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Perusing the News

"Sir," he said, "are you perusing the news?"

It took me a second to understand what he was asking.

I was having lunch at a local brewery.  It is a good place to have lunch, because they have good beer and good food.  (I am a man of simple and elementary wants.)  Next to me on the bar there was a newspaper.  He wanted to read it, and did not want to take it if I were reading it.  I sent him off happy.

I am never going to read a newspaper, again.  I am going to peruse the news.

One of the advantages of being old is that people often speak more politely to you than they do to ordinary, obviously immature people.  I had no delusions about being an ordinary person.  In fact, I had just taken three old TV sets to the recycling center.  No ordinary, new-fangled, flat-screened sets were they, either!  They were massive, cathode ray tubes, more-or-less in the shape of a hot air balloon, or a manatee.  It was all I could manage to get them up into the back of the pickup.  A cheerful, young walrus of a man picked them up, one at a time, and dropped them onto a cart.  So when the guy to my left at the bar asked if I was perusing the news, I knew, immediately, that he was speaking courteously to the last of the 19th century fossils still eating buffalo shrimp and drinking IPA.

Yesterday, I saw my daughter, Gail, in Iowa.  Walking back from lunch, while talking about dementia--I think it was:  I forget--I said that one of the (other) advantages of being old is that I don't really worry about all those diseases that will kill you before your time.  I am already eighty.  Of course memory fades!  Of course everything wears out!  Of course joints become arthritic!  But I am eighty!  It was the prospect of all those things that might prevent one from living a long, satisfying life that used to worry us.  I have already won the contest!

I sawed off fingers and the doctor sewed them back on, a bit crookedly.  Another doctor has paid for splendid vacations after rooting around in my right eyeball.  A long time ago, another doctor snipped out an ulcer.  He is gone, now, too.  But we are about to move to Tucson, so I can soon quit drinking anti-freeze to survive Iowa or Minnesota winters, and take up tastier brews to remain hydrated.  I will probably naturally get skin cancer, as I am certain to develop prostate cancer:  nearly all men do.  It is evidence of a good, long life.

But not yet.  Right now, I am going to peruse the news.  And practice hydrating.

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