Thursday, November 22, 2012

I've been thinking, and that can be dangerous...



...because my mind tends to wander.

I had a shrink appointment over the weekend and that meant driving back to Ohio, 16 hours round trip in a car. It's cheaper than flying and it would give me a chance to run some Columbus errands.  I had a whole list of them but somehow that was the one thing that I forgot when I left the house.  So when I hit the city that I had called home (with great annoyance) I was a bit like a butterfly wafting on the winds.

I was staying with two of our best friends - Mike and Mo, and I did remember to take them the case of Natty Boh and a couple bags of UTZ chips, but I forgot their Christmas present which I left on the Dining Room table with my list of things to do, so I guess it was two things that I forgot to take with me. Thank God I remembered by meds.

So Mike and Mo asked what I wanted to do for dinner and I opted for something that we don't have on the east coast - Der Dutchman.   Der Duchman (aka Der Starchfest) is a chain of vaguely Amish restaurants that serve home cooking.  You can either order off the menu, or you can go through the Buffet and engorge yourself on all manner of things that would appall David Zinczenko into a fit: homemade chicken and noodles, mashed potatos, gravy, sweet potatoes, chicken, beef, corn, cornbread...  You get the idea.  In fact we all ate so much (and the three Sidecars before dinner didn't help) that when we got back to Mike and Mo's, Mike ended up going into a starch coma and headed to bed at 7PM.

Is any of this making any sense?

My point is, and I do have one, is that the whole way out to Ohio gives you a lot of time to think about stuff. And I got to thinking about me because today, I am 50, and its an age that I never considered making.  And let's be realistic, I have, maybe, twenty really good years left the God Lord willing and the creek don't rise.  When you tell people that you are trying to plan for the end of your life they think you are going to do something to hurt yourself.

But when I hit the door at the shrink's office (and this man is very good at what he does) and I told him that I wanted to better plan out the next twenty years or so that the end of my life isn't filled with regret when I am old and feeble in human terms.  That he said, was a sign of maturity, and he said it was a sign of a man who has passed through a midlife crisis, which I thought was interesting, because I am still panicking over all the wasted time in my life and wonder if the mind I lost so many years ago was more lost than anyone thought.

 Back to my point, on the way back to Baltimore, it hit me.  I had forgotten to ask Joe if he thought I was ADD.  Damn.  AND I found my list, so I still am functioning within the maxim of always forgetting ONE thing before a trip. That made me feel better.

Now then, did I leave anything out?

11 comments:

  1. Happy day, you, and many happy returns. I'm following you into our seventh decade all too soon; also have those "time in its flight" moments these days. Is it really fair that we'll never be 38 again?

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  2. i never thought i'd live to see my 50th birthday.
    i never thought i'd live to see your 50th birthday.

    mustn't believe everything i think.

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  3. The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down.
    - T S Eliot

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  4. The man who views the world at fifty the same as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.
    - Muhammad Ali

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  5. ANd yes, Hippy Birdday, Cookie. Sorry for the informatity. I'll just toast you with another drink!

    Celebrate...forget the number of your birthday and expand your mind, your experiences. Grow your life, forget your age...soon enough it will let itself be felt anyway and why waste your time worrying about each birthday. If birthdays are "trop triste" for you, celebrate your name day. Don't have a name day? Pick one and celebrate it. Afterall, the idea is to celebrate YOU and your being. Birthdays were not supposed to celebrate your age, they were meant to celebrate your birth. Who cares how long ago it was...mine was 56 years ago and I'm not hating that number because I'm not about a number, I'm about me.

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  6. Three side cars before dinner is a sure sign of fully lived life!

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    Replies
    1. Thank you. It doesn't happen often, but when it does, they are sweet, one after another...

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