"I Hope I Die Before I Get Old" - Part One

    

Image by Bianca Van Dijk from Pixabay

This weekly column consists of letters written to my perspicacious progeny — the Stickies — to advise 'em now and haunt them after I'm deleted.

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC-65: Sexy Seasoned Citizens   

About 

Glossary 

Featuring {Dana}: Persistent auditory hallucination and charming literary device 

"An actuary is someone who can put a number on something that's not certain." -Karthick Balaji 

Dear Stickies (and gentlereaders),  

I think I've previously mentioned that I'm now old, but being old, I can't remember in what column. 

I can do a search and find out exactly where and when, but if a bunch of hits are returned (which is, I confess, what just happened) I don't have the patience to pursue the matter further. A lot of old men are like that. 

Besides, being old, I've no idea how much time I've got left and I don't want to drop dead while looking for an old column just so I can link to it. Links are fine for connecting to something a given writer thinks may actually be helpful to a given reader. 

However, a lot of links are provided under the oft-mistaken notion that readers are champing at the bit to read more of a particular writer's output. If they actually are, it's easy enough to find without bothering people who aren't.

{Wait-wait-wait. Is it champing or chomping at the bit?}

Here's a helpful link. Apparently either will do, but as best I can tell gramandos seem to favor champing.  

I was 39 for 38 years and although it could've been better, that was long enough for me to repeatedly learn that it could've been worse, much worse. Intuitively speaking, I've known for several years that at some point after I turned 70 I would officially be old. 

{Officially?}

Officially in my universe, not necessarily by any official definition as promulgated by The Fedrl Gummit or even the Society of Actuaries. 

I was right, I'll be 71 in a few months, and I'm now old. 

{Wait a second, there's a club for actuaries?} 

Absabalutely, in fact, there's more than one but the SOA is "...the largest professional society for actuaries in the world." I discovered this in passing while researching how much longer I can reasonably hope to keep on dancing while avoiding doing the mortal coil shuffle.  

 {So, how much time do you have left?}

According to the Northwestern Mutual Lifespan Calculator, I'll wake up dead when I'm 82. As it turns out, there are multiple lifespan calculators you can access via the Worldwide Web of Conflicting Knowledge.

I went with Northwestern Mutual's conclusion because their very name sounds like they know what they're doing, not to mention the neat little box in the upper right-hand corner of the screen with a projected age estimate that goes up (and down) as you answer a series of questions. 

Also, I'd much prefer to not live past the age of about 80, so 82 sounds about right. 

While investigating how much time I have left I discovered there's an algorithm loose in the world called life2vec developed by Danish researchers that's allegedly 11% more accurate at predicting when you'll buy the farm than more traditional methods. 

It's still in development but you'll be excited to know that the people involved claim it."...was able to make predictions about certain aspects of people’s lives, including how they might think, feel and behave..." 

Cool, right? I can't wait. 

{You know not everyone finds sarcasm to be an attractive personality trait. Hey...given that you hope to die before you get old, have concluded that you are old, but expect (hope?) to see 80, what are...?}

Well, Dana, there's good old, and then there's bad old. 

{Oh, okay, now I get it.} 

Recently coming across that famous line (that I've turned into a title) from that famous song was what motivated me to go a-googlin' to find out how much time I might have left in the first place, and to discover what Pete Townshend was thinking when he wrote the song, My Generation. 

For those of you too young, or too old...

Bad old, as I suspected and confirmed, is what the song is about

According to Wikipedia Mr. Townshend said in an interview in 1989 that when he wrote the song, old, to him, meant very rich. Personally, I wouldn't mind being obscenely rich, but I think I know where he was coming from. 

I don't ever want to be so old that maintaining my personal financial and ideological status quo is the primary reason I keep getting out of bed in the morning — the pursuit of purpose and meaning, and fun, be damned. 

I know/have known/know of a lot of people who are younger than me but who are actually much older than I am. I, and Pete Townshend, would rather be dead than be that sort of old. 

{So what's good old?}

A concept that requires its own column, which is why there will be a part two. Stay tuned. 

{I don't think they say stay tuned anymore, Pops.}

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

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My Sister of Charity

This nun was fun

Sr. Mary Clifford Soisson, SC

This weekly column consists of letters written to my perspicacious progeny — the Stickies — to advise 'em now and haunt them after I'm deleted.

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC-65: Sexy Seasoned Citizens   

About 

Glossary 

Featuring {Dana}: Persistent auditory hallucination and charming literary device 

"For a Catholic kid in parochial school, the only way to survive the beatings-by classmates, not the nuns-was to be the funny guy." -George A. Romero

Dear Stickies (and gentlereaders),  

Au Revoir France, I'm outta here. It's time to go home.   

Six of my first eight teachers were members of a Roman Catholic religious community that has roots extending back to 1809, the Sisters of Charity.

Sister Mary McGillicuddy changed my life, Miss Crabtree, not so much.

{Um, don't you mean Ms. Crabtree?}

No, Dana, I do not. I'm so old that Ms. Magazine wasn't born till the year after I graduated high school which, according to Wikipedia, is when that particular honorific caught on.

Now that name tags read, "Hello, my name is _______ and my personal pronouns are _______  " Ms. sounds/seems almost quaint.

{Oh, that's right! We're supposed to use Mx. now... I think.}

Sister Mary and Miss Crabtree are composite creations. S'ter Mary McGillicuddy represents the six nuns mentioned above. Miss Crabtree stands in for the two lay teachers I had in Catholic grade school. To a lesser extent, she represents the handful of female teachers I had in public high school. 

The word handful is a hint at how ancient I am and an indicator of my impending deletion.

{Chill, dude, 71 is hardly ancient.}

Thanks, Dana, but the speed at which so many radical changes have occurred (and continue) in my lifetime makes it seem like it.

The majority of my teachers in my public high school(s) were male but nowadays, nationwide, it's roughly 60% women, and 40% men. The principal and vice-principal of the two high schools I attended were both also members of the toxic sex, particularly the vice-principals (readers of a certain age smile/cringe knowingly).

However, this column is about a real Sister Mary, Sister Mary Clifford (Soisson is news to me) who was my teacher in seventh grade and whom I recently discovered died in 2010 at the age of 89.

She was my first and only "cool" nun. She was the first and only nun I liked. She was one of only two nuns I wasn't afraid of. She taught me, at the age of 12 — without meaning to — that nuns were just H. sapiens in peculiar clothes, not members of a separate, parallel species.

Sisters of Charity, New York -1965

Eileen Soisson  ("She was a faithful Steelers fan and had a great sense of humor.") was born on the 17th of July, 1920 in the Borough of Bellevue which borders and is butt up against, by gum by golly (sorry...) Pittsburgh. Like me, she attended Catholic grade school (hers still exists) and a public high school. She received a scholarship to Seton Hill (not Hall) College which was founded by the Sisters of Charity and she took her vows in January of 1942.

She was not only my seventh-grade teacher but also the school's principal. St. John the Evangelist was located on the Sou'Sidah Pittsburgh, across the street from the 12th Street playground.

For some reason, I was one of her pets. To this day I don't know why.


Being a pet of the principal meant that at least once a week I got out of class to accompany her when she borrowed one of the parish priest's cars to take care of some sort of business, usually grocery shopping for the convent that was right next to the school.

It was never just me — there was always at least one of the other boys, sometimes two depending on our mission — but it almost always included me. In retrospect, I know why it was always more than one boy but at the time neither I nor any of my classmates (that I'm aware of) noticed or cared.

Different era...

But, why me?

There was this girl, Eileen(?) Somebody, who from year to year was always a teacher's pet, but that made sense. She had a beautiful voice and the nuns were always finding excuses to get her to sing.

