Feeling Kinda Wild and Wacky Today

Good morning all:

What shall I ponder or muse about this week? Hmmm! Okay, let’s have a little fun using automobile insurance as the topic of discussion. I have been in the process of weeding out old paperwork and the like trying to get rid of all that unwanted baggage we humans seem to think we cannot live without. As a result, while going through the reams of paperwork I have saved over the years, I came across this letter to an insurance policy about an accident. Well, it’s not really a true letter to an insurance company. You know me – my posts, for the most part are created to elicit a smile, chuckle, or if I am lucky, get you rolling on the floor laughing your you know what off. In any case, my posts are designed to take your mind off whatever is troubling you, at least for a small moment in time. With that thought in mind, let me remind you that what follows is all in jest. Hope this gets you smiling or even laughing and in the mood for the weekend that will soon be upon us. Can you believe tomorrow is the first of May already. Here goes:

From: 1234 Screwball Place

Hollywood, California

To: Protectem and Savem Casualty Company

      123456 Wilshire Boulevard

      Los Angeles, California (probably written before ZIP Codes as there was none)

Dear Sir:

I can’t find my insurance policy, but had this little card with your company’s name, and I thought I had better write to you and give you some information about an accident that I had with my car a couple of weeks or so ago. I did not think at the time that I was at fault and didn’t think much would come of it as there were five people in my car to testify for me and only four in the other car, so we have one more witness than they do. This other car was driving ahead of me and it was about midnight, raining awful hard, and all at once he stopped real short to keep from hitting a kid on a bicycle, and I ran smack into the back of his car.

I don’t know how I could have been expected to see that this car ahead was stopping as the lights on my old 1941 car are real dim, and my brakes could be better. If I have time to pump the brake pedal a few times she stops pretty good though. Another thing, the windshield is kinda yellow and has about a million little cracks in it that makes it kinda tough to see out at night, so all a Court would have to do is look at my car, and they’d know in a minute that the other car should have signaled so I could have more time to stop.

Another thing, a lawyer for one of the passengers in the other car called me twice saying they had traced me by my license number. I know that no one saw the accident happen except this one lady passenger in the other car, because the other three people were all unconscious when I went up and looked in. This lady claims to have gotten my license number while she was laying out in the road (she was thrown out of the car) but I know she was in no shape to know what she was doing because according to the lawyer, she had a fractured skull and a brain concussion, so her testimony wouldn’t hold up in Court.

What I want you to do is to get an estimate of my damage right away and see if you can collect from the other driver. He ought to be good for it, he had a 1967 Cadillac. Or if he don’t pay, then we ought to find that darned kid on the bike and sue him.

Oh say, a couple of the boys in my car claim they haven’t been able to go to work on account of they cracked their heads on the windshield. It’s good enough for them because they had been yelling like Indians to get out of the car a few minutes before the accident. They seemed to think that I wasn’t in shape to drive just because we had a few beers while fishing. We only had two cases among the five of us so I couldn’t have been so bad.

I thought I would save you some trouble and that’s why I’ve been telling the cops and the lawyer that I didn’t have any insurance, but I guess you had better take over now. I’m sure glad you folks insisted on raising the limits of my policy to a hundred thousand. When I told the lawyer that, he said he wouldn’t bother me anymore.

Yours truly

I.M.Right

And they walk among us!

Stay safe my friends and keep smiling – one day at a time, one day at a time! Until next time!

Feeling Bad About Not Posting

I have been negligent about posting and cannot believe it has been more than a week since I last posted. So, rather than post one of my usual long-winded posts, thought I would just share some whimsical thoughts with you to hopefully bring a smile to your faces. I’ll do better with my next post!

Question: What do you call an Amish guy with his hand in a horse’s mouth?
Answer: A mechanic

Here is a thought – since we all have a lot on our plates these days – just think, if someone ever invented a microwave TV – we could watch a one-hour show in ten minutes!

Here’s yet another thought – look on the bright side of having shaky hands as we get older – now when we are at the grocery store and pushing the shopping cart – the wheels stop wobbling!

You know you are getting old when you attach a cord to your cordless phone because you’re tired of looking for it.

Speaking about knowing you’re getting old – you know you are really getting old when you begin to wish your rocking chair was battery operated.

