Category Archives: Humor
Gifts of Age (Part Four) Nobody Came Home in an Urn
Old Lady Klutz
Though one of the most positive aspects of reaching retirement age is the opportunity to travel, I wish I had photos of the incredulous expressions on airport security personnel when my husband and I show up. They look like, “Why don’t people like you, just stay home?” Their feelings may be justified since they spend twenty minutes patting down my husband, whose pacemaker can’t go through the x-ray machine, and about fifteen minutes examining my wheelchair as I limp through, at the same time others are dismantling our sleep apnea machines. I’m not sure what terrorist profile we match, but believe me, you are safe from us.
Back in our youthful sixties, we each took only a small rolling suitcase and backpack for eleven days abroad. This meant we could take it all as carry-ons and not risk the trauma of lost luggage. Now, in our seventies, we need an extra suitcase just for medicines, heating pads, sleep apnea machines, current converters, and outlet adaptors. The upside of my wheelchair is that we customized it to carry both me and the luggage. Of course, we look a lot like a traveling circus act. But that’s one advantage of being over seventy, who cares? One small warning to other wheelchair travelers however; all those lovely little bridges, that you have to cross every two blocks in Venice, actually consist entirely of stairs. A wheelchair with pontoons and a paddle would be my suggestion for Venice.
Traveling late in life has given me a new twist on the old joke, “What do you call someone who only speaks one language? An American.” My version is, “What do you call someone who can say, ‘Where is the bathroom?’ in six languages? Any woman over sixty ,who travels.” And I am currently creating a coffee table book of photos of my husband waiting patiently outside loo’s, el banos, il gabinettos, and badezimmer around the world and including a warning about the sale de bains in France that are ecumnenical.
I remember callously laughing years ago, when hearing about two young men on one of those farcical thirty minute tours of the Louvre getting on either side of an elderly woman and literally hauling her like luggage, as their group raced from Winged Victory to the Mona Lisa. That’s not quite as funny to me now, but I do try to bring a bit of lightheartedness into having to use a wheelchair in countries that lack accessibility in their transportation systems. When I have to stand up and struggle up long sets of steep stairs, I sing out, “I’m healed. I’m healed.”
Since I’ve never been compulsive about seeing every single thing there is to see, I don’t mind sitting in sidewalk cafes or under shady trees, while my husband and son are climbing castle ruins that are too much of a challenge with the wheelchair. Being a devout coward, I declined my son’s suggestion that we ask if there was a catapult available. Besides, I have memories of the time my husband and son, energized by several glasses of beer, attempted to run while pushing me up Mont Saint-Michel over its large cobblestones. We threw a wheel about halfway up. I decided then that the view from the bottom is just as interesting and tasty as that at the top.
One surprising travel experience was sitting in a row of white-haired, rosy cheeked Miss Marples in the theater at Stratford-on-Avon. I was the only little old lady to gasp aloud at sudden full frontal male nudity on the stage. It would seem that the English are at least a verbally reticent race. Or perhaps the Miss Marples had been coming to the play every day since it opened.
There was another experience that’s funny now, if not then. We stay mostly in clean, but literally ancient, B & B’s or small hotels that have lots of atmosphere, but limited plumbing. Once, at three in the morning in Vienna, I spent fifteen terror-filled minutes locked in a tiny bathroom down a very dark hall, listening to heavy breathing sounds outside the door. It turned out to be my husband’s snores echoing out the bedroom door that I had left open for a hasty return.
I confess that planning trips seems a tad less fun now that we tend to choose the countries we visit by the quality of their medical facilities. And shopping for insurance that will fly us home dead or on life support conjures up some daunting scenarios. Recently, just my husband was planning to visit one of our sons, who was staying in London for a month. Since I do most of the practical preparations for our trips and I’ve also reached the age where funerals are a frequent part of my social life, I checked out the pros and cons of return by urn, rather than by casket. When I suggested to my son that should the need arise, he bring Dad home in an urn, he responded with great outrage, “That’s a horrible thing to say. There’s no need to be morbid.”
I decided right then to make the trip with my husband, figuring that one of us would survive to deal with any morbid decisions. When we both returned, sans urn, from what felt like the best trip of many years of traveling, I began to wonder just what made it feel like such a wonderful trip. That’s when I realized that there’s an upside to imagining worst-case possibilities. This particular trip seemed so delightful, at least partly, from sheer relief that nobody came home in an urn.
