Tagged: Humor

Refusing Role Call

I’m on Linkedin a lot to promote my Forbes.com stories and podcast, Tales From the Beat, so I see things. What I see are a ton of people who write they’re looking for “a new role.”

Of course these are unfortunate individuals who have found themselves suddenly payless because the thing they were doing to make a living was taken away from them due to firing, layoff, business failure or just bad luck.

It happened to me back in January, 2001 when I was laid off as part of the awesome merger between CNN parent company Time-Warner and AOL. I was the CNN Detroit bureau chief and correspondent at the time and was one of about 1,000 employees told to hit the road, thanks to the recommendations by an outside consultant.

So I’ve been there.

In my “role” as a father and husband I burned some of my generous severance to take my family on a vacation out to Arizona, then went to work…looking for work…a job.

The term “role” never entered my mind. I’m not an actor, although I act up some times. I actually was a speech and theater major in college until I realized I had no future as an actor because I couldn’t remember my lines. That’s one of the reasons I pivoted to broadcasting, because you get to read stuff instead of memorizing it.

But I’ve been thinking a lot about the wide use of the term “role” because, well, everyone has a role. Maybe you’re a partner, spouse, parent, mentor, individual pursuing life, support for a disabled person, confidante, conspirator. Those are all roles.

Folks, what you really need….is a job. It may not be as elegant a term as role, but it’s what you really seek.

You need a job because you don’t have one. You need a job because you need a source of income. You need a job because you enjoy working in your chosen field and it gives you pleasure, satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment.

Why do we need to use this word “role” to soften the message?

There is zero shame in admitting you need a job. There is no shame in admitting you need work. It’s what we all need unless you’re independently wealthy.  

Coming out loud and clear that you’re in the job market is actually a great message. It tells prospective employers you’re ready to work and don’t mince words. Yup, no screwing around. “I need a job. I’m right for your company because I have all the skills, great employment record, list of accomplishments. I’ve thoroughly researched your company, its goals, its culture, its accomplishments and I bring qualities that will add value to the operation.

You’re not looking to play a role, you’re not looking to play at all. You’re looking to do a job and do it well in exchange for money.

Actors who play roles have understudies to step in when they can’t come to work. In real life, we don’t have the convenience of someone being paid to wait around backstage to do our jobs in case we don’t show up.

In my entire working 52 year working life, I never once said, “gotta head off to my role now!” I’ve never undergone “on the role training.”

I went to work. I underwent on the job training.

There’s no reason to substitute some sugar-coated euphemism to soften the message.

Just say what you mean. Use honest words to find honest work. You’ll always have your life’s role.

Party Pooper

My wife likes purple. I thought it would be cool if I tossed a bag of purple candy in her Christmas stocking. I looked in every supermarket and big box store but purple colored candy just wasn’t something any of them offered. Online wasn’t an option. Christmas was just a day away and I don’t fall for the “Prime” extortion.

I was about to give up when I decided to try my luck in a store that was all about celebrating, since purple seemed to be a celebratory color, if not exactly appetizing.

Yes, Party City had bags of it. Tubes of it. All the purple M&Ms any number of humans could desire simultaneously. It had so many pieces of purpley pills that would melt neither in ones mouth or hands I had to contain myself. Hell, I wanted to toss myself a party for popping into Party City. It would be a theme party with purple hats, cups and paper plates and plastic utensils. Everyone I invited could take a whack at a purple pinata in the shape of a lavender lizard. I wouldn’t even have to leave Party City to get all that stuff because it was all there.

In fact..on the Party City website you could actually search for stuff not only by theme or occasion, but by color. Click on purple and voila, it’s a grape new world!

Now the suits who run Party City say the entire chain is closing down. They say the Party City poopers are discount stores, online marketplaces, people not throwing parties at all that require bundles of balloons or paper tablecloths and napkins with pictures of ponies or super heroes.  

What are kids doing for birthday parties? Maybe there’s an app for that, like everything else. How do you play pin the tail on the donkey—close your eyes and take a poke at a smartphone screen? Feels ass-backwards.

Where do you get party favors? You know, those little tchotchkes you give each kid who is sure to either break it or choke on it before the candles are even lit? I’m told you can get that stuff at “dollar” stores. Heh. Even those have given up the ghost now charging at least a buck-twenty-five for their wares that were barely worth a single in the first place and it’s never as cool or in the variety Party City offers.

