I knew I would be good for the week.

As is my custom, I spent some time on the patio the first morning. Apparently I was not careful enough to close the sliding door quickly as I came in. I soon realized I had a fly in the house. So as I watched TV, prepared meals in the kitchen, and checked my Internet each day, I had an unwelcome companion who soon becomes my nemesis. Going to the garage and digging out the flyswatter did little to resolve our relation. I was not flexible enough to thwap the fly into oblivion. When my son stopped by for a visit, I asked him to use the flyswatter and relieve me of this curse. He beat on me without success. I sat quietly in my lift chair and pleaded for him to continue whapping me with every opportunity. The fly simply was too frisky and would not land long enough for a good death blow.  While my son thought the whole thing quite humorous, I don’t think he realized the gravity of my situation.

I next closed the French doors to the computer room and posted a sign that said, “Please keep doors closed, no-fly zone!” So like Libya, I had declared a no-fly zone in the house. But this did little good for my TV room and I had four days until my wife returned and I was feeling more desperate by the day.

My fear was that by week’s end, my wife would come home and find a husband too weak to brush the fly away from his eyes and lips just as one might see the poor in Bangladesh living with these pesky pest. I did get relief when it grew dark and if I left the lights off. I was safe in the dark. But the day belonged to the fly.

I then began to consider a new strategy. What if I sat in the bedroom and waited for the fly to follow and then run out of the room closing the door behind me. That didn’t work! He wouldn’t follow me there and I got tired of sitting on the end of the bed.

And then serendipity took over. This morning I laid my clothes out for the day and took my morning shower. As I closed the glass door in the shower, I realized that the fly had come in with me and was on the tile. Now I had him cornered! It was me with my shower wand in the shower with the fly. I was determined that only one of us was coming out of that shower alive. After adjusting the water pressure and temperature I realized that he had moved. He must’ve landed on the black metal edge of the door. So I began to spray all the areas that were lined in black.

The water mist soon raised the pest from his hiding place, and the battle was on. Moving from side to side and corner to corner, chasing the fly with my spray of water I was finally able to shoot him down. I did not want him to come back up from the trap in the drain. So I covered the drain with my foot and let the water back up an inch and release the water down the drain, certain that after three days I was finally free at last.

Eagerly I showered and dressed and phoned my wife to share my early morning success. I went into great detail of how I was able to overcome the enemy. And while basking in the glory of this post-battle debriefing, I realized that as I was talking to my wife on the phone that a fly had landed on my hand. I had no idea that there were two. All I could say to my wife was, “Come home soon! I want you! I need you!”