Say you’re one of the good ones

You reach a certain age, you just want all the shit to stop.

Let’s say you’re a respectable Boomer. Those I call the good ones. The ones kept their noses clean and followed the rules of life. You’re the kind that embraced Sanity quite a while back. You may’ve been a wild youth. By the time you reached your mid-thirties say, you cleaned up your act. Found a steady job. Established a career path. Stayed on the wagon…pretty much. Avoided prison. Then, by your mid forties, you came up with a retirement plan. You stuck to the plan. Now you’re on a glide. You got a house pretty much paid off. You got retirement dough pouring in each month like magic. You got a nice little investment portfolio with tax shelters. You can play golf or go sailing or do whatever it is you do while scratching your ass. You look in the mirror at seventy and you say to yourself, this is as good as it gets. Okay fine. I’m tight with that. Now’s the time to enjoy what time I got left.

But now, at Seventy, Change is looking you in the eye.

How odd!

Change has taken on a character.

Change speaks to you, almost as if you met long ago and now after all these years you’re together again. Only now this Figure intends to build a closer relationship.

Eh….you don’t need this friendship. You remember how well you liked this person back then. How charming he was. How She took you places you never would’ve gone…how He opened your eyes to fresh experiences. Yet even while you were enjoying the ride, you viewed this person with wariness…and often with alarm.

At this point in your life you don’t really need any wild rides…especially with a figure so volatile and ominous. You don’t need disruption.

You need peace.

Okay, you say, Okay…you know things are going to change. Change is inevitable. That’s life. Everything changes all the time. You’re getting older and you’re getting older faster. You tell yourself, just relax and go with the flow of life. Don’t sweat the small shit. Okay? Just take it easy.

But then, people you care about start to get ill. They die. Then you get ill. Or you fall and break a bone or worse a bone wears out and a Quack is offering a replacement. You said to yourself, I’m never going to do that. Spend good money on that. Look at Gwen with her new shoulder and new knees and now she’s doing a new hip. She’s a fucking mess. I’m not doing that. I’m taking care of myself. But your shoulder don’t hold up your arm without pain. You’re looking at these brochures of shiny titanium ball joints. With a procedure that’ll restore your golf game. Okay, then. Let’s do this thing and I can get back to my life…

These disruptions will happen now with gathering frequency.

Nothing much you can do about it. So you take care to watch where you’re going. Pick your friends more carefully. Show more kindness to those still in your orbit.

Find ways to avoid this wild character wants so desperately to be your best friend.

Then there’s the Sad Ones

I meant to label these people The Bad Ones. The non-conformists. The ones that appear Lazy. Shiftless. No-account. The Petty Criminals. Artists. Tax Dodgers. Addicts. Drunks. Fringe Dwellers. Professional Bums. Those of us who just refused to do the right thing most of our lives. Refused or didn’t have the good sense to follow the smart path…

The thing is, you’re free, often encouraged, to be bad when you’re young. You can be bad throughout your middle age. It’s called rugged individualism. Or even Entrepreneurialism. That’s provided you win. We love the high achievers. They don’t always follow the rules. In fact, they break the rules in order to win. But how many winners are there? The rest of us never make it. We were bad once, now we’re just old and beat up. And by the time you make it to Seventy you’re not much of a threat. By Old Age, most of us are no longer Kicking Ass and Taking Names. The best of us are just chuckling Old Farts. We’re done being bad.

We are the admitted Failures. The Broke-Down Dreamers…

The Sad Ones.

The Sad Ones don’t especially want the shit to stop. They’re used to the pile-ups jamming the road. They’ve resigned themselves to stormy weather. A sense of calm often accompanies the routine of hard times. They know the shit will not stop.

What they’re hoping for is the worm to turn.

What They’re banking on is a big change.

Like maybe somehow in the not too distant future their life situation will reverse.

They made bad choices in life. Or they made too many changes when change was fun, like a drug. They didn’t think they’d ever get old.

(Could be you were one of those true crazies that charmed and alarmed the Good Ones, way back when. Probably you weren’t, though. Those crazies are dead. They died young or they died in their forties. Like Bobby Lee, my Old Man. Dead at 44. Or like Wild NIck. Dead at 40. I could name a half dozen others that never made fifty….)

No, you’re not one of those. You straggled your way into Old Age. You did it without taking any precautions against Want. You didn’t think you’d get old. Even when you were getting old you didn’t think you’d get old.

What the hell were you thinking?