I always enjoyed watching some poor mom or dad trying to schlep out to their car with a bundle of a dozen helium balloons, struggling to get out the door without cursing as that big Mickey Mouse one got loose and headed to oblivion in the troposphere.

Where do you even buy helium-filled balloons now? When I was growing up long ago, Party City didn’t yet exist. It was hard to find a place to buy helium balloons, so my father figured out if you rub an inflated balloon on your pants it created enough static electricity for the balloon to stick to the wall…for about 10 minutes.

Oh, you might find another store that sells helium-filled balloons but only Party City has them for every freakin’ age decade–although I’d be afraid to buy one for someone turning 80. The damned thing bursts, scares the crap out of the new octogenarian, that’s their last birthday. Too bad because Party City has balloons for when you turn 90 or 100. So deflating.

I’m not much for dressing up for Halloween, or even to go to the store, but hell, you never know when you’ll get the yen to pop on a Green Glam Wig when you’re too lazy or late to wash your hair..or you just wanna look greeny-glam.

I never really got the thing with “gender reveal” parties. I mean, when we had our kids the nurse or doctor just kinda looked, er, under the hood, when the cherub made his or her way into the world from the tunnel of love. But nowadays couple want to know in advance so they can decorate the nursery gender-specifically, advise attendees to their baby shower not to gift jock straps when they know the lil’ darlin’ about to emerge will have nothing to strap in.

I know, I know. You can find them online. I did, but hell, you don’t get the satisfaction of watching the smirk on the face of the pimply teen-aged cashier or the opportunity to tell a bad dad joke while cashing out. “Yeah, the wife and I are celebrating our second honeymoon. Heh-heh.” Then you apologize as the kid makes some rude remark about Boomers.

Sure enough, Party City carries just the right accessories for gender reveal soirees. I love the paper plates that say, “just here for the SEX.” Heh. I’m here for that! Where will you buy those now?

I could go on and on about all the party paraphernalia at Party City, but you get the idea. We’re just losing too many go-to chains that we long depended on for one reason or another, like Big Lots—cheap stuff, tacky furniture, giant containers of cajun snack mix and a hundred varieties of ear buds and pods for Keurigs.

But I mourn the passing of Party City the most. It’s not that I visited the store very often, but sometimes it’s just nice to know a place like that is there when you need it. Like when your partner in life decides she has a new favorite color M&Ms, or when a friend turning 100 boldly requests a helium balloon and doesn’t care if it bursts, because they can’t hear it anyway.

So long, Party City. I’d say “party’s over” but that’s just too trite..and I won’t be party to that.

Simplifying Self-Help

Do you rely on so-called “self-help” books to improve whatever it is you want to improve? About eight years ago I wrote about why I don’t think much of them and my unexpected reply to a college student who asked me following a speech I gave, what self-help book I would recommend to improve relationships with co-workers. It’s in the blog post to which I’ve linked.

Lately I started thinking about self-help books again for a couple of reasons. For one, while in a book store, I noticed they’re not called “self-help” books anymore, but rather less obtuse categories such as “self-improvement” or “life-improvement.” 

Do those alternative categories soften the realization that one might need actual help in some area of their lives? If so, why is that necessary? There’s no shame in seeking help and we can all certainly stand to improve.

But it falls under a growing trend de-sensitize the truth. It sounds kinda harsh to say we need “help,” and clothing for larger folks is no longer labeled “plus sizes” but rather “comfort fit.” That’s fine. Self-esteem is important and I take no issue with attempts to help individuals feel better about themselves.

That leads to my main point. Self-help, or self-improvement, whichever you prefer, is much simpler than the myriad books and magazine articles make it seem. There’s no need to fill hundreds of pages with many thousands of words.

Self-help can be as simple as self-control. See? Two words.

Let’s take it further by drastically simplifying other subjects of bloated self-help books.

Marie Kondo has made a career with books and TV shows about organizing. I can boil organizing down to six words: “Throw things out. Put things away.” There. Simple.

How about leading a healthier life? So many millions of words blather on about this diet or that lifestyle. I’ll save you a lot of time with this word diet:

“Don’t eat crap. Get enough sleep. Get more exercise.”