Gifts of Age (Part Seven): Aging Like Fine Wine by Dancing in Our Hearts
Dance of Youth
New bottles seldom hold particularly fine wine. Likewise, the gifts of age don’t come in teenaged bodies. On the outside I’m a short, plump, white-haired old lady on a walker. But inside me still live all my younger selves. And the imp inside has gotten braver with the passage of time, so I challenge other little old ladies on walkers to races and to consider themselves armed and dangerous. I plan to get tee shirts that say, “Bare Toes Beware” and “I Can Do Anything You Can Do, Just a Whole Lot Slower.”
Being in my mid-seventies, not only means that I’ve run out of a future full of possibilities, it also means that I’ve actually seen the consequences of some of my major screw-ups in my younger years. And part of my spiritual journey has involved developing enough self-awareness to recognize a self-serving element even in the good things that I do. Parting with delusions is a painful process, but like most difficult things in life, it has an up-side. It eventually makes it easier to live lightly, unburdened by carrying pockets full of stones to throw at others. All those cracks in my façade make that quite hazardous.
Letting go of physical agility and mental acuity as major parts of our self-image is one of the most frightening challenges of this part of the spiritual journey. When I was young and lithe, one of my few natural talents was ballet. In fact, I often expressed my emotions through dance. Once, I danced in sheer joy at the awesomeness of God, while reading The Well Springs of Life by Isaac Asimov. He used several diverse sciences, that study both the macrocosms and the microcosms of the universe, to trace the incredibly orderly and unifying processes of evolution in all aspects of creation. Even such a small glimpse of the brilliance and glory of God was almost blinding. Verbal praise was simply not enough. This cried for praise with my whole self. I put the book down and danced to express my overflowing joy.
I can no longer physically dance, nor do I have enough mental energy or short term memory to explore complex scientific descriptions of the glory of God in His creation. But age brings simple moments of grace that lift my heart and mind to dance on butterfly wings.
A grandchild whose journey through autism began with learning a few simple signs to ask for basic needs, now keeps me awake chatting past our bedtime. As I pray for energy to stay awake, I dance with delight in my heart at having this once unimaginable experience.
In another part of my series, Gifts of Age, I describe the timely sight of a cow-pile covered in golden Monarch Butterflies just as I was telling God that I was up to my neck in manure down here and asking where the heck He was in all this. What a perfect symbol of grace. Butterflies, the classic symbol of transformation, happen to need certain chemicals found in manure. Problems that go beyond our human ability to solve can open us to God and the grace to grow.
And, believe me, old age is full of that kind of fertilizer.
Dwindling energies and a sense of time passing at warp speed force me to re-evaluate my priorities. Where do I want to focus my limited resources? On image? On possessions? On my aches and limits? On pleasure as a temporary distraction? On a past that I cannot change? On a future that may never come? It seems more important now, to focus on recognizing the footprints of God in my daily life, on celebrating God’s presence in the small and ordinary, even in the heartbreak, and to share that awareness however I can.
No matter what our age is; today is the only day we actually have. We can seize it, rejoice in it, and dance in our hearts.
Rediscovering my Muskrat Ramble Self
The challenges of old age and the feeling that time is running out have tended to bring out my sadder, wiser self.
The other day I watched a movie, A Little Bit of Heaven, and glory be, there was my old New Orleans’ French Quarter Self, just dancing like crazy to Dixieland bands. And remembering and loving the diversity of the French Quarter: black Dixieland bands, the St. Louis Cathedral, drag queens, street corner evangelists, jazz and blues drifting out of clubs into the street, pirate hangouts, like Jean Lafitte’s blacksmith shop, Antoine’s, Brennans, Antiques Stores, Rock and Weed Shops, the Cabildo, where slaves were once auctioned, tourists of every shape and size from Kansas to Japan, a clump of Baptist Sunday school teachers, huddled together for protection from all that blatant humanity,walking so closely knit that they looked glued together, nuns in traditional habits, Voodoo artists hawking their luminous paintings and potions.
I love it! I love it! I love it! All of it.
This is US, people……this wondrous, awful, frightening, lost, saved, becoming, struggling humanity; one and all beloved by a God so huge, complex, and awesome that He/She cannot be fathomed, only experienced and celebrated.
Taste and see the Goodness!