You know, I used to get upset when people used to make fun of my age on my birthday but now – I just take it with a grain of salt………..a bit of lime, and a shot of tequila! Works for me.

And before I go, let me leave you all with a conundrum:

‘If we had a bill of rights that got wronged, would it be right or wrong for a judge to right that wrong?’

Have a great day.

Until next time!

Now How Much Will This Cost Me?

Did you ever stop and think, now that we are old and in the retirement scene, how many kinds of old people there are in the world?

Crazy rich people, rich people, middle class old people, and then we cannot forget the old farts like me and you. As I see it though, the main problem in not having any money, is that not too many people take us seriously.

Think about it – due to not having much money – we must do our own laundry, drive our own car, clean our own house, mow our own lawns. We are not part of that class that can send their laundry to a Chinese Laundry; expect the chauffer to be available at a moment’s notice; expect the maid to pick up after us and keep our house clean; nor show our pride in our garden and landscaping due in fact to having a gardener that keeps everything trimmed and neat.

As a result, since we do not have much money, it falls on us to do our own laundry (hopefully we are fortunate enough to have a washer and dryer within our house), drive ourselves to the grocery store, doctor’s appointments and even to the garage to have it serviced – plus there is also the washing and cleaning of the car we must attend to ourselves as well. Not having a maid to pick up after us, we must clean the house on a regular basis – you do the toilets – no, you do the toilets – and the list goes on and on.  And then there is the mowing of the lawn, trimming the bushes and so forth – yuk – I think I will pull up the grass and put in stones.

How do we avoid this – after all, we are retired now and expect to live the Life of Riley (meaning an easy and pleasant life). I am sure that many of you old-timers out there remember William Bendix and how he portrayed the role of Riley. Who can forget his famous catch line “What a revoltin’ development this is!”

After all, there are hundreds of thousands of younger people that will be coming after us and they have but one goal in mind – it is their duty to follow in our footsteps. The way they intend to do that is by getting older themselves – it is what they live for.

But being the generation that they are, one has to ask how are they going to do this?  I for one, feel that we should treat our younger generation as interns – you know similar to those working for our politicians. Do you think for one moment that politicians pay their interns? Nay – interns may work for free but they are not stupid! Their payment lies in the connections they make while interning.

What does this mean – well, we old farts have to be well connected and by being well connected, we become “intern magnets.”   In this position we can get all the free 0ld-person-in-training interns we want. After all, isn’t that what the younger generation wants – to be like us during our retirement years.  We can teach them how to do their laundry, go grocery shopping, plan doctor’s appointments, maintain the car, and yes, even how to clean the house – toilets and all.

All the above sounds good doesn’t it? I thought so too, until that is, I remembered the type of connections interns and politicians have in common – “those with money.”  Uh, oh! I bad! If you are like me, your connections are likely the same as mine – those that do not have two plug nickels to rub together. Thinking this way will find us paying for our interns and that is going on a huge assumption that we might even find one willing to work for less than Minimum Wage. Nope – that is not our end goal.     

Back to the drawing board – being a not so well-connected old fart might just merely mean that we will have to think up some hair-brained idea to raise some money for old farts like me. In the meantime, I guess I will continue cutting coupons and taking advantage of all the BOGO sales I can find. I may be getting old, but I am not stupid!

Until next time! 

Are You a Glass is Half Full or a Glass is Half Empty Type of Guy?

Half Full or Half Empty?

I am a “the glass is half full” type of guy. However, that is not to say I have always been that way. Prior to retiring, and as a matter of fact, even up to a few years after that – well more than a few years after retiring, I looked at life as one where my glass was always “half empty.”  I am sure we all remember the expression “the glass is half full” or “the glass is half empty”.  Were I to say this in today’s age and in front of small children, I would expect to hear one of them say: “What’s that mean?”

Now that I am much older, I tend to look at my life as “half full!” This may seem a bit odd because depending on what group of people you associate with many people might feel that the glass is pretty much “half empty”.  Why? because we are senior citizens!