Oh, I love the riot of rhetoric about how to get along better at work. This one is near and dear to me because I find workplaces can be one of the worst environments for spending the valuable time we have on Earth.

For this one I’m a little more expansive:

“Focus on your task. Be willing to listen more than speak at meetings. Don’t gossip. Ignore assholes. Office coffee is gross. Bring your own.”

I love the many books out there on how to negotiate—whether it’s a pay raise, business deal, price on a new car.

I’ll negotiate that issue thusly and succinctly:

“Know what you want. Know what you’ll accept. Don’t accept any less. Be willing to walk away.”

One of the more popular topics of self-help books is on relieving stress. I find plowing through hundreds of pages to find the answer is stressful, so I’ll pare it down to a less-stressful volume.

Big task ahead? “Break it down to its parts and complete one at a time rather than look at one big giant task ahead.”

Deadline? “No problem. When the deadline arrives you’re finished so you know you don’t have to live with the task beyond that. So stay focused, get it done, then relax.”

Bigger credit card bill than you can afford? “See what you can return. Pay it down over time. Learn the lesson and don’t do it again.”

See? I just boiled down five types of self-help books to a handful of words. Most of the help we need is not all that complicated and easy to understand if you don’t muck it up with pages and pages of blah, blah, blah.

Indeed, I’ll offer this brief self-help for would -be authors of future self-help books: “Keep it simple. Make it clear. Kill fewer trees.”

I’m telling you, we could shrink the self-help, or self-improvement, book store and library sections to maybe one shelf of single-sheets of concise advice.

It could work—so help me.

Detroit’s Multi-Towering Conundrum–The Renaissance Center’s Dark Ages

What do you do with seven giant glass tubes sticking out of the ground that happen to be the most famous and distinctive feature of your city’s skyline? That’s the question folks around Detroit are asking ever since General Motors CEO Mary Barra announced the company is moving its world headquarters out of the Renaissance Center next year to a new building about a mile north.

Some say tear it all down. Barra promised GM and the developer still putting the finishing touches on the building to which the automaker is moving will work to, um, reimagine the colossal architectural beast.

Yes, I call it a beast that should actually never have been imagined.

Some context. I lived in Atlanta for eight years in the 1980’s when I worked for CNN. It’s where I saw the first iteration of what would grow to become the actual center of the Renaissance Center.

You see, the architect John Portman built his first tubular monstrosity in the city of a hundred streets with Peachtree in their names…and now, one hotel..the Peachtree Plaza. The single glass tube instantly became the key feature of Atlanta’s skyline, showcased in every image of the growing city’s downtown.

The first time I landed in Atlanta for my interview at CNN in 1981, I looked north from the terminal and saw that thing sticking up like a 12-year boy’s first real boner. The city Sherman burnt down was rising again and finally reaching puberty.

Thankfully, over the years, as Atlanta grew, so did its skyline and Portman’s glass pipette is less prominent.

Here in Detroit Henry Ford II, the Deuce, figured he’d more than double what Portman planted in Dixie and, together with Detroit leaders, commissioned the architect to duplicate Atlanta’s Peachtree Plaza, but then surround it with four octagonal office buildings all connected by a network of passageways that would challenge even the most accomplished spelunkers.

The new Renaissance Center, or RenCen, would become the symbol of Detroit…the Renaissance City. Planted on the banks of the Detroit River, facing Windsor, Canada, the RenCen overshadowed and loomed over older landmark downtown buildings such as the Penobscot and Guardian to herald the Motor City’s vitality and prominence, or at least assert it.  

If anything, the RenCen was a photogenic feature that made for effective marketing materials.

Less than 20 years later it all went bad.

In 1989 I was transferred by CNN from Atlanta to Detroit to become its new bureau chief and correspondent. The company had me spend a few days getting to know the staff and the city before moving here. They put me up in what was then the Omni Hotel in the Millender Center…connected to the RenCen by a short pedestrian bridge over Jefferson Avenue.

Of course, I had heard of the RenCen and decided, one evening, to explore this famous landmark. As soon as I entered it from the pedway I felt like a piece of dust might feel as it’s sucked into the collection bag of a Hoover. It was dark and directionless, with scant chance of quick escape.

