In the late 1980s and early 1990s there was a very popular television show set in a bar called “Cheers.” It starred Ted Danson as Sam “Mayday” Malone, a former major league pitcher and a world class womanizer, who owned the joint and was the bartender. Significant roles were played by Shelley Long, Rhea Perlman, George Wendt, Woody Harrelson and Kelsey Grammer. Cheers was a Boston bar where “everybody knows your name.”
All of us, in our younger days, had places whether it would be a bar, a gym, a class, a sports team or any other grouping where “everyone knew our name.” As we grow older, most of those type of places tend to recede in our lives.
Given my current ambulatory challenges, my usual default position is a recliner. There are not a lot of things that you could do in a recliner, but reading is one of them. One of my daily reads is the local newspaper. I used to read only the written obituaries but now I have graduated to reading the death notices. Obviously, that is a function of my age and, as Carl Reiner once said he did the same, and if he wasn’t in them, he would then have breakfast.
There are also other portions of the newspaper that are fun to read. One of my favorites is the list of people having birthdays on that particular day. Typically, the people are actors, musicians, and other celebrity types. Don’t laugh. Where else could you find out that Joey the CowPolka King is 76? Sometimes, I don’t know any of the people but, usually, I know two or three but, if they are under 40, “forget about it.”
But for every rule there is an exception. For example, the birthdays of December 27, 2024 were the following: guitarist Mick Jones was 80; drummer T. S. Monk was 75; actor Tovah Feldshuh was 71; actor, Maryam D’Abo was 64; actor. Ian Gomez was 60; guitarist Matt Slocum was 52; actor Wilson Cruz was 51; actor Masim Oka was 50; actor Jay Ellis was 43; singer Haley Williams was 36; singer Shay Mooney was 33; and finally, actor Timothee Chalamet was 29.
So, I don’t know about you, but I knew no one except the youngest who is now starring in the Bob Dylan movie “A Complete Unknown” which, according to my son, is a must see. I recognize the name of Monk but the Monk I knew was his father Thelonious who was an American jazz pianist.
The business of getting old and realizing that your “sell by date” is approaching is very sobering. There are any number of unwelcome physical changes. Someone once said that we start to resemble what we eat which may explain why my neck now resembles that of a chicken and, by the way, what is happening to my belly which keeps growing; and then the mental change because your brain atrophies just like your muscles. Things like pickleball, movies, friends, good books, Netflix, Prime and crossword puzzles divert our attention from what’s coming but coming it is.
The comedian Dave Barry recently wrote that pickleball courts now occupy approximately 43% of the land mass of the United States and there are legions of pickleball boomers who are trying to get all others to join. Stores cannot keep knee braces in stock as they are flying off the shelves. I guess the notion is that, if everybody starts playing, the noise complaints will go away as we will all be deaf.
I recently saw a television show where two retired detectives were going back-and-forth about their current status. One said that “We are gone but not forgotten.” The other replied “No we are forgotten but not gone.”
Time has a way of erasing memory. There are 188 members of the Maryland General Assembly which meets in Annapolis, Maryland. Approximately a third of those individuals reach Annapolis by driving on I-97 which is the road from Baltimore and points north. A sign on a portion of I-97 indicates it is dedicated to Senator Jack Cade; it was so dedicated by a formal Legislative Resolution in 1996. I will wager that only one elected official of the sixty has any idea who Senator Cade was. In less than 30 years, an individual who was once worthy of a formal Resolution is now virtually unknown.
The same thing happens over and over. The older generation is on its way out; the next generation is in a place where everybody knows your name; the youngest generation, whether it knows it or not, it is on its way to that place. Sons and daughters replace fathers and mothers and their children, in turn, replace them. It’s as if there’s only so much room on the planet.
So, what to do? The answer is pretty easy. Carry on unless you’re inclined to disable the airbag and drive your car at a very high speed into a tree.
The Book of Ecclesiastes appears as one of the Writings of the Hebrew Bible and is in the Wisdom Literature of what Christians call the Old Testament. In many ways, it is one of the most quoted portions of the Bible. The most quoted phrase is “there is nothing new under the sun.” In other words, what we are now experiencing has been experienced by all others since time immemorial.
A well-known section starts as follows:
| To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; |
The message of Ecclesiastes can be considered pessimistic or, more likely, realistic for some scholars say it instructs us to enjoy the gifts of living which God has given us.
Apparently, those “gifts” include a chicken neck and a distended belly. Bear up because it will be over soon and, maybe, we will be “gone but not forgotten.” And before it’s over, there are spouses, significant others, friends, neighbors, children and grandchildren to enjoy and, of course, pickleball games to play. All of these things help us to get through the evils in the world that arrive on our doorstep every day. In the end we all want the light to conquer the darkness.
In the meantime, follow the admonition in numerous billboards featuring cows, with one slight change: “Eat less chikin ”
