Rambling Josh

When I saw the picture of my Aunt Susie and my first-grade teacher Mrs. McEvers on the front page of the December 4th edition of the Burke County Tribune under the title, “Dixon Celebrates 40 Years in Salon Business”, my first thought was, “No way! 40-years ago wasn’t that long ago.” But, alas, I crunched the numbers, and it all added up.

Susie wasn’t very old when I was born, and coincidentally, neither was I. In genealogical and/or ancestral terms, she is not my Great-Aunt, but she is a great Aunt, and a kind, caring, selfless pillar of the community of Lignite and Burke County.

When I was a wee lad, Susie would sometimes babysit my brother Jarvis and myself while our parents piously attended Reverand Laurie Chrest’s bible study group at The 109 Church. I always knew when Susie was going to be our sitter, there would be a pre-payment of condolences in the form of TJ Swann in the fridge to ease the pain that was my brother and I.

“Little Creeps” as Susie mostly lovingly, and always rightfully, referred to us knuckleheads. I loved when she was in charge for the night, because if she was our sitter there was a good chance that some of the Burke Central High School class of 1983 would be called in for entertainment and reinforcements…and I would get to watch Saturday Night Live. “Back when it was funny.” As we of a certain age like to profess.

We loved being her Little Creeps and diligently strove to live up to the moniker. Oftentimes us Little Creeps would be abandoned at the farm with Susie in charge while the adults did adult stuff somewhere away from the farm. “Abandoned” might be a bit strong, we loved nothing more than going to the farm. Everyone should be so lucky as to have a grandparent’s “farm” in their young lives. A place where rules are bent and often broken.

A place where a bottomless tin of Strawberry Nesquik is in perpetual supply, and when Susie is in charge, you get a bendy or swirly straw to blow bubbles in it until it covers the kitchen table.

A place where the long rubber hose from big red fire extinguisher filled with fine white powder can be stuffed into the front of your little brothers ToughSkins jeans and sprayed until the fine white powder shoots out of the bottom of both of his pant legs…when Susie is in charge.

She isn’t to blame. You turn your back to clean up a kitchen table hemorrhaging Strawberry Nesquik and Little Creeps will do what Little Creeps will do. So it goes.

She had been annoyed with us often, like when we ate her cherry flavored lip gloss or gave her dolls crew-cuts, but the fire extinguisher incident may be the only time I remember her actually being mad at us Little Creeps. Perhaps that’s why she was instrumental in helping me to maintain my glorious mullet, or why she eagerly complied with my ill-fated request to have the New York Yankees symbol shaved into the side of my head? Little Creep payback.

I’m quite proud of my Aunt Susie…a great aunt indeed.

I have always thought it interesting how different days of the week possess a distinct “feel,” a personality of sorts. I suppose this feeling attributed to a specific day of the week is entirely a social construct dependent upon how that day is, or was, predominately spent in the social construction zone of your self-construction.

Many moons ago, each day was most likely just a period of light between the darkness comprised of a fairly short “To Do” list of finding food and not becoming food. Two things to do each and every day. Well…three things…need to make new humans to replace the ones that failed at task two. Turns out humans are pretty good at making new humans and quickly outpaced the sabretooth tigers nefarious plans for our populations demise. So it goes.

Once those three tasks were checked off you were free to spend the rest of the day doing as you please: crafting (sharpening sticks and stones), fashion design (tiger print…never wear polar bear after Labor Day), Netflix (cloud and star gazing…more tigers). Ah…the good ol’ days.

“The Social Construction of Days and the Self” sounds like a snoozer of a title you might see on the cover of a book lingering forlorn and forgotten at the bottom of the bargain bin at a used bookstore. Used books that never got used. Don’t blame it on the book, it’s the author that put the words in it that failed to compel readers to read it.

The singer/songwriter John Prine was quite adept at putting compelling words to our daily tasks of living, “You say you drive around the town till you just get bored, and then you change your mind, for something else to do, and your heart gets bored with your mind and it changes you.”

“Your heart gets bored with your mind and it changes you.” Sometimes we think we know what we need or want, our mind contrives all sorts of reasons for this and for that, and our heart goes along for the ride…for a while. It goes along quietly at the beginning, but gradually grows more insistent about the direction it would really like to go. An insistence, like that book at the bottom of the bargain bin, we can choose to ignore.