If I was a mouse seeking a piece of cheese I would starve before finding the morsel since there was no apparent logic to the labyrinth’s layout. I wasn’t dumb enough to attempt to explore the complex because it was just too, well, complex. So I returned, disappointed, to my hotel room.

Not long after I moved up to Detroit and was with my camera crew, I returned with them to the RenCen to shoot an interview with a prominent economist at Comerica Bank which had offices in one of the towers. We weaved in and out between the towers and concourses searching for the right tube to ascend to reach our destination. We were late. We apologized. The economist laughed as he said, “This place sucks. Everyone gets lost…the first dozen times they come here.”

Another time, years later, as I was heading to a meeting a very upset man came up to me. “You look like you know your way around. Please, I heard there’s an ATM here. Can you direct me?”

Deciding this person was an honest Joe who did not deserve to have his hopes and dreams crushed, I looked him in the eye and said, “Sir. Even if I told you, you’d never find it. There’s a bank right across the street. Just head for the daylight of the exit and never stop. I want you to see your family again.”

The man instantly did as he was told. He knew. The RenCen’s tubes would suck you up like bacteria in a test lab.

The place not only didn’t make sense, but it wasn’t making any money as tenants fled to locations where employees, customers and clients could reasonably expect to find their destinations without the utter frustration of being caught in a glass and concrete hamster cage.

Just as it was given up for dead, in 1996 GM bought the place at a bargain rate and moved its world headquarters there from an historic building a couple of miles north. The automaker saved the day. Instantly, thousands of people occupied offices, supported the stores and restaurants. The RenCen had a new life!

Not so fast. Shortly after GM made the move we had an interview booked with then GM CEO Jack Smith. Nice guy. The interview was for our annual auto show special and our producer wanted to use lots of lights.

We plugged ‘em in. Our lights, and all the lights on the floor, went out. Guess the building wasn’t quite ready for prime time…or any time that required extra voltage. It took a few minutes, but the electricians did their magic and we smartly reduced our lighting scheme.

Smith was cool about it. “I guess there’s still some work to be done,” he said with an embarrassed chuckle.

There was plenty of work still to be done.

 GM poured millions upon millions to finally take some of the mystery of navigating the maze with a simple innovation called the circulation ring. No more weaving in and out. Take the ring like a big traffic roundabout and bail out when you reached the exit closest to your destination. The big berms that walled off the complex from the rest of the city were torn down and the soaring Wintergarden was built, offering a bright gathering venue and passageway to the Detroit River.

Then Covid hit. People started working from home. The RenCen returned to its ghostly, pre-GM silence. After the pandemic abated, Barra said workers needed to return three days a week, but by then many of them had already relocated to other GM facilities and others just never returned.

It became time to find a smaller place for the automaker to park.

So what to do with it when Mary and all her sheep settle in their new pasture?

Some say to knock it down. Others imagine apartments, condos, restaurants, some commercial space.

In another era, it might have served well as a garrison guarding Detroit against hostile canon fire from gunboats on the Detroit River. Ah..Fort Renaissance! Tower 400 forever! We have secured the circulation ring! Remember the Marriott! It’s enough to make one forget the Alamo, which is much, much smaller and has an expensive gift shop.

Only because I’m semi-retired and have the time, I think about the future of the Renaissance Center. To demolish it would just add tons of waste to the environment. To save it would just leave tons of waste above ground where at least squatters could literally lose themselves for awhile.

Maybe get Carvana to turn one of the towers into its most giant vehicle vending machine. Wouldn’t you love to see your late model Buick do a swan dive from the 39th floor? Good way to test its shocks.

Offer bungie and parachute jumping over the river. Just make sure you packed your passport in case the winds make you wind up in Windsor.

Fill one tower with infused water for all those enjoying Detroit’s magnificent River Walk. Lotsa taps all around the tower where walkers, joggers, cyclists could fill their Stanley cups, less than a mile from where the Detroit Red Wings won their Stanley Cups. Joe Louis Arena is long gone but the ground remains hallowed. Hey…it’s all marketing, go with it.

In reality, the RenCen will probably become the banal “mixed-use” property with a variety of residences, hotels, stores, restaurants and maybe once in a while, sponsored races around the circulation ring.

