Retro-spective

This Saturday (Aug. 31) I will celebrate (?) the fifty-ninth year of my birth.  As such, I thought, embarking on my sixtieth year would be an excellent time to ruminate (No, I am not chewing cud… look to the second definition) on what I have witnessed.  I will respect your time by promising to ramble no longer than two type-written pages.  You’re welcome!  Also, I will make a concerted effort to avoid inserting my tongue into the folds of my wrinkled cheek as I normally do.  I apologize.

Where to begin?  I suppose the obvious answer is at the beginning.  Truth be told, I have no clear recollection of the beginning but I suppose it is safe to make some assumptions based on available evidence.  Now as I believe that human life begins at conception, I have to assume that the very start of my life began with my parents engaging in sex.  Okay, then… we have just proved that one should not consider the absolute beginning of one’s own existence.

So what then of the second milestone; birth?  Well, I have no real memory of that either.  Any time I questioned my mother about her maternity experience; she would slap my face and run out of the room crying.  This continued until I learned to avoid the issue somewhere around my fortieth birthday.  It wasn’t that I had lost interest but the dentist suggested if the beatings continued I would develop TMJ.

Ah, the sweet innocence of childhood in the golden age of America when Communists were scary and Nazis were funny.  I remember some neighbors added fallout shelters to their backyard landscape design.  I guess when you count your age in single digits, global political threats to survival are difficult to assimilate into one’s world model.  But oh what fun we had playing in the dark where are parents couldn’t find us; although, I don’t remember them looking for us all that diligently.  There seems to be consensus that those times were much simpler and children could frolic safely through the neighborhood.  But perhaps the reality is, our parents knew we were easily replaced (I refer you to paragraph 2).

The summer of love: My teen years were spent in the halcyon days of the flower generation.  Hair grew longer and toleration shorter.  It seemed that everybody was angry at someone over some thing.  I was angry because I couldn’t find anything to be unhappy about, except that NBC cancelled the Man from Uncle.  And they wouldn’t answer my letters of protest.  I do blame Laugh-in for my recently detected brain damage.  The most pressing issue requiring rigorous debate was, “Genie or Samantha?”

“All Hail to Monte Vista…”  Oh, the sweet memories of high school.  I have often heard that the teen years are fraught with emotional danger; pitfalls of discovering one’s true identity.  Many of my friends have related tales of woe because they did not fit in.  I had no trouble in that regard.  If there wasn’t enough room, I’d just shoved the guy next me over until there was ample space.  If the dork on the end of the bench wound up on the floor that was his problem, he should have spent less time in the library and more time in the weight room like me.

College: The foundry that forges us into the productive adults we are destined to become.  Well, as I graduated from high school in 1972 and the date on my college diploma reads 1981, and I promised to keep this missive at two pages or less, there is not enough room to go into detail.  Suffice it to say that there was a false start or two.

I heard the call of public service.  It was a wrong number.  It’s not that I don’t hold the highest respect for those who commit their lives to the betterment of society, but they will have to proceed in their vocations without me.  Police officers, fire fighters, teachers, Cal-trans workers are all irreplaceable cogs in the machinery of civilized society.  But my contribution will be limited to the egregious taxes I paid en route to financial independence.  I sure hope those government pensions hold up against the Obamanization of the economy, boys.

On to my career in business: Well, if you saw the wisdom of limiting my comments on college, you’re going to be ecstatic over my self-restraint on this topic.  To summarize: Everything I needed to know to be an effective leader in business could be found in the Boy Scout Handbook.  It really is a shame I never cracked it open. Well, I did read their essay on masturbation.  The Boy Scouts of America are okay with it, as long you’re fantasizing about someone of the opposite sex.

And now that I’m retired (have been for nearly ten years-nyuck, nyuck, nyuck), what do I think of life?  Well, it sure seems better than the alternative!

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This week’s punch line:

“Would I! Would I!”

“Hair Lip! Hair Lip!”