"Looking for your glasses?"

I hate looking for my glasses, because I can't see to find them. The last time I bought glasses, it was a two-fer price, so in theory, I should be able to wear one pair to search for the other pair, but about two weeks after getting the two pair, I ended up lying down on one pair, and bent them so that they aren't very comfortable, and at this point, I don't know where the other pair is, which seems to be what usually happens when I buy a spare of anything.

Learning The Wrong Lesson

You'd think I'd learn, but it seems I learn the wrong lesson. Mark Twain pointed out that it's a great problem for many people, and not just people, either. A cat, having once jumped onto a hot stove, learns not just not to jump on a hot stove, but not to jump on a cold one as well. That story isn't as useful today, in a world of central heating, as it was when heating stoves were common, as in my youth, but I suppose you have an imagination, else you wouldn't be reading this drivel, you'd be reading some other drivel instead.

My glasses, it seemed, were propped atop the pile of towels in the bathroom. That's one of the places I check regularly when I've lost my vision. I wash my eyes these days about every 90 minutes. Jackson Browne complained of other problems from keeping his eyes open, and I have his problems as well - for instance, I saw Keith Olbermann on Letterman tonight, although he wasn't mentioned by name either by voice or by Chyron, and he didn't say a word - but my other problem is that my eyes get dry these days, and I end up washing them about every 90 minutes.

Not Much Of An Inconvenience

It's not a real inconvenience. I'm in the bathroom every 20 minutes anyway - it's part of being umpty-zillion years old. Blondie, being a spring chicken at only eleventy-zillion years old, only visits half as often, but that's how she happened to find my glasses before I realized they were gone.

When I got my first pair of cheaters, I bumped into Ben Franklin at the optician's shop, and he told me that glasses were rather expensive, and to be considerate of my poor suffering parents (I used to wonder how he knew my parents were suffering, but when I became a father, I realized it was because they had to put up with me), I should only use my glasses when I was looking at stuff, so as to not wear them out. I repeated that to my mother, who told me that was a joke, and you wore out glasses from putting them on, taking them off, and folding them up, not by looking at stuff.

Everyone Misspends Their Youth

Everyone has a misspent youth, I am told, and I don't know that to be true, but the older I get, the more and more I regret the way I misspent my youth. Damn it, I behaved. I didn't do things that would get entered on my Permanent Record, not realizing, of course, that nobody would ever give a hotsy-totsy about it once I became an adult. I'm not sure who even has possession of it, these days. Maybe the Permanent Record is like the witches of Salem, a symptom of ergot poisoning.

This is a culture that worships youth, but as far as that goes, I'm nigh onto being a cultural atheist. Gods obviously exist. Who but the God of Spares could ensure so thoroughly that spare items are rendered useless in jig time? Youth, on the other hand, is highly overrated. I think about ergot poisoning, and realize that it would be a great scheme for terrorists.

The Tao Of Terrorism

The gist of terrorism, many people fail to realize, is not actual destruction and devastation, but the close escape. Instead of 2,800 people dying in the Twin Towers, the buildings could have been set on fire at the base, closing off all exits, and causing 50,000 people to roast to death and suffocate in the smoke and fumes, but that wouldn't have been as effective. The shoe-bomber on that plane reminded us all that Al-Queda was out there, and it resulted in Richard Reid getting locked up, at cost of a few hundred dollars. A real attack could not strike fear into any more people than that, and it would have been much more costly for Al Queda.

So just imagine that you introduce ergot poisoning into the products at one of the nation's largest mills. It'd take weeks or months to discover, and by then, it would have made its way into lots of different products ranging from breakfast cereals to pancake mix to breaded meats to bread. It'd take a long time for someone to figure out that all these people were suffering the effects of ergot poisoning, and by then, there'd be a billion dollars of products that would have to be recalled.

A Youth Who Comes Up

At my age, it's sufficient to invent the plan and discard it. A youth who comes up with this clever plan might be tempted to see if it would actually work. From the Salem witch trials, obviously a lot of people survived the accidental poisoning with little more in the way of ill effects than temporary insanity of a sort. Kids have been known to poison teachers with LSD-25 or with phenolphthalein - it's the laxative that is (or at least was) in Ex-Lax - as a practical joke.

A kid could consider mass poisonings with ergot to be a big practical joke, not thinking about the cost of all those recalls, or the number of people who would die because of traffic mishaps, errors by medical professionals, etc. There are much better ways to misspend your youth.

CBS Has A Word For It - But It Can't Be Said

Craig Ferguson was talking tonight about CBS not wanting him to use proscribed words. The reason, he says, is to keep people from running off to do the things in those words; they'd rather the audience sticks around and hears about the sponsors' products. Or, he suggested, the words might corrupt the viewers, although anyone who was awake at that time of the morning would already be corrupt, he suggested. Or then he postulated, that there might be people who have a clear conscience, and simply enjoy the nighttime.

That, of course, describes those of us suffering from Oldtimer's Disease. We have to be up all night in order to keep the toilet well-flushed. We nap around the clock, which seems to be what the cat and dog prefer to do as well. Robert Heinlein, quoting his character "Lazarus Long" said, It's amazing how much "mature wisdom" resembles being too tired.

Not An Enemy

At this point in my life, I don't have an enemy in the world. I've outlived them all. There are simply people I annoy the hell out of, and I'm glad they exist, because how else would I be sure I am still alive? I suppose that means I am in my dotage, and I certainly reached the point of "too tired" years ago. Is there such a thing as mature wisdom?

If so, it has to lie in the fact that my regrets mostly lie in not doing more things that I thought I would later regret. I've seen a lot of friends and relatives die, and while I can't say that none of them resulted from "Hey, watch this" moments, most of them died while acting prudently.

So I'd say that "mature wisdom" is something I once read on a billboard advertising spaces in a graveyard. It said "Get Lots While You're Young."

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
Ben Franklin - cemetery - Chyron - Craig Ferguson - David Letterman - ergot - Ex-Lax - eyeglasses - Keith Olbermann - Lazarus Long - LSD - Mark Twain - misspent youth - Richard Reid - Salem - terrorist - witch