Don’t blame the heart, it’s the owner of the vessel that continues in an uncompelling direction. Sometimes willfully and knowingly and sometimes begrudgingly…without choice. Choice. As Viktor Frankl once said, “Everything can be taken from us but one thing, the last of the human freedoms, to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

In our heart, in theory, we most likely know this, in our mind, and possibly in reality, we may not currently have an option for another route so we keep “driving around the town” despite the boredom our heart is experiencing. Maybe someday? Someday when…

To lean on the lyrics of Mr. Prine one more time, sometimes “Saturday made Sunday feel like it would never come” and other times it “felt just like Sunday on Saturday afternoon.”

What do the days of your week feel like?

On November 22, 1986, my 14-year-old self watched a 20-year-old Mike Tyson become the youngest heavy-weight boxing champion ever when he knocked out Trevor Berbick. On November 15, 2024, my 52-year-old self watched a 58-year-old Mike Tyson get beat by 27-year-old Jake Paul in a unanimous decision. A lot of life has happened in the 38 years between that day and this.

What did the 70,000 people that filled AT&T Stadium and the 120 million that tuned in (or attempted to tune in) via Netflix want? What did I want? Did I want to be 14 again? Did I want Iron Mike to be 20 again? Maybe I just wanted some sort of proof that age is just a number, and that even in our 50s we possess the power to summon forth our younger selves if we so desire?

The proof in the pudding was undeniable, and like a bowl of lukewarm tapioca it was neither savory nor satisfying. Despite whatever it was that each of us wanted, reality, stiff-legged and lumbering, was what we got. So it goes. I suppose if we were never to experience anything we found unsavory or unsatisfying we wouldn’t enjoy that which we do find savory and satisfying to the same degree.

I don’t blame Iron Mike for the proof he revealed in this serving of tepid tapioca, for as Teddy Roosevelt once said, “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood.”

Sometime around 1980, my dad thought it was a good idea to get my brother and I boxing gloves. Perhaps his reasoning was that since we fought all the time, we may as well settle our never-ending disputes in a sporting manner? Whatever the reason, those gloves inevitably served to fuel more fights than they ever sportingly settled. I remember that they were black with a white “Rocky Marciano” signature across the palm, and I remember feeling “tough” just by virtue of slipping them onto my hands.

There’s a space between feeling tough and being tough that some bombastically fill with talk, and some, quietly fill with putting their fist in your talker. Of course, most professional fighters do both, while most of us that have chosen a less bruising vocation, recognize the pain in that gap as largely avoidable and undesirable and are quite happy to just feel tough while we quietly shadow box.

As it turns out, that shadow boxing opponent can prove to be a salty foe…relentlessly present, knows all our so-called moves, takes advantage of each and every weakness, never falls for a feint…as psychologist Carl Jung said of the “shadow self”, “I must also have a dark side if I am to be whole.” The dark side…earlobe deep in tepid tapioca.

As I watched the fight unfold, as my enthusiastic prefight prediction of Iron Mike laying Jake Paul low 48-seconds into the first round shuffled by, as giddiness took an uppercut from reality amidst the ever-present commentary not-so-subtly hinting that 58-years-old was old…too old…I began to hope that at the very least, both fighters would leave the squared circle none the worse for wear. Health and humility intact.

I am reminded of what is often said of events such as this, “It is better to have tried and failed than to have never tried at all.” I am also reminded of something Kurt Vonnegut once said, “We are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you any different.”

Thanks for trying Iron Mike…thanks for farting around.

Do you remember when you were a kid and your parents were painting the garage or the house or most anything, and the absolute best way that you could “help” was to disappear until they were done? Delusionally, you would ask if you could help, or even more delusionally, your parents would suggest that you help.

Pick your poison, both delusions are going to be very short lived, and both will end with you pedaling your banana bike (with the ape hanger handlebars) down the driveway. Pedaling away from the paint tray you stepped in, the paint roller you dropped in the dirt, the general tedium of being an adult. Pedaling to where? During a painting project…anywhere. Unbridled freedom until the final coat dries.

Of course, you will come home a time or two (kids are needy) and find yourself mildly dismayed that your mother doesn’t drop everything, shimmy down the ladder, and fix you a bologna sandwich just the way you like it. Thin slathering of mayo…cut diagonal. What kind of degenerate wants their sandwich cut any other way?

