More from the Wayback Machine:
Oh, and by the way, that's a reference to Peabody's Improbably History, with Peabody the dog and his pet boy, Sherman, not the Internet archive thingy. The Internet archive thingy was named by a bunch of geeky cartoon-watching Baby Boomers who spent their formative years trying to produce an actual Wayback Machine.
Sent: Wednesday, December 18, 2002 5:36 AM
Subject: I Grow Old and Other Stuff
Dear Yahoos,
There are times that I get bits and pieces of stuff stuck in my brain that won't go away. They swirl around and around, never congealing yet never fading. Sometimes I've just gotta poop 'em out to get rid of them so I can start a new cerebral belly button lint collection. Tonight I am fully dilated. My brain is full. I gotta poop a little.
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Yesterday two newly hired Patient Care Techs appeared in my department. Since my boss went Christmas shopping, I had to give them the "Welcome to the Department" speech and tour and fill out all the initial paperwork. They sat primly on the other side of my desk with their 19-year-old freshly scrubbed little faces and puppy dog eyes, answering my hundred questions with "Yes ma'am" and "No ma'am."
Somewhere around the third "Yes ma'am" it hit me that I was old enough to be their mother. I looked up at them and, looking in their eyes, realized that to them I must seem like an antique. In that instant I could almost hear my wrinkles forming. My brain keeps telling me I'm just 22.
This morning I fixed my hair as I got ready for work. I admired it in the mirror. It was looking pretty nice...no frizzies, curling under nicely, very shiny and healthy. Then I put on my glasses. There on my right temple was the biggest gray skunk stripe you ever saw. (sigh) I gotta get me some Miss Clairol.
I was reminded of a verse an old college professor quoted all the time:
I grow old...I grow old...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
(from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Eliot)
Doc and I became friends about five years after I graduated. He had a scandalous reputation both at the university and in the community mainly because he bucked the administration and bedded most of their daughters. He was an independent thinker and had an off-the-wall opinion about everything. I loved that. He was a character.
After his third divorce he decided to adopt the bohemian lifestyle and set up housekeeping in a ratty old trailer on the banks of the river. His door was always open and something from his garden was always cooking on the stove. Any time day or night there would be an odd mixture of folks hanging around. They would range from his students to other professors, to the mayor or the chief of police. You never knew who you would encounter at Doc's. He would hold court from his piano bench, cigarette in his wildly waving hand, imparting the wisdom of the ages on his gathered audience in a beat poet, coffeehouse style. All that was missing was the beret.
In the summer we would wade out into the middle of the river and set up a card table and lawn chairs. We would play spades sitting in the waist-high water. People floating down the river on tubes and rafts would stop and chat for awhile then float away. After we were thoroughly waterlogged, we would go back up the hill and eat whatever was cooking on the stove. He cooked green beans all day until they wilted. Hubby always wants me to cook wilted green beans that way now.
For reasons I'll never fathom, he hooked up with one of the faculty's daughters and married her. She got him to clean up the ratty trailer and take a shower a little more often. They were an odd couple. They built a beautiful house on a bluff overlooking the lake. Just a few years after it was completed Doc died from cancer. I'll miss him.
Current day, current hour...my jeans are rolled up just past my ankles. Dammit!!!
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