69 Stories No One Reads Anymore

My baby is in finals this week. She is a senior and is a few days away from a much needed break before she starts her final spring semester as an undergraduate.

I keep meaning to ask her if she has ever had to handwrite essays into a bluebook. I figure she has but then again maybe she hasn’t because she is in school during a time when everyone has a laptop and or an Ipad they drag around with them.

If I had to handwrite an essay it would be painful but not because I lack the writing skills to put my thoughts down upon the page nor because of bad penmanship.

It is because I rarely handwrite anything more than a sentence or two and my hand tires quickly when I try to write for any length of time.

Can’t say when I noticed it, but I realized a while ago that a skill I once had has fallen to the use it or lose it syndrome we all hear people talk about.

It’s kind of funny to me because I could fill a bluebook or any sort of notebook with words without significant effort. Writing comes easy to me so it never occurred to me the mechanism of putting words upon a page would impact it.

Sometimes I play around with working at it because there is something nice about holding a pen or pencil on my hand and transcribing thoughts from head to paper.

I know my parents handwriting quite well but I wonder if my children know mine.

69 Stories No One Reads Anymore

It’s a ridiculous headline for a time in which life is especially ridiculous. More than a few people have told me they won’t miss 2025 but I don’t know that I have a particular opinion, though I have reason not to miss it.

You could read When The Family Dog Saves Your Life and that would give you a sense of some of it but it wouldn’t give you the full tale in the way I would like it to.

This past Saturday marked three weeks since we said goodbye to my furriest child and though I know he is gone I still find myself looking for him or checking to see where he is if I get up from the table while my plate has food upon it.

I dreamt about him and my father and wasn’t surprised to discover they were stuck behind something large and heavy. And like so many of these dreams I went to work to tear down the walls and move the heavy objects from my path and theirs.

Though I may not have been built for grace I am built for demolition and moving heavy things from where they rest.

So I went to work and I moved mountains of stuff but I never could quite get to them. When I woke up I was mildly frustrated and then as sunlight washed over me I realized it was a dream, shrugged my shoulders and rolled out of bed.

Took a few minutes to stretch my body and prepare myself for the day I wanted to have and wandered into the kitchen to grab my cup of Joe.

****

Two cups of coffee in my system and some light walking to get the blood pumping got me thinking about the results of my last physical.

Most of my bloodwork was good and I was very pleased to see my A1C and cholesterol numbers have continued to improve. Doc took me off of my BP meds and in many ways I celebrated but there was one thing that had me scratch my head.

I am still anemic.

Neither one of us expected that and for a guy who lost almost half his blood in early October it was a surprise.

I had expected to see my hemoglobin and hemocrit in a normal range. In part I was surprised because physically I feel good and I am throwing iron around at the gym like I did in my thirties.

Somewhere around 2 I hit the gym and hit the weights harder just to see how I feel.

When I first got out of the hospital the docs warned me to go easy because they said the blood loss was going to make it much harder and I would tire out more easily.

It wasn’t easy to listen to their words, I very much wanted to test myself but I waited a bit to be safe. This time was different.

I am anemic, but show know symptoms so it got me wondering which is why I pushed a little harder.  Felt good about things and then sat down to rest for a moment and found myself slightly behind and to the left of a guy who took his shirt off to pose in the mirror.

I coughed loudly but he didn’t hear me which shouldn’t have surprised me because we both had airpods in.

So I made a point to get his attention and asked him to move over. He made a snarky comment about my not wanting to be embarrassed because I am not cut like him so I pulled out the picture above and showed it.

“Little man, I was more ripped than you and that picture doesn’t show how much more ripped I got. Been there, done that. Silly insults work with people who care and or are insecure. Move along.”

And yeah, we have exchanged words before. He is one of the youngsters who think they defy the laws of physics and should be allowed to use two machines at once.

Most of the time when I have encountered them it is a pleasant brief conversation and we move on. But apparently I made this one feel stupid and his nose has been out of joint ever since.

Words You Don’t Understand

I keep sharing this quote online and elsewhere with people who mistake information for knowledge.

They think the proverb a picture tells a thousand words is literal but are misled by photos that show part of a story.

They use words they don’t understand because they have heard others use them but don’t take the time to determine if what they heard was factual.

And if you question them on their use of said words and inability to use facts to support the allegations they make they go back to pictures who’s full story they don’t know.

The lack of critical thinking is troubling. I showed someone a picture of a wreck caused by a drunk driver.

They immediately assigned blame to the wrong party and were adamant about it until I told them about the drunk driver. Instead of accepting they were wrong they told me that was unusual and then I shared Tuvia Grossman’s story and they made another excuse.

Some people simply won’t let go of their preconceived political narrative regardless of the facts you present.

I am kind of glad that I am not in college now and that I don’t have to write an essay about that, the loss of critical thinking and the over reliance upon social media because as I said earlier I don’t think my hands have the stamina for that kind of writing anymore.

Maybe that is a sign that I need to start exercising those muscles too.