Tag Archives: Aging

Legs

I am a limper.  I limp more than most people.  In my younger days I was always spraining an ankle.  High school football marked the start of my knee adventures when I partially tore my anterior cruciate ligament.  I was born with chondromalacia, meaning my kneecaps are somewhat askew, leading to arthritis at a relatively young age.  I had arthroscopic surgery on my right knee in my late 40s.    

In the meantime, I hiked, hunted, backpacked, played killer volleyball in the Army, and climbed over twenty fourteeners, mountains over 14,000 feet elevation.  I always experienced some pain during all that, but I just kept on truckin’.   

Sunshine and Redcloud Peaks

It all changed when I climbed Sunshine and Redcloud Peaks in the San Juan mountains.  It started as a fine day in country mostly new to me.  A great climb, with a lot of time sharing  the alpine tundra with the resident Pika.  It started clouding up as we dropped down from Sunshine on the way to Redcloud.  On the summit of Redcloud we were in a whiteout with horizontal snow.  We got scared when I took my hat off and my hair stood on end, what there was of it.

We headed down as fast as we could, having experienced lightning above timberline before.  People die that way.  We moved straight down, sort of loping down a scree field.  By the time we reached timberline I was hobbling, both knees screaming.  That was the end of my climbing and backpacking days.  I did climb Quandary Peak some years later, but I was climbing with people twenty years older than me and it is an easy climb for a fourteener.  

As a substitute I bought a motorcycle.  I had ridden in my younger years, but got away from motorcycles.  I have always sought out activities I have no business engaging in. I was repeating a risky activity beyond my ability.    

Posterior Cruciate Ligament

My first ride into the mountains was up Golden Gate Canyon, one of the many canyons carved down the face of the Colorado Front Range.  The canyons are all winding, scenic, and steep, making for great motorcycle rides.  There are hazards.  Wildlife, crazy drivers, bad weather, and debris on the road.  I went down sliding on some sand . My right knee hit the road, my tibia and fibula stopped, but my femur continued long enough to tear my posterior cruciate.  Ow, Ow, Ow.  After things healed a bit I kept riding and crashing without too much damage.  

One day at work I was walking along and SNAP, my ACL finally gave up.  The MCL was also gone so the only things holding my leg together was skin and muscle.  I now have a titanium knee. It works fine.  My left knee is not so good.  Most of the cartilage is gone and arthritis has set in.    

I get injections in my knee from time to time, and they help.  Some.  Mostly I live with some pain, cycling from mild to hobbling.  I will get another knee replacement some day.  I fall down.  I always have have to some degree, lacking much coordination.  Now it is worse as my balance is increasingly rocky.  I fall off ladders, down stairs, and even on level ground.    

On one of my trips down the stairs I bruised my left hip.  I figured it would heal, not being broken but no luck.  It’s sore, a lot, but aspirin and BenGay are helping.  The orthopedist I have gotten to know pretty well says there is arthritis and not much cartilage there.  She looked at me and suggested a hip and knee replacement.  Well, maybe someday.  

I look at these health issues as teachers.  Stuff doesn’t work well, it gets plugged up, it doesn’t want to flow, and it hurts. It is all likely to get worse.  My job is to adapt.  Life involves change.  It involves pain.  It is endlessly rewarding.  The pain may be limiting, but it does not necessarily lead to suffering.  After all, I can still look at car crashes in Russia on You Tube and make up lies for you to read.

Stuck

Stuck

Stuck is my current problem.  I have not been able to write a word for a couple of weeks.  That problem seems to be receding.  Writer’s block and my general lethargy stems from a deeper problem.

First, some of what I know of the Buddha’s thinking.  One of his core concepts is about what today we call the ego.  In our regular thinking we treat our egos as permanent things stemming from what we are as beings.  Not so, folks.  We have made it all up.  We draw from our genetic makeup and our interpretation of our experiences in living to form a sense of self.  This is necessary for our survival, both as individuals and a species.

In the tribe, boys learned how to hunt from the tribal hunters.  Girls learned how to have and raise children from other mothers.  Everyone’s experiences are somewhat unique, but have a lot of commonality with others around us.  If things go well, children grow up to be healthy, capable members of their group.

Often, however, things go wrong.  Trauma, disfigurement, disease, and deprivation can lead a person to develop a wounded ego.  This is true of all of us to some degree.  The wounded ego suffers.  Suffering prevents us from reaching our deepest innermost being, the condition often called emptiness.  It is pure being, free of suffering stemming from the decisions we have made about ourselves.  It is often called enlightenment.  A better word is peace.