Mildly dismayed until you realize that while they are painting, they don’t care what you eat. You come to this glorious conclusion when the terse response to your whiney, “Mooommm I’mmm huuungry” is, “Eat something. I’m busy.” With the same twinkle in your eye that you had when you pedaled away from painting, you saunter into the kitchen and eat a lot of somethings.

Everything except those fancy little square cubes wrapped in gold foil you snuck out of the cupboard last week. “Bouillon” sounds exotic, but they were almost as bad as those Circus Peanuts grandma tried to pawn off as candy…almost.

So, there you are, King of the Kitchen, a Keebler Fudge Stripe dangling off each finger. You smugly show your little brother the middle cookie when he asks if he can have one. He of course threatens to tell mom (that’s what little brothers do), but you know for a fact that she’s precariously perched on the ladder step that says, “NOT A STEP” and in no mood to hear little brothers whine about cookies and fingers, so you waggle the middle cookie with impunity.

My wife had me pick up a bucket of paint the other day so she could paint the shed and the garage. Like a good husband, I delivered the bucket of paint as requested, and the following morning I looked out to see her in her painting clothes meticulously applying a coat of “Crisp Linen” to the shed. It was a lovely fall day for a bike ride, but first I had to stop by the hardware store to pick up some hardware store type stuff.

I sauntered out to the shed to ask my wife if she needed anything from the hardware store, and she said, “If you are going to help me paint, pick up another paint roller.”

I remember when I was a kid, and the absolute best way I could help paint was to disappear until the painting was done. Sometimes I miss being a kid. It was a lovely fall day for painting. So it goes.

I looked up from my guitar as I was singing “Night Rider’s Lament” to see tears streaming down Don’s face. Don is in his 80s, residing in a hospice care home until Alzheimer’s disease, which has already taken much of who he was, takes him bodily. So it goes.

Music is almost all that is left of this world that puts Don at ease, so as a hospice volunteer, I have been asked to come and play and sing “some old country songs” for him every few weeks. Those old country songs that were new back when he first heard them. Back when he was in the military, back when he got married, back when he and his wife were working to raise a family. Back when his life was full of life.

The nurse asked Don why he was crying, and he softly said, “I remember that song.” In the few times I have visited Don, that’s the only time I’ve heard him speak, and what little he said, said so very much.

Night Rider’s Lament was written by Michael Burton and was first released by Jerry Jeff Walker in 1975. Since then, it has been performed by numerous artists, as tends to happen to a song that speaks a certain language in a certain way that touches so many people. Like Don.

This semester I started taking one of my classes on regular visits to a local nursing home to engage with the residents and for the residents to engage with the students. They all sit in a big circle and talk about life. Life that has passed, life as it is, and life that has yet to come.

Young and old, sharing a bit of time, sharing a bit of themselves for the benefit of one another. The benefits of these visits run both ways, the residents getting the opportunity to tell the students who and what they used to be, and the students getting the opportunity to tell the residents who and what they want to be. Somewhere in the middle, they both talk of who and what they are.

A common question the students have for the residents is, “What advice do you have for someone my age?” The common response from the residents, most of whom are wheelchair bound, is, “Do things while you are able.” Except for Sandra, she says, “Never get married.”

One of the residents, who was about to turn 90, disagreed with Sandra, saying, “My husband was a hunk, we had a lot of good times.” One of the students asked her what she planned on doing for her 90th birthday? She shrugged and matter-of-factly said, “Crawl out my window and go have a beer.”

We all have a variety of biases that shade the way we see the world and the people we share this world with. These interactions between young and old have seemed to lift some of those shades and allow both sides to see each other in a better light.

“One night while I was out a ridin’

The graveyard shift midnight ‘til dawn

The moon was bright as a readin’ light

For a letter from an old friend back home”

September 24th, 1994 doesn’t seem that long ago. In comparison, it seems much nearer than the 30-years Marty McFly traversed from 1985 back to 1955 in “Back to the Future”. What would our kids find if Emmett “Doc” Brown let them fire up the flux capacitor and take his DeLorean for a time defying cruise to Aberdeen, South Dakota, to take a gander at their future parents on that September day in 1994?

