I'M DYING HERE------

 

I’M DYING HERE------

I’m living in the middle of a hay field and why am I surprised to have hay fever? In Houston, I had ragweed…in Austin, it was cedar. It seems as if the entire globe has some thing or another that sets me off. If I was living in the Sahara Desert, I imagine I would sneeze, snort, cough every ten minutes due to the abundance of sand.

Last Sunday we went to a doc-in-the-box and got three shots of something or another. I’m pretty sure I would be disqualified for any Olympics games at this point, but I do feel better. The positive thing that has happened during all of this is that I have started on our Christmas decorations. The new tissue boxes are all done up in festive colors.

Retiring is a mindset that you have to get adjusted with. I know lots of people who have told me, ‘when I retire, I’m playing golf and fishing every day’. I don’t know of anyone who ever lived up to that statement. Perhaps they are out there, but I’ve never seen or heard of them. Even now, I like to stay busy, and I enjoy myself without having goals or deadlines to meet. It’s great to work at your own pace and actually have less stress than the workplace. Try it for yourself.

I started working at fourteen, my first job was cutting up melons at a watermelon stand. I got fired after the first week since I was cutting the slices too large to suit the manager. My second job was a caddy at a country club in Baytown, Texas. I think this had a lot to do with my attitude towards golf for the rest of my life.

I hated it.

Number one, I never saw a happy golfer. They always seemed mad about something or another. Secondly, I knew nothing about the game and here is some adult asking me what club to use for this shot as if I knew. Then yell at me for picking the wrong iron or wood. How was I supposed to know you shouldn’t use a driver to putt?

I don’t have time to describe all of the various business opportunities I was involved in after I got out of the army and the police department. I’ll get around to those at some later date. The rest of my pre-adult jobs were mostly paper routes, grocery stores and service stations. Paper routes were ok, but when it came time to collect each month, you came to dislike those who avoided you for payment. When you rang the doorbell and the curtains moved, you knew they weren’t going to fork over that $3.50 again that month. Bagging groceries in paper sacks was not bad. Most of the customers were nice and tipped well. It was only those who wanted to stand over you and berate you on their method of double bagging and how canned goods were always placed and the bottom and the bread on top. As if I didn’t know that already.

All of these jobs gave me lots of positive experiences in learning how to deal with people and handle their individual characteristics. It helped me when I became an adult.

Do kids today even have after school jobs and if they do, do they learn anything from them?  

I wonder….will have to check into this. Keep reading.

See you next week----Peary Perry

GIVE IT UP....

 

GIVE IT UP…..

So, go back in your mind when you were young and think about the stuff you moved from one apartment to another. It probably could all fit inside your car or truck. Not much at all. We were kind of like nomads carrying our stuff from one place to another, weren’t we?

Now come back to present day and open your eyes, what do you see?

Stuff. Junk…crap you will never in your lifetime ever use. You bought that handy corn on the cob shucker, didn’t you? Used it once and threw it into the ‘things I’ll never use again drawer’. That nice Ronco slicer/dicer that takes longer to set up than it does to cut up some carrots and celery, into the drawer. Along with those knives you bought on sale that went dull after using them twice. But in your mind, you think you will get around to sharpening them someday.

Keep dreaming because it will never happen.

Recipe books? Who needs them anymore? Remember all those Junior League books you bought with all those pretty pictures that you never used?  Your version of a coconut cake never even came close to the one on page 54. Your forks and napkins were nice but that’s about as close as you came, wasn’t it?

The Tupperware starter and master set of 36 containers that you have stored in the overhead cabinet over the stove. A cabinet you cannot reach without a ladder from the garage. Just sitting there, year after year doing nothing or anyone any good whatsoever.

When we downsized for our move to the country a year ago, we were faced with a serious dilemma. Move from a 2500 square foot house with a huge garage and lots of storage to a 1500 square foot house with a 250 square foot storeroom. It’s plenty big enough for us.

Most of the stuff we had to get rid of were things we didn’t really need. Or missed once it was gone. I can’t think of one thing I wish that I had kept.

Being married for over 54 years brings 108 birthdays, 54 anniversaries, 54 Mothers and Father’s Day gifts and multiple vacation and other mementos. School annuals? Who needs them? I can hardly read what anyone wrote much less make sense of their comments. “I’ll never forget THAT night” signed Ace. Who was Ace and what night is he referring to?

Your kids are grown and married, it’s time for them to come and get their letter jackets and school crossing certificates. Those finger painting pictures they made in first grade have got to go as well. Your mother’s favorite china dishes she never used because she was saving them?

Why and for whom was she saving them? Why haven’t you used them? Your kids don’t want them, or they would have gotten them by now.

Toss em’. Give them away to charity. Let someone else try to figure out what to do with it. In 10 or 15 years, maybe longer they will be asking themselves the same questions?

“What do we need this for?”

See you next week…Peary Perry

I THOUGHT I COULD....

 

I THOUGHT I COULD-------

I really thought I could be a substitute teacher at our local high school. I volunteered of my own free will. No pressure or threats from anyone but myself.

Boy was I wrong. I grade myself as a ‘F’ for the day. What was I thinking?

This was in no way shape or form ‘generational gap’. This gap was the Grand Canyon times two.

I was trying to get an idea of the relative ages of their parents, grandparents, and great grandparents, if they had any.

Their grandparents were in their sixties. I think I made my first mistake by stating that I was graduating from high school when their grandparents were being born. This was where it started to go south on me. I don’t think I have ever seen so many high school students with complete looks of shock on their faces at one time.

At this time, they began to look at me as if I were an alien from some distant planet. I am certain they are trying to figure out just how this ancient artifact of a human is still standing, much less trying to converse with us. Perhaps they were afraid I might just die in front of them, and they were asking themselves if they remembered their CPR class.

One of the students asked if I was born before the internet? I popped off and said, ‘I was born before television’. Right then and there I knew I had lost them.

Instead of seeing someone standing in front of them as an ex-military, ex-cop macho type of individual, I think they put me in the category of Tim Conway in the ‘little old fireman’ skits he used to do. I think they were surprised I wasn’t drooling.

Now I am wise enough to know not to try and insert their slang phrases of the day such as 6-7 or others currently popular expressions. But you would think they would give me credit for (1) being alive and breathing and (2) able to converse in complete sentences and answer any questions.

I wasn’t asked any questions other than ‘can I go get a drink of water?’ or ‘can I go to the bathroom?’. Lots of these all day long.

I will say this, they were all clean and as polite as they can be at this age. I just don’t think they have ever had to answer questions or formulate any opinions in front of someone as elderly as me.

The other thing that I noticed is the softness of their voices. This is the first time I have had to use my new hearing aids in a room with twenty-five other highly active people. I turned them up as high as they would go, but that only made matters worse. I heard every pencil drop, chair move and other noises while trying to comprehend what some youngster was trying to say about two feet away. I am getting them retested next month.

Then I will try again.

See you next week…Peary Perry