In my humble opinion, those individuals preparing to retire must ask themselves this question: Are our glasses half-full or half-empty? One of the best ways I know to look at our lives when we reach retirement age is to look at life as though we have a half-full glass as opposed to a glass that is half-empty.  Okay, for the skeptics out there, having reached retirement age, one might argue that our lives may be half-over. But that does not mean we should look at our lives as being half-empty.

True, I would have liked to know at age eighteen or even age twenty-five what I know now but one thing we all know is that we cannot turn back the clock. I am sure there are many facets of our life we wish we could relive and do it better but being realistic, the fact of the matter is there is no genie we can conjure up out of a bottle to ask for three wishes that might enable us to redo those days or years of our lives. So, what are our choices? Complain, scream, holler and say woe is me, woe is me! Nay, those are the words of an individual looking at life as if our glass is half-empty. Instead, we need to “man up” and accept our lot in life as it is and get on with it. Bottom line, we need to look at the rest of our life as if the glass is half-full.

Every morning I wake, I look forward to whatever life throws my way. Am I happy with some of the crap being thrown at me – No – but I stop and think to myself, posing the question: “Hey, will this matter five years from now or even better yet, next year?” Probably not – so why sweat the small stuff?

True, we all have issues as we get older but I have found that taking life one day at a time is the only way to move forward at this time in our life. One of the things I find helpful is writing a “To-Do” list every morning and by having a busy schedule. I’ve been retired now almost twenty-five years and the one thing I have learned is that we need to keep busy. I always thought I was a fairly healthy individual but believe me – when a sickness or health problem comes up at our age, the first thought to cross our mind, leastways my mind, is why did I let myself go. Actually neither my wife nor I have left ourselves deteriorate but we could have done more.

 Today we walk as much as we can and do morning stretches to keep our bodies limber and in fairly good shape. Years ago we line danced sometimes three days a week and some weeks five days a week. It is a lot of fun and does keep you in fairly healthy shape. Staying under the covers when that alarm goes off every morning is not a luxury to us – we look at it as an early start to something new and exciting.

Reminding ourselves that we aren’t twenty-five or even fifty anymore enables us to think of some of the comedic things that we might look forward to (or not) as we age. For instance, one thing that is consistent with regards aging is that our bladder tends to remind us that we do have unfinished business that needs to be taken care of once we wake. It is usually during my morning walk to the bathroom that I remember that I am no longer 25 or even 50. For some reason or another, once you pass the three-quarter of a century mark our bones and muscles tend to remind us that we are not as young as we used to be. Another hint is when we look at ourselves in the mirror and say to ourselves – who are you – when did you get so old? Good news though is the fact that looking back at me is an elderly gentleman smiling, saying “guess what – you don’t have to go to work today, you are retired”. 

While many of us succumb to many of the various ailments that come with the aging process, one has but to look at all the modern medicines available to us today that weren’t there yesterday. Modern medicine is being created and designed to enable us to cope with these ailments, enabling us to live  to a ripe old age of say 80 or 90.

It is true, however, that as with any change in say natures’ plan (leaves falling from trees, flowers dying and then watching both the trees and flowers come back to life when the seasons change), we could have repercussions as we live an extended life. What repercussions you ask? Repercussions such as quality of life issues. How do we cope with such issues? By keeping each other healthy by visiting the doctor regularly, eating the proper foods, exercise, and yes, take our medications as prescribed by our doctors.

Another thing I would recommend that will provide much benefit towards living to a ripe old age is staying socially active. Loneliness can be devastating. Stay active and surround yourself with friends and relatives. Even contact via the Internet, social media, phone calls, can be beneficial as we move forward at this point in our lives. While we have quite a few friends due to our dancing and social activities, and do stay in touch with our children and relatives even though they live thousands of miles away, I personally look forward to the exchange of thoughts with friends made via Social media sites such as Facebook; Retirement-Online.com, and Lakeland Musings by Irwin. Why, because our travel time has come to a standstill due to Covid-19 and since we cannot be there in person, keeping in touch via these mediums, remind us that we are not alone during this pandemic. By staying socially active via the Internet, I know that there will always be someone to talk to and share thoughts with.

Let me end this post with the following thought for the day:

Old age is like a car. Paint can conceal the exterior, but the lines reveal the age.

Look at the balance of our lives as merely another part of our story – one that we have to live, enjoy, and share with others.