Insight Meditation can lead to the state where we have let go of all the encumbrances of ego.  It doesn’t mean ceasing to act much like the suffering person we were once were.  It doesn’t eliminate the need to cope with the tasks of living in the world, (especially a world containing Republicans.)  it’s clarity, freedom free of suffering but not of pain, grief, infirmity, and death.

Letting Go

I have tried to reach this goal for a large part of my life.  I tried many paths, Christianity, Buddhism, raging atheism, and trying to ignore the whole mess.  An amalgam of the teachings and lives of Jesus and the Buddha is what I have settled on.  It works for me, and much of my suffering is gone, let go.

But not all.  As a young child I experienced some abuse that seems to have gone to the very core of my being.  I have had profound, life changing spiritual experiences.  I have had over thirty years of therapy, I take medication for depression and ADD/HD.  ( not to mention prostate medication). My spiritual work has done the most good, but the other stuff is important.  I couldn’t meditate or write before I got effective ADD treatment at age 59.

Still, the deep reservoir of unease and discomfort remains.  Now, I am not the greatest practitioner of Insight Meditation or prayer, although I practice them every day, sometimes for much of the day.  I still go to therapy, go to meetings a couple of days every week, see my shrink, actively meditate and study the dharma.  They help tremendously.  Drugs, alcohol, and the motorcycle did not work.

That pool of existential isolation remains.  My teachers tell me to continue the process and I will, but I have times when I despair.  Is it karma, I am destined to suffer throughout this lifetime?  Or as my teachers say, I just need to persevere.  Well, I will persevere, continue the struggle.

I usually can chug along just fine, but a few weeks ago, one of my teachers said the continued practice of letting go will do it.  It hasn’t, not that deep pool of anguish.  His saying that just triggered more agony. This stuff sure is taking a long time, and I am not sure it will ever work.  Do you have any ideas?  Maybe I need to go to the mountains.

Unexpected Happiness

Most people assume happiness comes from material things, especially in our consumer culture.  Not so, folks.  Happiness comes not from craving but from compassion and loving kindness.  I am an expert on craving.  Currently, my main craving is for ice cream.  I think about ice cream, I long for it.  I score!  I eat ice cream and have a fleeting feel good.  Then it starts all over.  I am suffering desiring the temporary fix that creamy, sweet, fatty stuff provides.

There are two main results.  I feel that discontent of no ice cream, eat ice cream, feel contented for an hour or so, than resume craving.  I am also getting fat.

There is another way.  Do good and feel good.  The good feeling doesn’t go away.  We are wired to help one another.  It comes from feeling compassion for someone who is suffering.  We then act out of loving kindness. The person suffering feels better and so do we.  They are feelings that don’t go away.

Many philosophers and economists say we operate on the pleasure principle.  Most of them assume pleasure results from satisfying craving.   The marketers exploit the craving and tell us happiness comes from the right beer, or car, or toothpaste.  In fact, they are exploiting suffering.

For the first part of my life I operated on that false pleasure principle.  I wanted stuff, temporary sensual gratification, alcohol, and ice cream.  I was something of a melancholy, trying to fill a void in my soul.  I then met the love of my life.  I was happy with her and looked forward to sharing satisfying cravings with her.  Food, stuff (lots of stuff), the mountains, the desert, canoeing, road trips, all those fleeting pleasures.

It turned out the love of my life is sick.  She has lupus, and can’t do many of the things I thought were the main goals of my life.  We can’t do road trips, she can’t be in the sun very long, she doesn’t have much energy, and she hurts.  All those fantasies exploded.

One of the benefits for me in meeting the love of my life is my commitment to her.   For better or for worse.  I cook.  I clean.  I do the heavy work of gardening, including maintaining that blasted sprinkling system.  I do Jin Shin Jyutsu(Japanese acupressure) three times a week I do shopping.  I lift, carry, move, assemble, and help in any way I can.  I scratch her back, we snuggle, we talk, laugh, and get cranky with one another.

Her family members have more trouble than they deserve.  I drove to Minneapolis to help her brother when his leg was broken by an errant automobile.  He has no support system there, so I went and helped out.  Her parents got old and infirm.  We visited Florida and North Carolina to help out.  We had lots of trips to Florida.  Her dad moved here when he could no longer handle the tasks of daily living.  Her mother moved to Boise to be with Carol’s sister and we visited there.  I also act as support for Carol’s two children, especially her son.