The same movie gave me my funeral….out doors, Dixieland band playing When the Saints Go Marchin In, Swing Low Sweet Chariot, St. Louie Woman, and you got it, Muskrat Ramble. Lots and lots of balloons, yellow flowers, wine, cappuccino, po-boys, shrimp, french bread, and everybody dancing.
I may need to have this before I die, so I get to enjoy it too.
It sounds weird, but I am excited about my funeral.
And I am so enjoying my old Muskrat Ramble self.
Messages from God
I’ve never gotten a message from God in a bottle, but I’ve gotten them a lot of other ways. God is amazingly creative in getting His point across.
When our five children were still young, my father-in-law gave us a side of beef every Christmas. One Christmas some friends with seven children were starting a new business and money was in very short supply. So, my husband and I decided to share some of our beef with them.
Now, I had by this time read the Scriptures quite a lot, so I was very familiar with the many times and ways Jesus told us to love others as ourselves, to share what we have, and even His comparison of the poor woman who gave all she had and the rich man who did not.
But as I loaded a basket with hamburger, pot roasts, and even some round steaks, every time my hand hovered over the sirloin, T bone, and ribeye steaks, I drew it back. I dearly love good steaks and there were many years in my life when I couldn’t afford them. I rationalized that the cheaper cuts would go much further with seven children. So I didn’t share any of the expensive steaks.
The next weekend we went out of town for two days, so I left the garage door up about a foot, so the cat could come and go and get his food. When we returned, all seemed well, until I went to the freezer in the garage to get some meat for dinner. The bottom two shelves, where all the expensive steaks had been, were completely empty. Nothing else was missing.
I got the message.
I asked God’s forgiveness, but I also admitted that I would really, really like to know how He did it.
A couple of days later, a neighbor who lived a block downstream from us on the creek that ran through our back yards, told me excitedly about all the mysterious expensive steaks her dogs were happily devouring in her back yard. Later that same day my next door neighbor mentioned that she had noticed the three year old from across the street crawling in and out of our garage over the weekend.
Evidently frozen steaks make great boats to sail down the creek and only the expensive ones were in her reach. I was so relieved that the little girl hadn’t gotten trapped in the freezer, that I no longer begrudged anybody, even the dogs, the expensive steaks.
Some years later, the nuns where I taught first and second grade, protested that I needn’t have given them any steaks in their Christmas basket, just hamburger would have been fine. I assured them with great conviction, that I really did need to give them some steaks with their hamburger.
I do get the message eventually.
The Church of Devout Cowardice
Early in life I became a charter member of the Church of Devout Cowardice. Physical pain and I were not friends. As a child, I had no desire to climb trees, jump from roofs, or do anything else that had the slightest potential for injury.
This devotion was reinforced in my late twenties when some friends urged me to join them on a ski trip. Though one friend teased me unmercifully about being such a wus, I was completely shameless about my compulsion for pain avoidance. The fact that this friend broke her leg getting off the ski lift on her first trip up the mountain definitely confirmed for me that “Avoid all risks” should be the first commandment of all true believers of the Church of Devout Cowardice.
Ironically, being so inclined to imagine worst case scenarios all my life led to a stress related illness that not only caused me a lot of pain, but also put me into a wheelchair in my late fifties and early sixties. During this challenging time of life, a son’s job with an airline gave us the marvelous blessing of thirteen years of free air travel to Europe.
Tourist sites in Europe are not known for their accessibility. Though I could walk short distances, hills and stairs were often too much for me. My son suggested a catapult for accessing castles and fortresses, but wus that I was, I demurred.
However, while we were on an innocuous Sound of Music day trip in Austria, the bus stopped to allow the foolhardy to ride down the side of a mountain on a sled with wheels in a very long shallow metal luge. My twenty-something son, obviously having inherited none of my antipathy to pain genes, decided to try it. I sat in my wheel chair on the loading dock as he began to get onto a sled built for two. Out of the blue, a wild thought occurred to me.
“I’m already in pain and in a wheelchair, what have I got to lose?”
Before my wus self could talk me out of it, I stood up and said, “Wait, I’m going with you.” My son and my husband were too stunned to respond, so I climbed on as the worker began to start the sled down the luge. I was in the front where there was a hand brake. As we began to hurtle down the mountain, my instinct for survival kicked in, and I tugged desperately on the brake. To my relief, we began to slow.
At that point, a nine or ten year old boy luging behind us began to tail gate and my son took charge of the brake. I scrunched my eyes shut as we suddenly seemed airborne. As much as I wanted to scream in terror, I couldn’t risk it, since either my heart or my lunch was in my throat.