I can’t wait to see how Mary Barra and master developer Dan Gilbert will reimagine the RenCen, because love it or hate it, it would be a colossal shame if our city’s signature bundle of glass towers was allowed to go down the tubes.

Becoming a Disc-Tossing Basket Case

That’s me “putting” at the Founder’s Park disc golf course in Farmington Hills, Michigan

The wind blew light droplets of rain in my face. The ground was muddy and a copse of trees stood defiantly, daring me to find a way inside of it to my target which amounted to a metal tray surrounded by chains mounted on a pole.

It was my first time and it was as ugly as the weather and the basket’s inaccessible disposition. My first toss wobbled insanely before smacking into the ground and landing about 50 feet from the concrete tee pad, putting it about 200 feet from the target.

I was hooked.

Egged on by my daughter and boy friend who discovered it over the summer, this was my first round of a sport that doesn’t piss off neighbors by its noise like pickleball, doesn’t require a reservation or, in most cases, cost a dime to play beyond the purchase of a set of projectiles.

Don’t you dare care call it “Frisbee Golf.” That’s old school. More on that in a bit. Avoid “the look” and use the correct term, disc golf.

Oh, you may have seen the baskets on poles around parks and wondered what they are. I had heard of a game where people tossed Frisbees at targets and thought it was just a backyard game like cornhole or badminton.

I was vaguely curious about it but never followed through. I’ve owned a few Frisbees over the years and actually still have one somewhere in my basement.

Back in October my daughter told me she and her boy friend, who’s really a life partner told me they’d been playing disc golf and loved it so much they started playing almost every day at one of the many courses in the Detroit metro area. Really? Who knew?

My bad knees kinda put a damper in my longtime habit of playing pickup ice hockey and she thought this would be a fun substitute. They invited me to join them on a visit to Ypsilanti where, holy crap, is the biggest store devoted to disc golf in Michigan….The Throw Shop!

We get there and there’s row after row of discs in every color, size and configuration. My eyes hurt from the chromatic blast.

It turns out a disc isn’t just a disc. They are divided by drivers for long tosses, mid-range discs for tosses not so long and putters, for that last fling at the basket. The disc also carry a set of four numbers that indicated speed, fade, glide and turn. I won’t get into what all that means except to say the numbers matter when choosing discs. You can read the details here.

Our putters after successfully hitting the basket.

Just like the other golf you have to put together a set of discs to carry in a bag on the course. Using the numbers as a guide you select the right disc for the shot. New discs cost $15 and $30 or more, but there’s a great selection of used discs at half the cost you can buy just to try the sport.

That’s what I did at one of those Play it Again Sports shops. It wasn’t long, though, before I sprung for a brand new driver. I’m told devoted disc golfers carry more than a dozen discs. My daughter calls them her “friends.” Sometimes they are. Sometimes, at least in my neophyte hands, they’re bastards.

After spinning my head at the Throw Shop we walked across the parking lot to one of the adjacent courses that costs exactly zero to play. That’s where I had my initial encounter with the evil oak trees.

Daughter and BF gave me instructions and encouragment. That’s after I had watched many minutes of disc golf how-to videos on YouTube. It was obvious it takes more than that to master the sport.

I attempted to replicate the good form presented to me in person and online and I did manage to pull off enough good throws to warrant a few “not baaaadddds!” or “there you go’s!” And just like what disc golfers derisively call “ball golf” I found every tree, water trap and bramble bush while slipping through the mud to retrieve my disc and toss again.

Then I’d make a long putt. Nothing like that sound of the disc hitting the chains and dropping into the basket. It’s enough encouragement to keep up your morale and anticipation of moving on to the next hole.

At some point you’re so enamored with the exercise, fresh air, challenge and walk through the courses that can take you on forested trails, hilltops, around small bodies of water or open fields stopping to toss the disc is just a value-added aspect of the entire enterprise.

It’s important at this point to take a step back to provide some context so you don’t think I’m just some crazy old man wandering around tossing round plastic plates indiscriminately in public places.

So yes, the sport did begin as Frisbee Golf, promoted by the man who invented the Frisbee, a guy named “Steady” Ed Headrick, who invented the Frisbee as an employee of the company that made them, Wham-O.