Blue Earth

All that seems like drudgery, inconvenience, and suffering.  Not so.  It is fulfilling.  I like to help, even if it means hundreds of miles of corn and soybeans on the way to Minneapolis.  Have you ever seen the blue earth clay west of Mankato (means blue earth) or the Nebraska sand hills?  Have you gotten lost on foot in downtown Minneapolis?  If not, you have really missed out.  The whole thing feels good.  Well, there is some inconvenience as well, but it is mostly happiness.   May you find happiness in helping others.

Driving Around in Cars

We live in a car culture.  The economy is based on the auto an oil and gas industries.  Most of us think of cars as a gateway to personal freedom.  We devote much of our resources, monetary and mental, to the automobile. Our culture is so strong in its emphasis on cars that we  have succumbed.

Carol’s car was getting old and the new safety equipment with all the sensors and warnings seems more important as we age.  She has a Mazda crossover SUV.  I got a Subaru Crosstrek, good for light backcountry driving.

My old ride was a fine 2009 Toyota pickup, great in the boonies but I am giving serious four wheeling up.  Too much risk at my age because I tend to go alone to tough places and turn off into tougher places.  My regular driving has changed as well.  Every few years I have a momentary lapse and some sheet metal gets bent.  This time I pulled out in front of an oncoming car.  $4000 damage to my truck, probably about the same to the other car.

Now there is technology in cars to help prevent some of those events.  I need as many external sensors as I can get, as my built in sensors have never been all that good and are getting a bit worse as I age.  That safety stuff is a bit expensive, but cheaper than an accident.

I am attempting to let go of as much artificial desire as possible and a new car doesn’t fit with the goal.  Well, whatever.  “We’re living in a plastic land.”  I could do most of my running around on my bicycle(s), and did for a while, but got away from riding.  I am not sure I will start again.  So I am going to support the Japanese auto industry and support our auto broker.

Instead of letting desire go I am feeding a craving.  Will I ever be able to let go before age and infirmity force me to?  Stay tuned.

Back to Real Life

Colonoscopy, a Peak Experience

As you have read, I went through a real downer after falling down the stairs.  I’m mostly over the episode, the body is mostly healed, and my psyche is on the mend.  Along with the trip down the stairs I got my three year endoscopy/colonoscopy and had a trip to the cardiologist.  I have an appointment with the gastroenterologist coming up for another butt chewing.  Who better than a butt doctor?

The cardiologist wants me to have an echocardiogram to see the extent of scarring on the wall of my heart.  I apparently had a heart attack sometime, and there is some damage.  I don’t remember anything, and my heart function is fine, but they want to check if there could be a problem in the future.

I go to many of Carol’s doctor appointments as well as mine.  I am tired of all the medical offices.  The people there are almost always great, but, the waiting sitting around reading six month old People Magazines.  I guess this gives old retired people something to do rather than sitting in the recliner watching old Law and Order reruns.

All this medical stuff is scary.  A good friend recently had a mild heart attack, but after 40 years of cigarettes, it is seriously scary.  He keeps telling me I need more exercise, but it is mostly projection.  At some level, however, he is right.  He is so scared he devotes much of his time to exercise, mostly pickleball and swimming.  When we have coffee he is usually limping from overdoing it at pickleball.  One of these days his leg is going to fold over backwards at the knee.  Well, maybe not, both of his knees are titanium and don’t fold backwards as readily.

I’m working on diet changes, getting Physical Therapy, and doing more Mindfulness Meditation.  Maybe someday I will start being more mindful when not actually meditating.  That should reduce the falling and tripping.

Other benefits of the meditation are the three refuges:  the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha.  The Buddha is not some kind of God.  He was a man, albeit a fully realized man who devoted his life to helping others become realized.  The dharma is the body of his teachings along with the wisdom of his followers over the last 2500 years.  The sanghas are the groups of followers meeting to meditate, learn the dharma, and pay homage to the Buddha.

Sangas aren’t unique to Buddhism.  Christians call it fellowship, the body of Christ.  Human bonding is important for living a spiritual life.  Sunday evenings, the Insight Meditation Community of Denver meets in an Episcopal church near downtown Denver.  As always, it took some time for connections to form, but I now feel close to everyone there, even if they may be from California.  In addition, meditating in a group is always special.

Someday science will figure out what the spiritual energy is that forms within and between people following a spiritual path.  The energy is common to every spiritual path.  Sometimes it is called mystical, but there are many who would say they aren’t mystics.  The only thing blocking the bond is hate.  People can feel a bond of hatred, but it is in no way spiritual.

