The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I have a friend, Betty, who’s planning to retire early, not because she’s sick and tired of her career, but the job demands standing all day and her hips need replacing, her knee is shot and her back is killing her. Trouble is, she’s a decade away from Medicare and with her medical issues, insurance is sort of critical, the insurance her employer covers now but she’ll be paying for soon. My knee replacement a little over a year ago was billed at 70,000 bucks, most all of it covered under Medicare. Hers and her hip surgeries, well, let’s agree she definitely needs insurance, even if it’s crazy expensive. Welcome to health care in America, the greatest in the world, I’m told.

But as troubling as losing health insurance is, that’s not her biggest concern. She told me she has no clue what she will do to fill her time once there’s no more work 5 days a week, not even counting overtime. “I’m not like you or my husband. You have all kinds of interests. You stay busy. I don’t have anything like that.”

Now, I may have missed my opportunity long ago to be a Retirement Influencer, my credentials being mostly retired all my life, plenty of idle time to develop interests in plumbing repair, house building, gardening, auto repair, boat construction, stained glass art, banjo picking, guitar luthiery, woodworking and furniture design, all those things that would have been impossible if I’d fallen into the trap of full time employment. Let’s be honest, I made Retirement an artform. Who better to present himself as an Influencer?

But I found myself virtually tongue-tied with Betty. Oh sure, I mumbled pathetic pithy pablum, encouraging claptrap, you’ll find plenty that captures your interest. Oh right, like daytime TV, noontime martinis, vacations to Las Vegas, long cruise ship sailings?

We’re woefully unprepared for the Golden years, obviously. Our work, our jobs, our careers — even if we hate them — give meaning to our otherwise empty lives. Our kids grew up and moved away. Our house is too big for two people. Retirement needs to start earlier for most of us, but of course if we all did that, who’d keep the economy humming? And even I, the Maynard G. Krebs of the late 20th Century, would have had to go back to work. So no, my career as Retirement Influencer, attractive as it seems, is a pipe dream. