Monday, March 11, 2013

An Accidental Meeting

I ran into a Loyola student last week.

Literally.

It was about 11 a.m. on Wednesday. I was making a right turn from one multi-lane avenue into another and the student, in the lane to my left, turned right in a slightly wider arc at about the same time. The left front corner of my car creased the front and rear doors on his passenger side as he sped past me. My bumper and left fender suffered some damage, and both had splotches of paint rubbed from his car.

After we had parked and shaken our heads at the damages, he told me that he had been speeding to get to school.

“Loyola or Tulane,” I asked.

“Loyola.

“What’s your major?”

“Music industry studies, but I’m also taking courses in music business.”

“I retired from Loyola a couple of years ago,” I volunteered. “I taught in mass comm.”

I gave him my name.

“Oh, yeah, geez. Now I know you,” he said, “You lectured on public speaking to my business communication class. You were awesome.”

That calmed the storm that had roiled my innards..

And seeing as how we had established our bond, he said, “I’m really sorry.”

Forgiven.

I asked his name. “Timothy,” he said. (Why does no one under the age of 30 seem to have a last name?)

Both, we discovered are insured by State Farm. And while he called the company, I dialed 911.

Afterwards we looked at the damages again. “I know a guy who can pop that right out,” he said, looking at the long crease along his doors. Mine would have to go into a shop, certainly, but I didn’t know of a reputable one. And the shop would probably keep the car for a week, probably more. I swore under my breath.

I heard Timothy say, "This is my first accident." I silently swore again. Lucky me.

At least the weather was pleasant, and we took to the curb and made small talk. He told me about his dream to go on to law school and become an entertainment attorney. He also wants to buy a hat when he becomes an attorney and wear it to his office downtown as other attorneys do.

“Hats are coming back, I think,” he said. “I see lots of men wearing them. When did they go out of fashion?”

I said that President Kennedy didn’t like to wear hats, and that set a style for younger men.

“What about that president before him?” he asked. I forget his name.”

“Eisenhower. He wore hats, like most men of his time.”

“A hat will keep me from getting dandruff from the sun beating down on my head, too,” he said, and he bent his head and parted a swatch of thick, black hair. He did not have dandruff.

We talked about all the potholes that pockmark New Orleans’ streets, the broken streetlights, the city’s broken infrastructure generally, its underclass and their housing, the failure of office holders to improve conditions. And so we killed little more than an hour, and during that time no squad cars drove past the intersection in any direction. We remarked on that, too, because the intersection is near a relatively high crime area, and it is rare not to see one.

I did see a small car make the same illegal turn. It had the State Farm logo and an agent's name painted on the door.

 Nearly an hour and a half had gone by when a parade of some five or six squad cars drove past us.

“Must be heading from the donut shop to lunch,” I quipped. Timothy laughed. Another point for him.

All the drivers ignored my waving—all but the last, and I think he must have been the officer who had been sent to the scene after my call.

We gave him our licenses and registration and insurance cards. He handed us forms on which to describe the circumstances. That’s an improvement, I thought. Some years back, when one of my daughters was involved in an accident, the officer listened to the versions she and the other driver gave him and wrote the report. It would have received a D for spelling, grammar and composition from a sixth grade teacher. A generous sixth grade teacher.

Timothy and I gave the officer our completed forms, and he told me they matched in the important particulars. He gave Timothy a ticket for “improper lane usage” and handed back our credentials.

It was close to one o’clock.

Timothy and I shook hands. Neither of us said it had been nice to see the other again. Then he drove off to campus and, I can only suppose, to explain his absence to his professor. I drove home to explain my tardiness to the missus.

Sunday, March 3, 2013

Elderly? Not quite.


      elderly Use this word carefully and sparingly.
      It is appropriate in generic phrases that do not
refer to specific individuals:
concern for the elderly, a home for the elderly, etc.
      If the intent is to show that an individual‘s physical or mental capabilities
have deteriorated as a direct result of age, cite a graphic example and give attribution for it
      Apply the same principle to terms such as senior citizens.
                                             --The Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual


Most mornings at the breakfast table, the newspaper spread out in front of me, I come on references to someone about my age as “elderly” or even “old.” “Damn kid reporters,” I mutter. “They probably see anyone over 30 as ‘I mean, you know, like, ancient’” And they have not read the “AP Stylebook,” as they should have.

I have no objection to “senior citizen” as long as I’m getting the discount. I do object to “elderly” and “old,” however, and not just on journalistic grounds. It’s personal. (My use of it in the blog's standing matter is just funnin', as we say down South.)