I didn't give it much thought at the time, just enjoyed it, rolled with it, took it for granted. Somehow, even the other boys in my class didn't razz me about it and normally this was a group that called each other out for everything


I have no idea what she saw in me, but I do know why I liked her so much. She was genuinely nice. She kept at least one foot in the real world at all times. She wore her vocation like a corsage, not a crown of thorns.

She told us she loved to drive and when we were out and about with her she behaved more like a kindly aunt than a schoolteaching nun. She'd answer our questions about parish politics, other nuns, her life, etc., questions we'd never think of asking in class (it just wasn't done) as honestly as she could.

But always diplomatically, always taking the high road, never stooping to gossip or backstab. Keeping the faith, as it were. Perhaps this was why I caught no crap from my peers — everyone liked her. She ran a tight ship but possessed not a trace of Crazy Nun Syndrome (CNS.

Please note: If you've ever been exposed to CNS, which was a common malady at the time, no explanation is required. If you haven't, no explanation I can provide will come close to describing it properly. 

Before Sister Mary Clifford, I had six teachers.

Four other Sisters of Charity, all afflicted with CNS; one lay teacher who was about 150 years old and another lay teacher, for second grade, who taught us how to curse (rather genteelly by today's standards) by conscientiously explaining which words we were not permitted to use under any circumstances.

Eighth grade: different school, radically different community (the 'burbs), unremarkable Ursuline nun. But I wasn't afraid of her thanks to Sister Mary Clifford's unintentional life lessons. I'm ashamed to admit I don't remember her name as she did an excellent job preparing us for Catholic high school knowing that intellectually speaking, things were about to get a lot more intense.

I do remember that she had tears in her eyes when she discovered I wouldn't be attending a Catholic high school. Callowyute that I was at the time, this baffled me. I think I get it now. Fortunately/unfortunately (it's complicated) my parents couldn't afford the increased tuition and transportation costs, so I was off to a public high school.

For the record, the nun who ran that school scared the hell outta me, as she would any right-thinking person. Crazy Nun Syndrome on steroids. But thanks to Sister Mary Clifford, as my faith slipped away, I knew that nuns were just people, sometimes very special people. Look at her eyes.

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

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I Accidentally Pulled the Trigger

Image by Christian Dorn from Pixabay

This weekly column consists of letters written to my perspicacious progeny — the Stickies — to advise 'em now and haunt them after I'm deleted.

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC-65: Sexy Seasoned Citizens   

About 

Glossary 

Featuring {Dana}: Persistent auditory hallucination and charming literary device 

"I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man's reasoning powers are not above the monkey's" -Mark Twain

Dear Stickies (and gentlereaders),  

I'm still in France, but not for long. I'll be returning to the U.S. with my new friend and his family the week after next. He's got his people trying to contact Bruce "I've never actually been a blue-collar anything" Springsteen's people and arrange a meet up down the shore.

This column was originally published in 2018, but once again I've done a bit a lot of rewriting and updating. Wouldn't it be cool if you could rewrite your life? Gotta run, Collette and I are going to our favorite French McDonalds for a farewell feast of snail nuggets and pommes frites. 

She's going to stay with her maman for a while as my impending departure has hit us both harder than we ever expected it would. C'est la vie. 

When I was but a wee lad...in fact, till I was at least in my late twenties, it was possible to engage in heated political discussions, as much for the fun of it as anything else, without feeling that civil war was inevitable.

Not that it was possible to do so with everyone. There's a reason people say don't discuss politics or religion at the dinner table.

I encountered this advice later than many I suspect. When I was a kid, one of seven siblings, everything was freely discussed at the dinner table except for sex, as my fellow Boomers hadn't invented it yet. 

But this was so long ago that supper was at five p.m., attendance was mandatory, and Uncle Walter told us everything that we needed to know about national/international news at six. 

