Special Valentine's Day Edition
On aging, pink carnations, special counsel & memory lapses.
When I was in high school, every Valentine’s Day, the cheerleaders would deliver pink and red carnations to the lucky girls during class. The pink ones were for “like” and the red ones were for “more than like.” I only received pink carnations and those were from my friends who felt sorry for me. If memory serves.
If I think back further into Valentine’s Day past, I remember my parents buying my sisters and I mice (fake, not real) dressed in red and white outfits (fake, not real). However, they always bought two girl mice and one boy mouse, so every year my sisters and I would fight over who got the girl mice but I always got one of them because I was the youngest. If memory serves.
(Incidentally today is also Ash Wednesday, the day that you can tell who the Catholics are by the ashes on their foreheads. Either that or they’re chimney sweeps. I’ve learned never to assume.)
As everyone knows by now, unless you’re blissfully living in an isolated cabin in the woods playing speed solitaire, the special counsel’s report released last week concluded that no criminal charges would be filed against President Biden for his handling of classified documents.
In his report, special counsel Robert Hur, a Trump appointee, wrote, “Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview with him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
Shit, man. If you replace “sympathetic” and “well-meaning” with “bitter” and “arthritic,” and switch “man” to “troll-like woman,” that’s basically me.
Now I’m no 81-year-old man, but it’s fair to say that my memory isn’t what it used to be. About four times a day, I walk into a room and say, what am I doing here? Then I remember it was to get my phone (in my hand) or grab my glasses (on my head) or else I don’t remember at all and I just shrug.
When someone asks me what I did over the weekend, my eyes glaze over as I try to remember their name. I’ve blanked before on when I graduated high school and college. One time I forgot how old I was. (Please. I was only off by like 10 years. Younger.)
Let’s face it. We have two very old men running for president, like Methuselah old. One resembles Henry Fonda in On Golden Pond. The other is that 77-year-old sociopath who called for his vice president to be hung on the Capitol lawn.
How do I write in Henry Fonda?
I mean, Trump’s the worst but let’s be honest. Biden’s not the best. We could have done better. And we could very well lose. Just like in 2016, when I wept for days, wore a black veil over my face, and refused to leave my house except to look up at the sky to witness the end of the world.
If I recall correctly.
It's beyond me how people don't even mention RFKJr as being a candidate. Like he's not got a ghost of a chance and we have to choose between who's the least worst of the old farts? Screw that.
Henry Fonda from On Golden Pond is a fine choice. A grumpy old coot. Or you could write in your vote for me as a proxy for old Henry. I am within 7 years of how old he was in that movie. And I can be just as curmudgeonly. A friend of mine told his wife way back in '81 that Fonda's character was exactly like what he expected ME to be when I was an old geezer. I'll own up to that. Besides I think I can claim Henry Fonda as kind of an ancestor. In the 1939 film "Drums Along the Mohawk" he played Gil Martin, patriotic American colonist in Revolutionary War era German Flats, NY. My Martin ancestors lived in that community circa 1770-1840. So, I claim Henry Fonda as my who-knows-how-many great grandpa. I am not sure what that means for my relation to Jane or Peter.