Now you’re stuck living like a refugee. You got a token amount of social security coming in…just enough to piss on yourself and imagine you’re dry. You’re sleeping in your car. You’re living on a leaky boat with 9 months of rent past due and a harbor master standing around like the grim reaper. Or, you’re short a floating home. Short a vehicle you might sleep in. You’re living at the mercy of a companion you hate. You can’t leave because you have nowhere else to go but the street. Or you’re even worse off. You’re health has failed. Now you find yourself at the mercy of the Government, tucked away in a single room with a bedpan and a roommate that screams himself awake at three a.m..

What I’m doing here is describing people who happen to be friends of mine.

I’m one of them.

We’re all hoping for the worm to turn…

The Deadbeat Club

There’s a saying I like that goes something like this:

“Wish in one hand…”

We gotta face the facts, us losers.

The Worm Aint Gonna Turn.

Now it may turn…but the odds are close to lottery odds.

We need to band together. Form a kind of Deadbeat Club.

I’m speaking after the fact.

It’s already happening. All over the country Losers are clubbing up.

You don’t believe me? Check this out.

This guy Bob Wells.

He’s the guru of van life. He’s got a wealth of youtube videos teaches us how to live comfortably in a minivan or even a prius…how to live for next to nothing. He’s organized all us Old Fart losers into a kind of Tribe meets once a year in Arizona. A kind of Burning Man for Losers. Started about with forty people. Last year 80 thousand showed up.

They call themselves Nomads.

Old farts living in old vans and cars.. They even made a movie about it. Bob appears in the movie.

This is a real live Deadbeat Club.

I love it. I’m gonna join here pretty quick.

Soon as I get organized.

The only reason I’m holding out for the moment is I’m not quite ready yet to go live on the street. I’m gearing up for it. You know, doing some mental training….

Anyway…

I’m just throwing out an alternative here.

It beats wishing in one hand…okay?

Meanwhile…

I’m working on Scruffy. Sealing his decks for winter.

It’ll look like shit when I’m done.

But it won’t leak!

Maybe….

I got tools for the job I snagged off the old lady’s boat. She broke her hip and went into a rest home. Her boyfriend, who owns her boat, gave it to me.

I declined his generous offer.

I already own a old boat…better than this one…why do I need another old boat?

That’s the thing about being one of the Sad Ones. You learn how to let go of shit. Or you learn how not to acquire even more useless old shit. Like this boat. I did, however, take him up on his offer to canibalize the old lady’s boat before Raul hauls it next door to the boat crusher.

I nabbed this hose.

And this wet/dry vac.

And some Fenders I can clean up and they’re good as new. You know how much new fenders cost? It’s criminal. I never buy anything at West Marine….

Mainly I’m biding my time for the moment…hanging with my neighbors.

I know, I know. Change is tough on Old Farts. It’s the same whether your one of the Good Ones or a member of the Deadbeat Club or whatever. You reach a certain age you grow resistant to change.

But what’s your alternative? There is no alternative.

You need to accept it.

Embrace it.

It’s like I’ve been telling this Seagull punk’s been hanging around, bugging his parents.

He’s the scruffy grey one on the left. Nature likes to identify the little peckers. This one’s been bugging his parents for days and days and days. Harassing them to keep feeding him. While they continue to avoid him. Nature makes it simple if you’re a seagull. You don’t get to question or try to resist the inevitable. You simply play your role. You push the foundling out of the nest…and that’s it. The Kid’s on his own. None of this living with your parents until your forty five…

Parents are not listening to his pleading.

They are deaf to his emotional pain.

This is the way it works in nature…out there in the great outdoors.

Or the great dock outdoors….

You’re all alone now. You gotta learn to shift for yourself…

Your parents will no longer support you. He keeps trying but it’s no good. It’s called tough love….or no love!

Look at him. Pathetic. I’m trying to give him pointers. Set him straight. I even tossed him a few crackers while I lecture him.

Listen. You gotta learn how to grab what’s offered you. No matter the source. Forget your parents. They are history. Now I know you can do it. You have it in you. You have all the tools at your disposal.

You can swim.

You can fly…

Time to go about being a seagull. Shit. If nothing else you can survive on the million or more dock muscles clogging the floats. That’s right. Nature has provided you with a bounty. So quit whining.

That’s the spirit.

Eat a cracker….

Little fucker’s catching on.

I think my work here is done.

Now I can get back to work on Scruffy.

While I contemplate my own fate…