I offered God my first born son, (not the one with airline privileges), if He would save me from certain excruciating pain. When we came around the last curve and began leveling out and slowing down, I peeked out with one eye. There was my husband waiting at the bottom looking as terror stricken as I felt. When he helped me out and into my wheelchair, he asked anxiously, “Are you all right? How was it?”
“Piece of cake,” I replied through gritted teeth. I never told him I meant my dessert from lunch.
God Does Sweat the Small Stuff
One of my nature enthusiasms after we moved to the country was to collect rocks, lichen, weeds, nuts, and pods to use in making ecology crafts with my children.
My first year of teaching primary grades I decided to use all these free materials for my class to make Christmas presents for their parents. My own children had used these for their teacher presents with happy results. Of course, four of them were already teens and my first grader took after his Architect father in both creativity and natural ability in constructing things.
So, after a migraine producing afternoon with twenty-five children indiscriminately piling heaps of pods, weeds, nuts, and the like onto flat rocks and then simply pouring whole bottles of white glue over them, I placed these horrible looking gooey white messes on the window sills to hopefully at least dry over the weekend.
Monday the parents were coming for our Christmas pageant and party and taking their children and their presents home for the holidays afterward. There would be no chance to start a new Christmas present project.
Disheartened, to say the least, I belatedly resorted to prayer, “God, we need a miracle here. The children had a great time, but even the kindest parent isn’t going to be able to disguise their reactions to these presents. Help please.”
Though exhausted, I slept only fitfully all weekend, dreading facing the debacle on the window sills on Monday.
But, it seems that God does sweat the small stuff after all.
The sunshine through the windows and the heat in the room, had somehow not only dried the glue to transparent, but in ways I will never understand, allowed the excess decorations to fall off each gooey clump. The remaining creations were each unique, and all quite lovely.
The Holy Spirit works not only is mysterious ways, but in very artistic ones.
One mother of six other older children, took me aside and said, “This is awesome. It’s the first thing any of my children has ever made, that I actually look forward to keeping in my living room.”
After the happy children and parents had departed, I swept up the scattered liberated pods and weeds, and thanked God profusely for sweating the small stuff.
Adventures in a Wheel Chair
Mt. Pilatus, Lucerne :accessible by tiny red train.
Monte St. Michel: settle for cafe at the bottom.
Mt. Pilatus at 7,000 feet is accessible by a small train, a cable car, and chair lift. We used them all. The train was the scariest!
The much smaller Mt. St. Michel defeated us when my husband and son, emboldened by a couple of beers, tried together to run pushing me up the cobblestone road. The rubber rim of my right wheel went flying off about a fourth of the way up.
I settled for coffee in a sidewalk cafe at the bottom. My son and husband were gone so long, the waiters were huffily removing my cup and setting my table for the next meal. I resorted to writing a note in French saying my son and husband would be back soon to join me for dinner.
Under threat of abandonment by my French speaking son, I am not allowed to attempt to speak French in France. The French are very proud of the beauty of their language. He thinks deportation is a serious possibility, if I do my usual “language deaf” mangling of even a foreign language that I have actually studied.
I must admit, I think that’s a real possibility in Paris. They are nasty to everyone, even non-Parisian Frenchmen, who often asked my son for help with the Metro and directions. And I helped young Japanese women finally get service in a cafe in Paris by besieging the waiters with written notes. I think the waiters feared I would fill the room with notes like confetti.
If you do not know French, at least carry a written note asking, “Where are the bathrooms?” But, beware, in Paris many of them are ecumenical.
Sunday from Hell or Does Somebody Up There Hate Us?
(Found this thirty-two year old memoir, while cleaning out files this morning. Someday, if I live long enough, I may think this is funny.)
I really believe in a God that loves us unconditionally; that that’s sort of what He does for a living. But sometimes….………
When I wrote this, we lived way out in the country, through a creek, up a hill, down a hollow, all five miles of which were traversed on an ancient dirt wagon path, last tended by Roosevelt’s CCC Corps.
Since we had a large family; us, five kids, my mother next door, horses, and miscellaneous and multitudinous pets, we drove a Suburban Wagon and a pick-up truck. Both vehicles were middle-aged and generally loose-jointed from the constant and traumatic trips over what euphemistically passed for a road to civilization.