My hate example is the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka.  One of their tenets is that God hates.  Do you believe it?  A friend is the Unitarian Universalist minister in Topeka.  Their tenets are love and helping others.  The Westboro congregation is actually at cross purposes with their beliefs.  Their protests have brought people together all over the country to stand in opposition to hate.  Love grows.  Hate destroys.

Aftermath

 

The Infamous Stairs

Falling down the stairs two weeks ago has turned out to be a life changing event.  I knew I was getting old, after all the URL you used to get here is DOFBILL, for Doddering Old Fart.  I have been using it for several years.  But, friends, this last excursion down the stairs hurt.  It still hurts.  I started physical therapy again for balance work.  I haven’t been able to get motivated for doing anything.  Getting here to the coffee shop to write took until noon today.  I am usually here by 9:00 AM.  All I want to do is lay in bed and watch U Tube videos.

I did manage to work with the painters the other day.  Our new stretch of fence looks good.  However, I dropped the tote tray full of painting tools and they all spilled.  They are still on the floor.  I talked to to Carol about all this, and she wisely figured out what is going on with me.

I am in mourning.  I guess I should have figured it out by myself, but I was too numb.  I retired in 2011, I sold the motorcycle.  I knew I was more and more limited physically, but this fall brought it all home.  At 74 years, I am old.

This was reinforced yesterday when I went for my three year endoscopy/colostomy.  I got chewed out by the doctor for not following the rules.  No caffein, no chocolate (!), no booze (I had already quit a year and a half ago), no spicy food, on and on.  I told Carol if I can’t have spicy Mexican food, life isn’t worth living.  What a stupid remark, as she not-so-gently pointed out.

I have limitations, have had them for years.  I just had never gotten to the acceptance phase.  Bouncing down the stairs feet first brought it all home.  In John Mellencamp’s Jack and Diane, he sings “Oh,yeah, life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone”.  That line has had residency in my head for two weeks.

Well, the thrill is not gone.  Some of the thrills, however, are gone.  No mountain climbing.  No motorcycling.  No more solo four wheeling trips where I could stay stuck for a week before anyone came along.  I have to let go of risky stuff.  The odds have changed.  I am an old man.

After mourning comes acceptance.  I am in that process now.  The sages say the task of elders is looking inward.  I am doing Insight Meditation for that reason.  My meditations do take me inward, but much of the time I am thinking about outer stuff.  In fact the best inner work I do is at the keyboard.  A good writing session sets the stage for good meditations.

Not all the outer world things have to go.  I can still get into nature.  The sunrise is still there.  The Japanese Beetle season is about over.  I still have a life.  So, what’s the big deal already?  There is my sense of humor, and it is intact.  Part of me knows it is all right.  If I can still make bad puns and turn phrases upside down I still love life.  Carol would probably be happier if I had a more conventional sense of humor.

I haven’t mentioned the most important thing in my life.  The people.  Starting with Carol, my soul mate and the everlasting love of my life.  All we do, all we are, and those morning cuddles.    Her children, who have become my children as well.  All our friends.  The poignancy of losing friends.  The memories.  Yes I can let go and still live fully.

Change

Where We Started

As Neil DeGrasse Tyson points out, we are made from stardust.  It takes a supernova to generate the energy to create the heavier elements.  That stuff diffuses, then gravity slowly congeals into new bodies.  Now this takes time, many millions up to billions of years.  Even geologic time is somewhat inconsequential compared to galactic time.

That’s a reason why we are so deluded with respect to time.  For children, the weeks leading up to Christmas can seem like forever.  It’s no time at all.  However, sometimes when I sit in meditation, time seems to stand still and I get jumpy.  In truth, our lifetimes are meaningless when viewed from even the nearest galaxy to our Milky Way.

The message in this?  Chill, already.  The therapist I saw for my ADD had me put a sticker saying NBD on the dash of my pickup.  No Big Deal.  Universes come and go in the blink of Kali’s eye, and we are obsessed with He Who Must Not Be Named’s tweets.

What is important is what we do with this tiny minute we are here.  I am attempting to connect with that eternal universe I tend to ignore most of the time.  Going back to the roots.  Well, the roots are made from stardust.

My brain gets oxygen and food these days, so it goes into action, what it evolved to do.  The action is thinking.  Thoughts arise, mull around, and pass to something else.  We are physically safe most of the time, so it isn’t really necessary to be on alert all the time.  The saber-toothed tigers are gone.