Frisbee inventor and creator of disc golf, “Steady” Ed Headrick. Courtesy Connecting Directors

To make a long story short, Headrick promoted the sport, founded the Professional Disc Golf Association (PDGA) then ran into other folks who began playing with non-Frisbee discs and therefore the name change to the more generic disc gold.

He eventually ceded control of the PDGA in 1984 to Ted Smethers in Rochester, N.Y. by handing him a bottle of Rochester-brewed Genesee Cream Ale.

You can read the full story of disc golf’s history here.

Note: My wife is from Rochester and I’ve quaffed many bottles and cans of “Jenny Cream.” It’s damned good, unlike regular Genesee Beer, about which my late father used to muse, “how do they get that big horse over that little bottle?”

Ahem. Sorry. Anyway, there’s no shortage of places to play. According to UDisc, as of February, 2023, there are 14,048 disc golf courses on this planet, of which there are about 9,000 in the United States, more than any other country.

There’s even a disc golf course in Anarctica. Heh..a basket on a pole at a pole.

Ross Island disc golf course at McMurdo Base, Anarctica. Courtesy UDisc.com

So far the cold weather hasn’t kept me from playing as often as I can, although not often enough. I just layer up, wear really crappy old sneakers for mucking around on the muddy trails, step up to the concrete tee pad and attempt to improve my form and results.

It’s great exercise, inexpensive and challenging enough to keep me motivated without getting discouraged. You know what’s also great about disc golf? It ain’t pickleball.

An Open Letter to the UAW and Detroit 3 Automakers

Dear Contract Combatants:

I’m writing to you to request you move the expiration date of your labor contracts because it conflicts with a date related to my domestic bliss and continued marital comity.

You see, my wife and I were married on September 15th, 1973 about 370 miles east of Detroit in our native state of New York.

We were but 21 at the time and not yet even experienced enough in our careers to call us “green” meaning we had no congizance whatsoever of your quadrennial exercise in contractual Hunger Games.

We led fine and happy lives through our early married life, always approaching celebration our anniversary with happy anticipation and thoughts of expensive gifts and meals.

But in 1989 that all changed. CNN transferred me up to the Motor City from Atlanta to take over as the bureau chief and correspondent at the network’s Detroit Bureau. We covered a wide region and variety of stories from suicide doctor Jack Kevorkian to hurricanes, crime, medicine, government…everything, including, of course, the auto industry. Indeed CNN founder Ted Turner created the Detroit Bureau to cover, as he accurately called it, “the biggest industry in the world.”

That meant covering the contract talks between you guys and of course the contracts always expired on either September 14th or 15th. Since you almost never reached a tentative agreement by the expiration date we beat reporters would get stuck awaiting the white smoke to appear languishing, sleeping, filing, doing thumbsucker live shots, killing time until something happened.

Yes, you automakers fed us well. Any reporter of a certain vintage will not forget GM providing an almost endless supply of Dove Bars.

Good eatin’ but it kept me away from home on our anniversary which caused a combination of disappointment, anger, tears and fat chance reliving honeymoon night.

On our 20th anniversary in 1993, CNN took pity on me and sent former Detroit Bureau chief, the late, great Bob Vito to spell me at Ford headquarters. Nice touch, but Vito didn’t show up until 11:30pm on the 15th from Los Angeles because, as he put it, “I hadn’t had a Lafayette Coney in years and I had a craving.”

Not only was he very late, but had terrible chile dog breath. I got home with about 3 minutes left on our “special” day.

Every contract since, whether I was working in TV, the Detroit News or flipped over to PR at Chrysler, we’d have to time-shift celebration of our anniversary to avoid being screwed by you guys not shaking hands on a deal on time.

This year is our 50th anniversary. I’m now semi-retired but working freelance. I have informed my clients that I’m out of the mix this time around on the 15th. No matter what happens…deal, no deal, strike, no strike, I’m a ghost.

Even though technology..and common sense, has elminated the need for reporters to sleep at the various automakers’ headquarters awaiting word that you’ve either reached a deal or are playing the game into overtime, I’ll be spending the 15th blissfully someplace else, celebrating the fact my wife and I haven’t drawn pistols at dawn after half a century together.

But then, dammit, the clock will tick, the calendar will turn and the 15th will turn into the 16th and if you guys don’t figure it out by then I’m out of excuses.

