Playing Fair and Being Kind

I’m seventy six years old, soon to be seventy seven in February; in about two months. My age has become a concern to me; you know like the mortality thing and energy thing and health thing. However this is not what I am going to talk about today. Maybe never. My attention is on the repeats that show up beginning about the age of forty five or fifty. As I’ve aged I have seen repeats and reruns more frequently. In a funny way it seems that life gets easier because we older folks have seen a lot and we can truthfully declare that “I’ve see that before. You can’t fool me!”

I started seeing old shipmates at the mall and in the supermarket and on the street about thirty years ago. I swore that I recognized old Ray from the USS Sam Houston once while shopping at Hannaford. I was squeezing an avocado in the produce section when Ray walked into the place with his wife and kids. Of course Ray never had a wife and kids but there he was and he hadn’t changed one bit. I was stunned. I stopped squeezing and just stood still wondering what universe I was in. I realized soon enough that Ray was not there. It was some young man who resembled Ray so much I was fooled completely. This same type of scenario has played out many times. Old shipmates would show up and walk right past without as much as a nod. Of course I got used to these events and I began to welcome them as pure entertainment.

Understandably the guys I was bumping into were dead ringers for my old pals and appeared to be of the age when last I served with them. Of course if I’d run into the real deals they would be thirty or forty years older.

Starting a few years ago I began to experience repeats and reruns of events usually to do with political shenanigans and situations. The rascals who were elected officials were falling into repeat traps of illicit behavior and military leaders were falling for the same bullshit and sending troops into battle for wrong and illegitimate purposes. I could go on but I’m not of a mind to and I think you get the idea.

So I’ve begun to watch reruns of life. I can see where this could be helpful in that I can begin to let go. I am not so eager to hang on to this existence if I am going to have to watch reruns. Maybe it will be worse than Green Acres or Happy Days. Just the same my days are sometimes filled with wonder and discovery and once in a while, like now, I get into a funk. I think it has to do with December and the darker days and cloudy skies. Lots of things can contribute.

I talked to my dear friend Rae tonight. That helps a hell of a lot. A good conversation to clean out the pipes does wonders for me. So the new lesson for this part of my life is to expect the blahs and have a phone number ready to bend someone’s ear. Rae’s ear is as good as it gets.

I hope your day has been, in the least, as good as mine. I’m enjoying watching old Victory at Sea movies from the fifties on my laptop. Life is great. Have a wonderful and peaceful day.

Here is a story I wrote today about an event that is based on fact. I hope you enjoy it.

Peace out.

A BASIC HUMILIATION

Geoffrey sat in the car trying to regain a bit of composure. He’d just been accosted by two women. They’d confronted him because he’d pissed on a patch of earth next to the building that housed a gas station quick stop and doughnut shop. Next to Geoffrey sat his son Bud. They were driving across the top of New England to visit a college in Vermont and this gas station was conveniently located in New Hampshire about half way to their destination. What was inconvenient about the stop was that there were two franchises housed in the building with only one rest room. One rest room for everyone who used the twenty gas pumps and the convenience store and the doughnut shop.

Geoffrey felt the insult of angry looks from the women, his face still burning from their indignation, their scolding voices. Sir! Did you just urinate on the ground? He was fixing his fly, feeling the piss soaked front of his trousers when the voices made him turn. Two women, one of whom was dressed in the uniform of a retail supervisor and the other an obvious traveler were standing very close to each other and with knitted and furrowed brows and scowls perfectly arranged on their perfect young faces held him contemptuously with glaring eyes. Geoffrey read the situation quickly. Here he was about to be detained and soon an officer of the law would arrive and quickly and efficiently escort him to a quiet location to interrogate him, take his name from his license, and probably charge him with indecent exposure. There was potentially more of a mess coming than what was on the front of Geoffrey’s trousers.

Geoffrey put on a confident air and with an authoritative expression he brushed by the women with a gruff, I’ve got a condition. He didn’t want to go into the explanation of the incontinence that comes with trans urethral resection of the prostate procedure (TURP) that he’d endured last week and the unfortunate situation of arriving at a busy pit stop where there were half a dozen men and women waiting to use the rest room. Geoffrey was not of a mind to explain. He’d waited while feeling the urgency of his bladder, the burn of the control mechanism inside his body, and the wetness that began as he searched the outside of the combination gas station, quick stop, doughnut shop for a tree, bush, big truck, some place to privately relieve the pressure. There were no trees for a quarter of a mile. Nothing but the parking lot filled with customer’s cars. Geoffrey could see nothing above head level for a mile in all directions. The piss came and Geoffrey sidled over to the decorative shrub next to the building where there were no windows looking out. He pissed on the little bush and the white gravel stones surrounding it and felt both the wetness spreading down his front and the relief of pain ebbing. He didn’t care about consequences. He was in a whole new dimension and it was all strange to him.

The two women watched in confusion as Geoffrey brushed past them. They watched him without a word. He walked to his car feeling the cold fabric on his legs. He felt totally incapable. He got into his car and sat. He didn’t say anything to Bud. Thankfully Bud was busy texting and didn’t look up. Geoffrey started the car and eased through the parking lot toward the exit onto the road. He took his time. He didn’t want the scene back in the gas station parking lot to distract him from finding the ramp to the interstate highway. He hated this place.

G. M. Goodwin

9 December 2015