I know I have some gray hair. Well, maybe most of what I have is gray. Regardless, I notice when I comb it that it is thinning (but who wants fat hair, I might wisecrack to my grandsons to watch their eyes roll). And when, with razor in hand, I look in the mirror every morning, I recognize the face right away. It is the same face I’ve been looking at since I began shaving, though it is somewhat wrinkled now and sags a bit in spots.

Otherwise I’m not aware of any major changes. In fact, I weigh the same as I did when I got out of the Army half a century ago, though I’ll concede that the weight is redistributed somewhat and, perhaps, a bit flabby When I change my shirt I notice—well, I’d rather not mention those.

Oh, yeah. One leg has become a touch gimpy. Putting on my shorts and trousers in the mornings has become a balancing act. And I’ve long since stopped practicing my Chevalier “Stairway to Paradise” routine.

I’ve experienced a few other changes, too. Once upon a time I had a doctor. One. Now he’s my “primary care physician,” and in recent years I’ve added enough specialists to seat around a poker table.

The eye doctor, whom I used to visit only when the golden arches logo on McDonald’s billboards got a little blurry, not long ago took away my spectacles—I’d worn glasses since I was eight or nine years old—removed cataract-clouded lenses from both of my eyes, and inserted machine-made lenses in their place. But while I can see him and his “E” clearly now, he still has me in for regular visits. “You aren’t getting any younger, you know,” he reminded me the last time. I still have glasses for close reading—five or six pairs in various places somewhere around the house. Give me a minute and I can find one.

I’ve acquired a cardiologist who is young enough to have two pre-school children. She observed that I have some sort of leakage in my heart. “But don’t worry,” she told me. “A lot of older people have that.” She told me she wanted to make sure that I didn’t have any fluid buildup. She prescribed a pill for me to take every morning that keeps me draining fluid all day, and often. She warned me not to take to the pill before going to bed. It would keep me going to the bathroom all night, she said. As if that would be a change in my routine.

There’s the GI doc, too, though I see him rarely now. When I was a young fellow of 58, he peered down into my esophagus fairly frequently for two or three months to see how a cancer that had developed there was responding to treatments by my chemotherapy and radiation docs. A few years later, he peered up into my colon—finding nothing, I’m happy to say. In my slightly drugged state during that exam, I thought I could hear him humming “I’ve looked at love from both sides now.”

Getting rid of the remains of the cancer, by the way, took a general surgeon and a thoracic surgeon. I didn’t meet the latter until he walked into the prep room to introduce himself just before the operation. Frankly, I was concerned, because he looked to me to be too young to be wearing scrubs. A Boy Scout uniform, yes. But he and the surgeon successfully took me apart, cut out what they were looking for, and put me back together. Is there a merit badge for surgery?

Most recently I acquired an audiologist. For a year or two—maybe more; I forget exactly—I endured the missus yelling “Get a hearing aid!” every time I asked “What?” in response to something she had said. So I finally had my ears tested and, after, bought a pair of hearing aids.

“How much were they?” she asked, when I came home wearing them. I told her--and it was her turn:  “WHAT?” she exclaimed, and I thought, but did not say—being only aging, not crazy—that if she had always spoken to me with that volume, I would not have needed the hearing aids.

Then, one recent evening I walked into the den while the missus was watching a college basketball game. I looked at the screen just as the scene switched from the court to the commentators’ booth. In the center was a much-lined, almost wizened, face I thought I knew. I will concede that I have a problem remembering names occasionally (the only folks I know immediately are the ubiquitous “whatsisname” and “whatsername”) and it took me a minute to slowly run through the alphabet testing names until I got to “N.”

“Knight!” I exclaimed. “Bobby Knight!” Of course. For many years he was the successful and controversial Indiana University basketball coach. Who could forget him?

I moved closer to the tv set and squinted.

“My gawd, he’s gotten old!” I said.

The missus said nothing. I looked at her. She stared at me with an odd and curious cat-that-swallowed-the canary expression on her face that pretty well told me what she thought.

I went up to my workroom and sat at the computer.

“Bobby Knight. He can’t be much older than I am, I thought. “Five or six years? Maybe seven?”

I typed his name into the Google search box on the screen and clicked to a biography.

“Born: October 25, 1940. “

Three and a half years younger than I.  I was astounded.

“My gawd!” I whispered. 

I could see in my mind’s eye that look that the missus had given me.

Since then, I have admitted to myself that I am somewhat worn, no longer quite the same fellow who worked at the peach-fuzz on his face with a Gillette blue blade safety razor.

But elderly? I don’t think so, no matter what those twenty-something reporters say.

Edging up on it, possibly.

But old? Hell, no.