Our adventure started on Saturday, when our eighteen year old had to take the Suburban to his new job fifty miles away, since the special jack for the truck was broken. That left mother and me using the pick-up to do our weekly grocery shopping. No problem, until a steady downpour set in just as we hit town. I bought only enough groceries to get by that day, then crammed them, mother, the new jack, and her purchases into the cab of the truck. So far, all was well, except maybe mother.
That night we got organized for a busy two hours at church on Sunday. One child was scheduled to practice lectoring at ten, while another was to train as a new altar boy, and I was teaching preschoolers. My husband and I were to usher at the eleven o’clock service, while one son served and the other lectored.(read the Scriptures.)
Three home haircuts, one bandaged ear, clothes laid out, and my mother reminded of the exact time of departure, I even remembered to set the alarm for six a.m. to get the eighteen year old up for work. Shutting my eyes about midnight, I treasured the thought that after getting our son up, we could sleep until at least eight-thirty, since we were so organized.
Ho! Ho! Ho!
Sunday
6:00 a.m. Alarm goes off. Husband rouses son.
6:40 a.m. Phone rings and husband stumbles to it. Husband exercises remarkable restraint to his mother-in-law’s enquiry as to where-abouts of her umbrella.
7:00 a.m. Son announces that truck has flat tire and lugs are frozen. Good thing we bought that jack. That crises handled, we return to bed.
7:30 a.m. Phone rings and husband mutters his way to it. I offer silent prayers that it’s not about umbrellas. Unfortunately, it is not. It’s son fifteen miles from home with truck broken down in the middle of nowhere. We both get up and husband dresses hurriedly to rescue son.
7:50 a.m. Husband’s key chain breaks on way to car, spreading keys all over gravel driveway.
8:00 a.m. Husband drives off. ( Muttering censored.)
8:15 a.m. Husband notices that car is overheating badly. Detours to his office to get water.
8:30 a.m. Radiator bone dry and steaming, but husband cannot get into office to get water, since office key evidently still lying in driveway.
8:35 a.m. Sun is shining, not a cloud in the sky. Mother walks through woods to arrive an hour early. Still worrying obsessively about umbrella. Alarm goes off. I realize I am out of cigarettes.
8:50 a.m. Husband prays way to filling station without water. Filling station is closed. (Maybe prayer cancelled out by earlier censored muttering?)
9:00 a.m. Ingenious husband finds outside water tap and coke can to fill radiator.
9:15 a.m. Husband learns noteworthy fact: It takes fifty to sixty coke cans of water to fill a radiator.
9:20 a.m. Son calls asking if Dad went back to sleep. (My reply censored.)
9:25 a.m. I see handwriting on wall and start calling to find a ride to church.
9:30 a.m. Husband realizes Suburban’s gas tank is registering empty and wallet almost empty. (Regresses to censored muttering.)
9:35 a.m. I start calling to find substitutes for teaching, lecturing, serving, and ushering.
9:40 a.m. Husband finds open self-serve gas station. Gas gauge now registering slightly above empty. Wallet registering empty. Switches back to prayer.
9:45 a.m. My mother still worrying about umbrella. I remember it’s in the truck. I start searching purses and pockets for cigarettes.
9:50 a.m. Husband arrives to rescue son. Ignores question about whereabouts for last hour and a half. Opts to use Suburban to push truck all the way back to our regular service station where we have credit.
10:10 a.m. Arrives at service station, which is still closed. Starts son refilling hot radiator with the coke can and a seven up can from the truck. Son asks no more questions.
10:15 a.m. Service station attendant arrives. Diagnosis truck as needing a mechanic, but Suburban just needs a new water hose. Suspense builds. Do they have a water hose? Why ruin a perfect record. Of course not. Husband beyond muttering, censored or otherwise.
10:20 a.m. Miracle discovery of an open parts store one block away. Son has enough money to buy hose. Husband repairs hose.
Meanwhile back at the old homestead, chaos reigns, as children and grandmother freak out over noisy impending demise of adorable chipmunk in jaws of hungry cat in full view outside sliding glass door. I shout over uproar and hand down ruling that all close their eyes and ears and accept cat’s role in ecological balance of nature. Children go sulk in rooms and grandmother goes home in protest. I surreptitiously dig for long cigarette butts in ashtrays. I try one more call, then give up on finding a lector substitute and mentally wish priest luck.
10:50 a.m. Hooray, hose is fixed and husband and son on way home. Suburban begins to make ominous jet airplane noises.