They would most likely find their mother studiously holed-up in a quiet corner of the basement in the Williams Library on the Northern State University campus striving to attain nothing short of A’s in all of her coursework.

They would most assuredly find their father groggily pulling the red sheet from his futon to fashion a toga in preparation for the homecoming football game and the festivities that tend to follow homecoming football games. As my college roommate said, “We went to a party and a football game broke out.” So it goes.

If those meddling kids of ours tailed us long enough, they would find that both their future parents’ paths would eventually lead to The Zoo Bar that evening. The Zoo was where the paths of most college kids led for refreshments, dancing, and general shenanigans on those special occasions when refreshments, dancing, and general shenanigans were called for. Special occasions such as homecoming, and most any Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday of most any week.

Wednesday was “Mug Night” at The Zoo, where a thrifty college student could buy a 32oz plastic keepsake mug emblazoned with “The Zoo” for $5.00 that, much to the chagrin of their liver, could be refilled for $1.00 until their dollars or their frontal lobe gave out.

On that September night in question, our kids would have seen their future parents, separated by an undulating sea of college students, laughing and chatting with their perspective groups of friends. Eventually, they would see their future parents chatting with each other, eventually dancing, and eventually walking out of The Zoo into the Aberdeen night, hand-in-hand, just as they would find them once they ran wild-eyed back to Doc Brown’s DeLorean, frantically fired up the flux capacitor, and dashed back to 2024.

What those kids wouldn’t know, if that were the only day in the recesses of the past that they dare venture to, is that that September night wasn’t the first time their future parents had met. They wouldn’t know that their future dad had first noticed their future mom a few years prior to that night, but assumed she was too smart for a guy like him (a valid assumption).

They wouldn’t know that for a semester their future mom and dad sat at the same lab table in Invertebrate Zoology where their future dad faired better at making their future mom laugh than he faired on the exams. They wouldn’t know that their future mom agreed to meet their future dad at her beloved library and tutor him in algebra, because he honestly needed tutoring in algebra, and she honestly thought he was cute…and desperately needed help with algebra.

They wouldn’t know that the majority of those tutoring sessions in the library were spent talking about what their future parents wanted in life. Who they wanted to be, what they wanted to do, the places they wanted to go…all the stuff that young people with more years in front of them than behind tend to talk about.

They wouldn’t know that all of that led up to what they witnessed on September 24th, 1994, and that what their future parents wanted from life, back when they had more years in front of them than behind, is what their parents have now. Where would you go in Doc Brown’s DeLorean? Or as Doc put it, “Not where, when?”

A few weeks ago, we made the 400-mile jaunt from Rapid City to upstate North Dakota to be a part of my brother Gabe’s 40th birthday celebration. There were no pony rides or bouncy houses, but there were 18-holes of golf and plenty of clowns around the backyard firepit.

Our son, Jackson, wanted to golf and carry-on into the wee hours with his uncle, so we weren’t able to depart Rapid City until about 7:00pm (our time…as it is often referred to by those in our Central Time Zone destination) as Jackson had to work later than anticipated. He’s a UPS driver, and we can’t have people without their essentially unessential stuff delivered in a timely fashion.

A departure of 7:00pm our time (8:00pm their time) made for a 2:00am our time (3:00am their time) arrival, which amounted to about 20-minutes of daylight driving. The other six-hours and forty-minutes were spent glancing from ditch-to-ditch, my eye’s pinballing the breadth of the headlight beams in search of nefarious beasts looking to raise my insurance premiums. They were relentless. One rabbit, one moose (no squirrel), two foxes, two owls, three horses, and I stopped counting deer after 30 (that’s where my mathematical education topped out my second year of kindergarten).

As Patches O’Houlihan once said, “If you’re going to become true dodgeballers, then you’ve got to learn the five d’s of dodgeball; dodge, duck, dip, dive and dodge.” Only one animal that we encountered on this Dakota safari failed to become a true dodgeballer. We will never know the answer to the question, “Why did the rabbit cross the road?” I suspect it was to make more rabbits, but that is merely speculation.

Sometime after midnight (both times), I spotted four young bucks loitering on the shoulder of the road, passing around a bottle of blackberry brandy they had stolen from some old stag and smoking Virginia Slims that one of them had lifted from their mother’s purse. They appeared to be trying to cajole the youngest of their renegade bachelor herd into setting my airbags off, but his eyes were watering from a coughing fit from inhaling a Virginia Slim and he mistimed his jump. So it goes.