So help a reporter out. Move the date your contracts expire to, say, the spring. How ’bout April 15th, tax day? No one celebrates that. How hard would that be? Maybe I’ll even buy you all Dove Bars.

Thanks very much,

Ed Garsten

Graduating Seniors

I like discounts but I don’t like being discounted. That’s why I’m letting it be known here and now I’ve not only graduated, I’ve gravitated towards a new classification. Enough word play? Ha! Ask ChatGPT for that kind of linguistic gymnastics.

So yes, I’m at a certain age where I’m offered, and happily accept, so-called “senior discounts.” Might be a buck or two, but I’ll take it, because who wouldn’t accept even a minimal deal?

But here’s my deal, and I offer it to all of you who spent enough time on Mother Earth to be called a “senior.” It’s time to graduate to another, higher, more meaningful and inclusive grade level.

We used to call dumb guys who got left back in 12th grade as “super seniors.” Well, I believe if you’ve made it past the years of toiling for a paycheck, shelling out for child care, college, weddings, Bar Mitzvahs and are onto enjoying whatever years you’ve got left in the tank, you’re pretty freakin’ super, but not stagnated as a “senior.”

Oh no. Considering all our experiences, insights, challenges faced and met, wisdom and matchbook collections we’re beyond “senior moments.”

Despite whatever wounds we’ve suffered, setbacks faced, enemies battled, in-laws tolerated, we survive and thrive through the ongoing wars of life.

That’s why I will now be known not as a senior citizen but as a “LIFE VETERAN.” Battle-hardened but not hard-bitten, still fighting the good fight from the comfort of my laptop and patio.

Oh, we life veterans have plenty left to give. Always ready with an anecdote we’ve told a million times, advice based on our decades of having gone through the same shit as “lower classmen and women”–those are people who, until this writing, may have aspired to graduate as senior citizens.

I will also suggest a special branch of the VFW where that acronym stands for Veterans For Wisdom. A place we can gather, bullshit to each other over cold longnecks and trade, yes, bits of wisdom based on experiences from our earlier lives. Never too late to learn.

AARP, take notice. I know you’ll accept anyone 50 and over for membership. 50? Those are still kids. Life veterans still wear Dockers that are older than 50. Yes, we’re in our own graduate-level class and quite satisfied.

What’s the age level to be classified as a life veteran? There is none. You’ll know it when you qualify. You look down. You’re wearing slip-on Skechers. It’s the uniform. Life veterans—wear it proudly—you’ve earned the right not to bend…and a senior discount.

The Seven-Year Itching

I wrote two stories today. Not 300-word quickies, not 1,500 word deep-dives. Somewhere in between. It wouldn’t be a big deal but in a few weeks I’ll be celebrating seven years since I swiped my badge to releasing me from then-Fiat Chrysler into the free air of retirement.

Just the other day, when I mentioned to someone I had a fairly full schedule of interviews and meetings related to my two freelance gigs, the person asked, “why, why still work so hard if you’re retired?”

The answer is so easy. First of all, it’s never work to me. Writing is recreation to me. Has been since I was a kid. Second, and this is the big one, because every time I interview someone I learn something. There’s little more satisfying, besides indulging in a giant anything from Cold Stone Creamery, than speaking with a young entrepreneur, or technology whiz who came up with a brilliant idea, had the guts to take it further, build a business, create something that will improve a process or our lives.

I’ve always said journalism is the ticket to a free education, and, someone will also pay you while you learn!

I manage my time so I’m never putting in the hours of an actual working stiff—just enough to keep my brain filled with new stuff and fodder for the handful of Forbes.com stories I file each month. I do a little consulting for Franco PR—an absolutely joyous opportunity to work with a bright, creative, fun and adventurous staff that also yearns to learn and puts up with an old war horse’s war stories.

Yup, I have plenty of time to kayak, play a little ice hockey, bang on my drums and make lots of noise with my collection of electric guitars on that big, new Fender amp I just bought.

So if there’s such a thing as the seven-year itch during retirement, it’s the itch to keep my gray matter, mattering, even as my graying hair thins and falls. Who cares? As long as there’s something under my noggin’ that’s working, I don’t care what used to be on top of it.

