Looking forward to Uncle Joe A guy my age is going to be president in a few weeks, a cheerful guy, not a scowly one, and I think it’s going to be an instructive four years for the nation. Growing old is, along with marriage and religious faith and hiking the Grand Canyon, one of life’s fascinating experiences, one to look forward to. It is the reason your mother told you to look both ways before crossing the street and to chew your food thirty times before swallowing. It’s the reason I stopped smoking: after twenty years of cigarettes, you’ve pretty much exhausted the possibilities, time to move on. And now here I am, floating along at 78, an age at which the obituaries are becoming more and more interesting. It’s pleasant to be an alien, which an old guy is. I don’t watch TV anymore because I can’t figure out how to work the tuner. I don’t read novels anymore because they’re all about somebody’s tragic disability and there are no recognizable landscapes. My disability is that I’m emotionally distant, but so is everyone else, it being a pandemic and all. For a writer, quarantine is a rare opportunity. A half-hour of contemplation easily turns into a nap. I don’t complain about this or anything else. I didn’t complain to Delta for putting a plastic stirrer in the cup of coffee they brought me, a stirrer that went up my left nostril. Not a word. People ask me, “How are you?” I say, “Fine,” even if I just read an article on bipolar and everything felt terribly familiar. A young waiter brings me a glass of water, I say, “Thank you.” He says: “No problem.” What happened to “You’re welcome” or “My pleasure”? I don’t complain because I don’t want to be a cranky old man, I want to be a kindly old man who tells people stories about olden times but the people I know are all attached to their smartphones. Read the rest of the column >>> | 