So, my task is to stop thinking so much, and just be space and stardust.  It’s where we came from and where we are going, so why not just be with that?  When I am able to let the clutter go,  I am more in harmony with the changing universe, not my nearly ceaseless churning of the noise I absorbed yesterday.  What arises, fleetingly, is equanimity and serenity.

In the long run we are all dead, so what’s the big deal?  Maybe we need catacombs, ossuaries we visit regularly to remind ourselves of the impermanence of it all.  I would like ho hold Nietzsche’s skull in my hands.  So much for the Ubermensch.

Can’t we all just get along?  If I remember something, I wand to remember yesterday’s sunset and look forward to the breeze in my face as I walk out of the coffee shop.  Oops, there I am thinking about the future, not enjoying the nice people in the coffee shop.

 

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Getting Older

Really Old

I am 74.  I retired in 2011 at age 68 when I started noticing I wasn’t as sharp in responding to problems.  I also noticed my co-workers giving me the easier jobs when on a project,I was used to wading right in, sometimes literally.  It was a water plant, after all.

Now, other things have manifested. If it doesn’t hurt, it itches. I have arthritis and allergies.  My balance problems keep me off the third step of the ladder.  I was falling off.  I fell on the stairs, broke two ribs.  I gave up motorcycling, given my desire to stay alive (Just go to motorcycle crashes on YouTube.).

People are dying.  Yes, they have  doing it all my life, but now it’s old friends, classmates, a guy I was Best Man for.  Not people I viewed as Old People, but my contemporaries.  Does that mean I am an Old Person?  Yep.  Old people see their friends dying.  You can also tell if you are old by falling down in a public place.  People laugh if you are young.  You are old if they rush over to help.

Then there is CRS.  I have always had a poor memory, but this is getting ridiculous.  When I hear someone’s name on meeting them I tell them I will forget it.  I head downstairs to get something, do two or three things I see need doing, and go up without I went after.  Also, people my age tend to be terrified when they start forgetting.  Is it Alzheimer’s?  Am I going to be a drooling vegetable?  I try to stick to my rule about not worrying about things I have no control over, but it doesn’t always work.

A good thing: after my ADD diagnosis at age 59 with the therapy and medication I have more focus.  I can even manage to focus on stuff I don’t like to do.  I used to put off paying bills until my anxiety level forces me to sit down.  Now, I can plan the time and actually follow the plan some of the time.  I can write.  I don’t have to go to work.  I just spend my four pensions and watch our investments slowly diminish.

Writing is a good thing for an old dude to do.  I can do it most any time, usually mornings.  I go to a coffee shop where I am something of a regular and do some extroverting along with the writing.  I always wanted to write, but could not maintain the focus to write for myself.  With a deadline, the anxiety level activated my prefrontal cortex enough to allow me to get the words down.  In college I wrote papers for Forestry majors and the like for $10.00 per page (long time ago).

Now I write for myself.  I almost always write nonfiction, like most of my reading.  As you can see from this website, I have a wide range of interests.  That’s  probably a function of an ADD shifting his attention all the time.  I need to know.  They say ADD’s occupy an evolutionary niche because their shifting attention enabled them to spot those brutes from the neighboring tribe or the saber-toothed tiger.  Sentinels.  Of course, we are also smart and charming.  Someone has to keep the place stirred up.

I have written a little fiction, some very short stories and a longer short story when taking a class at the Lighthouse Writers Workshop here in Denver.   Good people there, students and faculty.  Naturally, some English majors, more interesting than engineers, although impoverished.

For me fiction is hard work. You have to create the world of the story and invent the characters.  Good fiction also uses lots of metaphor.  I am not very good in that area, mostly because it takes lots of practice.  I usually write about shifting tectonic plates; not so much need for metaphor there.

I have taken to reading novels aloud to Carol just before bedtime.  She likes mysteries written by women, she calls them novels of manners.  Much of their focus is on character development and scene setting, so they are a good light reading genre.  The reading is fostering an interest in fiction again.  Can I produce a story about geologists?  Maybe a story about 19th Century naturalists and biblical literalists.  Have I mentioned I like history?

I will have to work on producing pieces longer than 550 words, however. I can do the short essays in one coffee shop session.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Winter Blues

Winter

As I sit here in the coffee shop it is a gray January day with a light rain falling, promising to turn to snow.  This is an accurate metaphor for my mood of late.  I’m prone to depression, get treatment for it, but this is probably Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD).  I haven’t been able to do much writing, and what I have written I haven’t posted.  This is unusual. My goal is to put something up every week and I haven’t come close.   