11:00 a.m. Husband and son arrive home in Suburban with jet airplane delusion. Grandmother arrives with doughnuts to console children. Son calls boss and is requested to come as soon as possible, “or else” is implied.
For next ten minutes we hold a democratic discussion, loosely translated as everyone yelling at once, about possibilities of son dropping everyone off at church and how many friends would it take to get us all home afterward? And how would we get groceries? Fifteen year old expresses grievance about not getting to go play tennis. My and my husband’s simultaneous spontaneous responses censored. (We regress a lot.) Son worrying about jet noises, since his job is fifty miles away. Mother still looking for umbrella. Cat still nibbling on chipmunk, which fortunately is beyond caring.
11:15 a.m. We call married son, whose wife is sick with a stomach virus, but who agrees to pick us up at the grocery in an hour and bring us home.
11:30 a.m. Eighteen year old drops parents like kittens in Kroger parking lot and jets off to work.
12:00 noon Run into mechanic in Krogers. His diagnosis: truck seriously ill, Suburban’s jet noise
also may be serious and dangerous on the highway.
12:30 p.m. Married son packs us and our eight sacks of groceries into his small car.
12:45 p.m. Son’s car begins making strange noise half-way to our house. Son stops to
Investigate. Husband remains numbly staring into space, while lighting two cigarettes at the same time.
12:55 p.m. Ice cream melts.
1:05 p.m. Start on again. Noise quits, but car drags bottom along last stretch of rough road.
Son sighs a lot. Husband mute.
1:20 p.m. Arrive home with eight sacks of groceries to ravenous whiney children, full cat, Mother again asking my husband about her umbrella. As husband opens six pack bought at Krogers, I hear him muttering something about “where the sun don’t shine.”
1:30 p.m. Phone rings and I panic that it might be about son driving the dangerous Suburban. It’s the person in charge of lectors asking was anything the matter, that our son didn’t come to lector?
2:30 p.m. Person in charge of lectors says that she is sorry she asked.
2:45 p.m. Husband finishes six pack. I escort mother, who is still obsessing about her umbrella through the woods to the safety of her house.
Safe from the Monsters Under the Bed
“Emma.” Nanu exclaimed, “Why are you out of your bed?”
“I’m scared of the monsters hiding under there,” Emma sobbed.
“Oh! I understand,” nodded Nanu, as she held out her arms.
With Emma snuggled into her lap, Nanu whispered in her ear,
“I remember when I was a child and used to get scared.”
“What did you do?” Emma asked, whispering back.
“Hiding under the covers was my favorite safe place.”
“But what about the monsters? Weren’t you afraid?”
“Well, I’d leap into bed from at least two feet away,
right into the safe space, smack-dab in the middle.
Then, I’d yank the covers up over my head,
staying perfectly still, with my eyes shut tight,
my legs close together and my arms at my sides,
so not any part of me would hang over the edge.
Then I felt safe from anything under the bed.
I’d wake up next morning still frozen in place
with my arms a bit cramped from being held close.
But, I’ve always been safe from the monsters at night.
And as you can see, that’s been a long while.
It’s been seventy years, since I was your age.”
Emma studied Nanu’s wrinkles and very white hair,
thought about it a moment, then nodded her head.
Her grandmother’s story had made her feel bold.
“My bed will be my safe place,……at least ‘til I’m old.”
Vanity, the Great Motivator
I’ve written about being a charter member of the Church of Devout Cowardice and how in my sixties, I finally decided I might as well risk riding down a luge on a tour in Austria, since I was already in pain and in a wheelchair.
Recently, I turned seventy-five about the same time my great-grandson turned sixteen . I suggested we celebrate together by riding a new zip line in our area. But, he must have inherited my genes and joined my old church, because he said, “NO WAY!”
Then to my dismay, I discovered that the upper age limit is sixty-five. I considered trying to get a fake ID, but thought perhaps that was a bad example for my great-grandchildren.
Suddenly, I ugly laughed out loud, remembering that a few weeks ago, I had done something with a lot more potential for serious injury than riding a zip line.
We were invited to go out to dinner and the symphony with some young and glamorous family members, so I bought my first pair of high heels in about twenty-years. Even after several days of practice walking in them, I had to cling to my husband’s arm most of the evening. (I left my walker at home. Somehow, it seemed to defeat the effect of the high heels.)
Adventure has nothing on vanity as a motive for risk taking.
Laughter: Carbonated Grace 