Today I am thankful for the opportunity to help people heal themselves, for loving family and friends, and for the people who sacrifice their own comforts to ensure that my loved ones and I can continue to enjoy our freedom. Hug your loved ones and show some love to strangers, today and every day!
Today we had Thanksgiving at the Courthouse Restaurant, where they offer a free meal to the community to show thanks for support throughout the year. We started the tradition of eating there on Thanksgiving a few years ago. It was one of Mom's favorite places to eat. She loved everyone who worked there and took an interest in all their personal lives, the way she always did that made people love her so much. It was nice to go again this year, but a little strange without Mom there. But this year, we brought along a friend who lost her husband in October; she and her husband were also regulars at the Courthouse Restaurant. Mom would have been so happy to have her along, and I know she was with us, shining her love down on all of us.
Thursday, November 27, 2014
Monday, November 17, 2014
Magic Numbers
They're just numbers. They really are. But somewhere along the line some bureaucratic agency here in the US decided that certain numbers (or ages) meant certain things.
A person isn't old enough to attend kindergarten until she is five or six years old. If that person is born later in the year (like November), she has to wait longer than the other kids because she isn't old enough at the start of the year.
A person isn't a "teenager" when the teen numbers start (ten); that doesn't come until she is thirteen.
A person is suddenly old enough to handle an automobile on her own at the magic age of sixteen.
A person is magically able to vote, smoke cigarettes, and die for her country at the age of eighteen, but for some reason isn't old enough to drink alcohol until the magic age of twenty-one.
All of a sudden, at age twenty-five, a person is considered old enough to be less of a risk to auto insurance companies, so her rates go down (assuming she has a good driving record, of course).
At the age of thirty-five, a person now needs to start having mammograms every few years because cancer doesn't become a risk to anyone below that age.
At forty-eight years old, a person is suddenly too old to get cheap rates on life insurance policies if she doesn't already have something in place. Tough luck for you, missy! (I turned forty-eight this morning, or last night if you go by where I was born. Fortunately I do have life insurance, so no worries.)
At fifty-five years old, AARP is suddenly interested in her. She can receive "senior" discounts at some places who consider us old well before we feel it.
Retirement and Social Security benefits are suddenly available to a person who has reached the grand age of sixty-five, though if she hasn't properly prepared for that retirement, she will have to keep working until the day she dies. Or she can spend oodles of money on lottery tickets and hope to hit the big one.
I know there was research that led those bureaucrats to make those numbers mean those things, but it is a very dangerous thing to create large-scale rules based on something as tenuous as age. Age and maturity or frailty are only partially connected.
I've known twelve-year-olds who were much more mature and sensible than any twenty-one-year-old, including myself at that age. And I've seen a number of elderly persons whose emotional and behavioral age dwindled down until they were mentally only five years old. But I've also seen senior citizens who were so physically active all their lives that they were still in peak physical condition well into their seventies. Who's to say they should stop working and sit in an old-folks home because of their age?
I'd love to see our culture unhook itself from all its conservative conventions that cause us to make laws and rules and regulations designed to protect us from ourselves. That's a silly basis for a law. Common sense should be good enough. If a person is doing something stupid or dangerous and gets hurt or hurts someone else, then hold that person responsible for the damage.
And that's my birthday soapbox rant. For me, each year is just another number. It's not that I don't celebrate it - I love the attention, what can I say? I just don't get hung up on the numbers. I'm exactly as old as I feel and that varies minute by minute. Don't pin a bunch of silliness to me just because of it. In five minutes I won't be that age in my mind and your silly bureaucratic rule about me will suddenly be a moot point. So, nyeh, and have a good day! Now I'm going to look up movie times and treat myself to a matinee with lots of oily popcorn and a soda!
A person isn't old enough to attend kindergarten until she is five or six years old. If that person is born later in the year (like November), she has to wait longer than the other kids because she isn't old enough at the start of the year.
A person isn't a "teenager" when the teen numbers start (ten); that doesn't come until she is thirteen.
A person is suddenly old enough to handle an automobile on her own at the magic age of sixteen.
A person is magically able to vote, smoke cigarettes, and die for her country at the age of eighteen, but for some reason isn't old enough to drink alcohol until the magic age of twenty-one.
All of a sudden, at age twenty-five, a person is considered old enough to be less of a risk to auto insurance companies, so her rates go down (assuming she has a good driving record, of course).
At the age of thirty-five, a person now needs to start having mammograms every few years because cancer doesn't become a risk to anyone below that age.
At forty-eight years old, a person is suddenly too old to get cheap rates on life insurance policies if she doesn't already have something in place. Tough luck for you, missy! (I turned forty-eight this morning, or last night if you go by where I was born. Fortunately I do have life insurance, so no worries.)
At fifty-five years old, AARP is suddenly interested in her. She can receive "senior" discounts at some places who consider us old well before we feel it.
Retirement and Social Security benefits are suddenly available to a person who has reached the grand age of sixty-five, though if she hasn't properly prepared for that retirement, she will have to keep working until the day she dies. Or she can spend oodles of money on lottery tickets and hope to hit the big one.
I know there was research that led those bureaucrats to make those numbers mean those things, but it is a very dangerous thing to create large-scale rules based on something as tenuous as age. Age and maturity or frailty are only partially connected.
I've known twelve-year-olds who were much more mature and sensible than any twenty-one-year-old, including myself at that age. And I've seen a number of elderly persons whose emotional and behavioral age dwindled down until they were mentally only five years old. But I've also seen senior citizens who were so physically active all their lives that they were still in peak physical condition well into their seventies. Who's to say they should stop working and sit in an old-folks home because of their age?
I'd love to see our culture unhook itself from all its conservative conventions that cause us to make laws and rules and regulations designed to protect us from ourselves. That's a silly basis for a law. Common sense should be good enough. If a person is doing something stupid or dangerous and gets hurt or hurts someone else, then hold that person responsible for the damage.
And that's my birthday soapbox rant. For me, each year is just another number. It's not that I don't celebrate it - I love the attention, what can I say? I just don't get hung up on the numbers. I'm exactly as old as I feel and that varies minute by minute. Don't pin a bunch of silliness to me just because of it. In five minutes I won't be that age in my mind and your silly bureaucratic rule about me will suddenly be a moot point. So, nyeh, and have a good day! Now I'm going to look up movie times and treat myself to a matinee with lots of oily popcorn and a soda!
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