I used to have two of those lights which are supposed to help, but I gave one away and the other is over the bathtub I haven’t been able to use lately.  Why no baths?  Leaks.  The upstairs bathroom sink cold water faucet started leaking as well. 

For me, things happening around me are often related to the state of my psyche.  Water is also a symbol of the unconscious mind, and leaks are about something important trying to come to consciousness.  I am engaged in a struggle to keep things buried.  Thus, leaks I am slow in fixing, and gloom leading to inaction.  It’s easy to guess how my meditation practice is going.  

My meditations are supposed to have the goal of being totally in the moment-no thinking about the pas, the future, or Donald Trump.  I can stay with just observing my breath for maybe five seconds.  I usually am able to stay with my breath or a prayer for several minutes before drifting off to be with Dorothy and Toto.  I come back to the breath, stay there a while and drift off again.  Currently, I obsess.   

I think the real issue for me is aging.  I am 74 years old. Lifting a fifty pound sack of ice melt salt is hard.  I used to throw fifty pound sacks around.  I cannot go above the second step on the ladder for fear of falling off.  I sometimes cheat and go to the third step, no higher.  My balance is not very good.  I have stayed at the same weight for some time but the muscles are shrinking and the belly is growing.   

I forget stuff.  I have always been somewhat forgetful, an ADD-ADHD symptom, but it’s worse lately.  I am going to have to go back to writing reminders down, a habit I have slipped away from.  I also head downstairs to do something, do two or three other things and head upstairs with the task not done. At least I get some exercise going up and down the stairs all day.

I know this too will pass, but I am tired of waiting

 

 

It’s Not Easy Being Green

Kermit

Kermit

“It’s not easy being green”.  I like to use that line with people who dye their hair green.  They don’t seem to mind, as they are extroverted enough to do such a thing and be seen in public.  I particularly like the phrase because I have a green pickup and my totem animal is the frog.  I even have a couple of stuffed frogs people have given me.  I have been kissed, but, alas, never turned into a prince.  I do tend to hop and croak, but draw the line at eating flies. 

I have found that at my age, I can initiate conversations with strangers I wouldn’t have dared to do when I was younger.  People just figure I am a silly old man.  Right on.  I am bald and usually wear a hat.  I walk up to African-American people, men and women, with dreadlocks and tell them I have wanted

Whoopi With Dreadlocks

Whoopi With Dreadlocks

dreadlocks for years.  Then I take my hat off.  I always get a laugh and a couple of comments.  It’s my way of connecting with black people.  It is also a way of showing respect for how they look in a humorous way.  I have had a lot of fun with it.  I also have a bit of a Rastafarian streak. 

Another joke I use with strangers is when I see someone with a college shirt on.  With the Denver University people I ask them why Colorado College grads keep a copy of their diploma on the dash of their car.  It’s so they can park in the handicapped slot.  Here in Colorado, it’s often CU and Nebraska.  By the way, that N on their helmets stands for nowledge.  

I used the joke with Duke-North Carolina, Auburn-Alabama, Notre Dame-Penn State, Denver Metro-CU Denver, USC-UCLA, and sadly after Saturday’s game, Washington-Oregon.  The combinations are endless.  I have had the most fun with Texas Tech-Texas A&M.  I told the joke to a couple, he with a Texas Tech T-shirt.  She screamed, “I’m an Aggie!”.  He couldn’t stop laughing.  I used Purdue with a guy wearing an Indiana shirt.  “My dad’s a Purdue grad and an engineer”.  He promised to use it on his dad. 

Then there are the Gingers.  I tell them they should rule the world.  Gingers are a downtrodden minority no one is really aware of.  The pure redheads are usually able to effectively protect themselves, given their temperament.  Of course many of them are Irish, which opens up a whole new area. 

Lincoln Tunnel

Lincoln Tunnel

I also have my New York joke, useful with anyone from a four-state region around the city.  “Do you know why the suicide rate is so high in Manhattan?”  “The light at the end of the tunnel is Jersey.”  Even Jersey natives laugh at that one.  Now, New Jersey truly is The Garden State, except for those ugly industrial flats across the river from Manhattan.  When in the Army, I was stationed at Fort Monmouth on the Jersey shore.  This child of the Colorado Plateau was overwhelmed by the lushness of that area.  I had never seen so much green. 

So, now you know how I make a fool of myself in public.  Try it, it’s much better than expressing panic about the election.

 

 

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