YES, I AM STILL HERE looking out my window on Main Street, and I am so happy to tell you that I’m not losing my vision.
Part of my morning routine is putting a couple of eyedrops in each eye because my eyeballs are red and itchy when I start the day. I do this after my shower.
Eyedrops are the first thing I do after the shower because the mirror is still fogged and I can’t see how I’ve let myself go.
One morning last week I tried to apply the eyedrops as usual. But I couldn’t see the bottle. I am accustomed to seeing the bottle as I squeeze it. The eyedrops are refreshing when they hit the eyeball.
I squeezed out a few drops anyway but didn’t feel them hit my eye.
And then some mysterious cold liquid rolled down the other cheek.
It was then that I realized my itchy left eye was shut, and I was squeezing the eyedrops onto the closed eyelid. I couldn’t see the eyedrop bottle, and, instead, was looking at my hand.
This may be evidence of a serious mental condition. Old age is not for the faint-hearted (or red-eyed).
I would prefer if you would not mention this to anyone in the city administraton. They might seize upon it to say that I am not physically fit to serve as Downtown J-Turn Enforcement Deputy.
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HUMAN BEINGS. This is so interesting I just have to share it with you in case you missed it in the news.
Some European archeology perfessers working down in Columbia have discovered something stunning. Kept it secret for a year.
On a tall rock wall — eight miles long — are thousands of carved images more than 12,000 years old. We’ll just have to take their word for the age of the carvings.
The images include several species of animals which are long-extinct in the Western Hemisphere. Like mastodons.
Some of the carvings are so high on the wall that the perfessers have had to use camera drones to inspect them.
The perfessers also found drawings of people bungee-jumping off tall towers and they figger that such towers are the way that the caveman artists were able to do their work so high on the wall.
The news article said that the carvings were so realistic that details such as horsehair were visible.
They’re keeping the site secret out of fear that some delinquent will swoop in with spraypaint and write a soccer team motto or something else obscene.
On my trip to Utah a couple of years back Daughter Julie and Miss Carsyn Elizabeth Murphy and I walked into a canyon to see one of the famous arches in Arches National Monument. To access the site we had to go through a narrow slit in the rocks.
There was a woman scrubbing spray paint off the wall of the slit.
She had a bucket of water. Scrubbing hard. And grumbling.
I asked her why on earth would some person deface a national natural heritage.
“Because they can,” was her answer. The answer didn’t make much sense, but her anger told a lot.
She was not a park employee, just a volunteer who had an appreciation of the site.
Indeed, why would some jerk feel compelled to deface the rock?
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MISSING FROM this newspaper issue is the column I used to update and repeat after every Thanksgiving. Did this for several years.
The column was a spoof about going to a Native American restaurant in Little Rock. The premise was that daughter and I were looking for a place for lunch since our big Thanksgiving meal would be at night. But we could only find one restaurant open on Thanksgiving Day.
Chinese, Mexican and Vietnamese restaurants were all closed for holiday, and only one nationality did not joyfully observe Thanksgiving.
I used to think that the column was pretty clever, and that belief (plus my laziness) is why it got updated and repeated.
Finally, last year, it occurred to me that the column might not be so funny to folks with Cherokee, or Sioux or Caddo bloodlines because, in the words of the column, “it (Thanksgiving) just reminds them painfully of when the foreign devils came and took away their country and slurred their image by giving sports teams objectionable nicknames.”
I read it again each Thanksgiving. Don’t tell anyone I still laugh.
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THINGS I LEARNED from opening (and believing) anonymous emails. “Great truths that adults have learned: (1) Raising teenagers is like nailing jelly to a tree. (2) Wrinkles don’t hurt. (3) Families are like fudge – mostly sweet, with a few nuts. (4) Today’s mighty oak is just yesterdays nut that held its ground. (5) Laughing is good exercise – It’s like jogging on the inside. (6) Middle age is when you choose your cereal for the fibre, not the toy.”
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WORD GAMES. A well-known couple: Adam and Eve. The first ‘arranged marriage.’
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HE SAID: “Christmas is the spirit of giving without a thought of getting. It is happiness because we see joy in people. It is forgetting self and finding time for others. It is discarding the meaningless and stressing the true values.” Mormon leader Thomas S. Monson
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SHE SAID: “Christmas, my child, is love in action. Every time we love, every time we give, it’s Christmas.” singing cowgirl Dale Evans (Mrs. Roy Rogers)
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SWEET DREAMS, Baby