A few years later, when I was old enough to know everything, late-night debates with a bunch of people I didn't go to college with were a thing. Lines were drawn and (mostly) observed and it was the intellectual equivalent of a (mostly) friendly sports rivalry. No need to take it particularly seriously (mostly).     

Fast forward to the Eighties: The most intense year or so of my life (so far) culminated in the spring of 1985. I was managing a fleet of someone's ice cream trucks in Austin, Texas (hello Tom and Miss Kitty, wherever you are) when I hired the woman, now deceased, who would in short order become my wife, to drive one of the trucks.  

She and her nine-year-old daughter, the mother of two of my four and a half grandkids -- it's very complicated, I've been married only once and have never reproduced -- with whom I currently share my house...

{How come she says you share her house?} 

Anyway, they lured me to Canada's deep South (Northern Ohio) to "meet the family" and I've been stuck here ever since.  

As to my sojourn in Texas, there was much in the way of partying and little in the way of intellectual debate, but once married the endless party ended. My bride had come pre-equipped with a kid and marriage, partying, and kids don't mix very well in my semi-humble opinion.

Late-night passionate debates never made a comeback in my life. I married a sick chick, physically sick, but a veritable force of nature. Betwixt helping to keep her alive, the three of us fed, and my gift for working my ass off while avoiding the burdens of financial success I usually went to bed early.

{OK, Roy, what's all this got to do with Trigger?}

I clicked my heels three times and I was a widower and a grandfather. One evening I found myself having dinner with a friend and a couple in their mid-twenties early on in the new millennium.

This was my first encounter with triggering someone and triggering at least its current version, wasn't even a thing yet. I thought I was a man ahead of my time but it turns out that the phenomenon has been recognized as far back as WW1. 

Interestingly, dictionary.com includes the word triggered in its slang dictionary, which is where I learned about the fact it's been around for over a century. 

Even more interestingly, Wikipedia has a relevant entry and if you scroll to the end you'll discover that  "Although the subject has generated political controversy, research suggests that trigger warnings are neither harmful nor especially helpful." 

Anyways... After dinner, over coffee and pie, a debate broke out over I remember not what. Although there's a slight chance that I may not be entirely correct, I have a vivid memory of intellectually dominating. 

It was me v. my friend and the male half of the young couple. I confess I neglected to monitor the emotional weather manifesting on the face of his lovely wife. 

Hooge mistake.


At some point, while I was not paying attention — I, a man who had been successfully married for 21 years and who had learned many lessons the hard way — there was a metaphorical explosion. My dining companions and I were riddled with psychic shrapnel.

"She leaped to her feet and stormed out of the restaurant in a huff." 

That's not a quote from a romance novel, that's exactly what happened. Really.

Although he was young and, relatively speaking, they had not been married very long, he knew the rules. 

"He leaped to his feet and followed her out to the parking lot."

"I think you just pissed her off," said my remaining companion, reacting no doubt to the baffled look on my face.

"Did we just get stuck with the check?" I replied.


My young friends returned to the table as my older friend and I were in the process of splitting the check, calculating the tip, and discussing which one of us was going to act as a collection agent to recover the cost of their food.

She, said nothing. Although the storm had apparently passed, ominous dark clouds lingered.

{I thought there had been an explosion?} 

He, politely and diplomatically...well, long story short, it was explained to me that she passionately disagreed with me. 

Although she lacked the social and or rhetorical skills — and most importantly in my semi-humble opinion a command of the relevant facts to contest whatever it was I had been on about — she knew she was right, and she knew I was a bully, case closed.

That's not exactly how he put it but that's exactly what he said.

Although I confess my heart wasn't in it, I apologized for being a boor and fled the scene of the crime ASAP. 

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

Scroll down to share my work or to access previous columns.   

Comments? I post links to my columns (and other stuff) on Facebook so that you can love me, hate me, or call to have me canceled or be publicly flogged.