When we rolled into my mom and dad’s driveway at 3:00am (their time), the tuft of rabbit fur clinging to the bottom of the mudflap was a stark reminder of how fortunate we were to dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge the larger animals we encountered. Maybe rabbits’ feet are lucky?

That moose would have made our Toyota, and myself, a convertible. Dawn was lying down in the backseat and Jackson was fully reclined in the passenger seat, so they most likely would have emerged unscathed. The moose appeared friendly enough, so I’m sure he would have given them a lift to the party after he dusted me off of him.

It was an enjoyable birthday party. A day of laughter and general shenanigans…the usual. A good usual to have while we have the time…ours and theirs.

A handful of times over the past few years I’ve had to drag my aging body in to be inspected by various medical professionals for the evaluation and treatment of various minor medical issues. Garden variety pre-elderly type issues that tend to crop up when something was used to much when it was new. So it begins. So it goes.

Though each of the issues varied, one thought came to mind each and every time I encountered one of the various medical professionals, “How old are you?” It seemed as though all of my appointments over the past few years happened to fall on “Bring Your Kid to Work Day”, but the parents were nowhere to be found.

Don’t get me wrong, kids have been doing a wonderful job running movie theaters and bussing tables for years, but hospitals? “Sonny, I have complete faith in your ability to slide that straw into my 32oz Orange Fanta, but kindly stop waggling that colonoscope around and go fetch the doctor.”

I’m more comfortable with the grizzled vet, someone that has seen it all and won’t be traumatized by the sight of anything I need seen. The issue seems to be that when one reaches the grizzled age as a patient, the grizzled vets of the medical world have hung up their stethoscopes and are doing all they can to unsee all that they’ve seen.

“Who’s your doctor?” Until about 5-years ago I proudly answered that question with, “I don’t have one.” I have one now. I have a doctor. He’s a nice young man. We have a pleasant conversation every October when my annual physical rolls around. Excuse me, I misspoke, they are called “well checks” nowadays. I suppose going in for a “well check” does sound a bit more pleasant than going in for a “physical”.

I went into my first well check with my pleasant young doctor expecting the same protocol I had experienced in the past with sports physicals. The protocol that involved nudity on my behalf and poking and prodding on the doctor’s behalf. Five years of well checks, and my doctor, that pleasant young man, has never once had me remove a stitch of clothing.

Years ago, it was expected that if you were going to the doctor for most anything, your naked butt was going to be wrinkling that odd butcher paper they roll out to shield the exam table from your wretched body stuff.

Earache…naked. Ingrown eyebrow hair…naked. Clubfoot…naked. Sprained thumb…naked.

Part of me is quite all right with having a pleasant fully clothed conversation every October, but another part of me is still in the old school “physical” mindset and feels like I’m being cheated. Would it stifle the pleasant conversation if I were to ask the pleasant young doctor if he’d like me to get naked? Perhaps he’s just too polite to ask?

The kids are all right, and I am quite pleased with the highly skilled and knowledgeable medical care they are able to provide me as I slide towards ABR…Advancing Bodily Ricketiness.

Be well my friends.

Between June 29th and July 21st, I spent a fair bit of time galivanting around various parts of Italy and France, before zeroing in on Paris specifically from July 26th to August 11th. Galivanting in mind and spirit anyway, the body was reclined comfortably in our living room.

I know the Tour de France isn’t everyone’s goblet of wine, but I took a shine to it about 20-years ago when I got into cycling. I got into cycling because while I was training for my one and only marathon, which still ranks near the top of my “Stupidest Things I’ve Ever Done” list, which is saying a lot, as I’ve done a lot of stupid things, I noticed that everyone I met on bikes seemed to be enjoying themselves much more than I was.

Perched regally upon two wheels, they carried a look of glee upon their faces, while I, perched upon two hot, sweaty, and sore feet, carried a faint hope that a distracted driver, in the midst of an “LOL” text, would clip me with a side mirror and put me out of my misery. So, getting a bike became my motivation for seeing that silly marathon lark through to its miserable conclusion. So it goes.