Let Sleeping Limbs Lie

The other night I got up around 3am because my left arm fell asleep. The more I thought about it, the more I wondered why, in the middle of the night, the rest of me wasn’t asleep. When all of me is asleep does it actually feel as numb as my sleepy arm, only I don’t know about because, well, I’m asleep?

Taking this further, if I start shaking my arm that’s asleep and wake it up, then go back to sleep, have I just wasted my time? Seems like I’m pissing off my arm which was sound asleep, until I rudely rousted it then expected it to immediately return to slumber.

When I finally awakened to start my day and grab some breakfast, it was difficult to lift a spoon to eat my Cheerios. You see my spoon-lifting left arm was lethargic from having its sleep interrupted and was grouchy the rest of the day, at one point, refusing to participate in nut cracking—a two-armed task, and threatened a stirring strike, leaving undissolved sugar at the bottom of my coffee cup.

Oh, I could use my right arm but as a southpaw it would only result in a dreadful mess and give my left arm another reason to elbow the milk carton in a mocking manner.

Consider this a valuable lesson learned. If you wake up in the middle of the night with a snoozing extremity, turn over and let it go. It’s nothing to lose sleep over.

A Breakup, Unmasked

We first met in the spring of 2020, albeit reluctantly. It was more of an arranged coupling. I was quite happy in my current situation but fate mandated our star-crossed relationship. Oh, I suppose we all experience initial errors and false starts when considering what would turn out to be almost constant contact, but I chalk this up to aiming way too low, ratcheting up my vulnerability to levels dangerously high.

Here I was, perfectly healthy with a firm intention to stay that way. Then the “relationship” came into my life at the command of the government. First it was quarantine to stave off an incidious virus, then, in order to take baby steps in public my first face partner was forced on me. It was paper, temporary, barely functional but what can I say, it wasn’t as if there were many choices at first.

I slapped it over my nose and mouth and gamely ventured to the grocery store for a few vital necessities: bread, milk, Oreos, and craft beer. We didn’t get along from the get go. Scratchy, stiff, utterly inflexible—the quick breakup was a relief, but I needed to quickly find a new partner or be sentenced to house arrest.

And then, ah…as if created out of thin air I was presented with a vision of soft, black-lined cloth with a forgiving elastic strap. As I placed it upon my face we were in instant simpatico. I hadn’t felt such comfort and ease since overdosing on Dulcolax during a lost weekend in Inkster, Michigan.

Oh, we had our little spats from time to time. There was the instance where I foolishly decided to enter an overcrowded Cabela’s a week before deer hunting season. My facial protector scowled at my indiscretion scolding me saying, “you KNOW I’m no N95. Why put me in a position of almost certain failure?”

In my guilt I turned tail, made my way around the displays of dead, stuffed wildlife and emerged into an almost deadlier environment—the massive parking lot populated almost exclusively by diesel-powered heavy duty pickup trucks spewing black clouds of lethal dreck. There would be hell to pay when we got home, including a thorough laundering.

Still, we hung together for almost exactly three years through super spreader environments that included malls, air travel, occasional visits to the office and the in-laws. My protector was impervious to it all and I suffered not even a slight runny nose all that time.

But then, just in the past few weeks, I felt a distance—between my mouth, nose and my material significant other. Gaps had formed. It wasn’t the same. I felt vulnerable. It felt loose. Then one night I awoke with a scratchy throat, runny nose and an unexplainable anticipation of the next episode of “Call Me Kat.” Something was wrong.

My family urged me to take a test. I did. I failed. I instantly moved into a spare room isolating me from those I loved and others who were willing to let me win Uno. I called my doctor. A strong prescription was ordered followed by a question only an experienced, training healthcare professional could conjure: did your mask fail you?”

I caught my breath, thought of the good times we had over the past three years, our initial adjustment period but ultimate comfort level between us and then admitted, “yes doc, I believe it to be so.”

The callous bastard ordered me to immediately toss it in a can and replace it with another that would offer sufficient protection for the long haul.

Tough love, he called it. I slowly removed it from my face, said my goodbyes, thanked it for its service. We parted as friends, but not before it landed one last shot.

“You just had to lower me in that crowded Costco to taste that free guac sample…and I get the blame. You’re all the same. No self-control…it’s a damn pandemic.”