When you’ve peddled over hill and dale (sorry Dale), you can sort of relate to what the cyclists in the Tour de France are going through. When you’ve felt the burn in your legs and lungs on a steep uphill, you can sort of relate to how the legs and lungs of these professional cyclist feel in the Alps. Sort of…but not really.

They race 100 or so miles a day for 20 or so days, so my 8 or so mile ride to get a scoop or so of maple-bacon ice cream, even with the brain freeze that ensued, may not illicit the same degree of physical duress.

Shortly after the Tour de France concluded, and the brain freeze subsided, the 33rd Olympiad commenced, and athletes from around the globe took center stage in our living room. Night after night, I would find myself moved to tears by the stories, the triumphs, and the failures of people that have dedicated large portions of their lives to the sports that have moved them to strive for “Citius, Altius, Fortius”.

Some were the fastest, some went the highest, some were the strongest. Some. Most were not. Some knew without a doubt going into the games that they had zero chance of going home with an Olympic medal, but they went anyway. They went to show others like them, from countries like theirs, what is possible. They went to give people that may feel hopeless, some hope.

As Desmond Tutu, the South African Anglican bishop and theologian, once said, “Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.” A light that doesn’t require a gold medal to reflect it.

If you, like me, have found yourself suffering from the withdrawals associated with an Olympic hangover and lusting for more inspiring stories of the expanses of the human spirit, you may want to check out the documentary, “Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa”.

It’ll scratch that itch.

And if you’ve ever had to walk to school during a North Dakota winter, your frozen fingers numbly clutching your prized Trapper Keeper, you can sort of relate to what it was like for her to summit Mount Everest a record 10 times…Sort of.

As has been the case for the past 25-years, my July 17th birthday conveniently occurred one day after my sons July 16th birthday. Every single year the 17th of July miraculously follows the 16th…numbers are so mystical.

This year my wife, one of those odd people that understands the seemingly indecipherable language that numbers speak, informed me that Jackson and I were having palindrome birthdays this year. A palindrome, as the trusty dictionary explains, is “a word, phrase, or sequence that reads the same backwards as forward.” Wow!

As the internet is prone to do, it provided me with a laundry list of examples, some interesting…some odd:

• Civic
• Mom
• Peep
• Ma is a nun, as I am.
• We panic in a pew.
• Yo, Banana Boy!
• Step on no pets.

So, until July 16th of next year, “2552” will be Jackson and my personal numerical palindrome for the ages…our ages anyway. Since I am so fond of this palindrome concept, and have so enjoyed squeezing the word “palindrome” into quasi-polite conversation, I have decided that after my birthday next year, I am going to willingly pause my birthdays until the boy turns 35. I tried to use math to figure out if Jackson and I had anymore palindrome years in our future, but seeing how math always…always…always…refuses to cooperate with me, I decided that this birthday pause was a simpler solution.

Simpler, and best for all involved. Specifically, me. I just need a short break from all this getting old stuff. For the past several years I have lovingly mocked my wife for her need to rely upon reading glasses to perform such tasks as…well…reading. Before these eye-crutches became a ubiquitous fixture upon her lovely face, in a fit of frustration, she would hand me something and dejectedly ask, “What’s this say?”

I, feeling like a balding Superman in tattered tights, with a casual glance, would effortlessly translate the blurred images she was trying to decipher. All while deftly opening the jar of Miracle Whip that was thwarting her attempt at a proper BLT. Actually, a “proper BLT” would be lightly slathered with Hellman’s Mayonnaise, but as a mixed mayo marriage, we have learned to accept one another’s poor taste in condiments and have made space for both in the refrigerator.

Sometime in the past year, either my arms got too short, or my vision got too long. I can still twist the top off of Miracle Whip jars when duty calls, but my casual deciphering glance has become labored, squinty…not very super.

For so long I assumed, with great hubris, that my vision was different, that my eyes were special. I imagined traipsing over the hill towards the golden years below, smugly waving off the assistance of eye-crutches as I pompously recited the labels of pill bottles to the hordes of blurry-eyed mortals that shuffled the halls of my wing of the nursing home…the one my children promised not to put me in.

We only have access to knowing whatever it is we know at any given time. Now, at the backside of a 2552 palindrome, time has passed, and I know different. So it goes.

The backside. Some of it stinks.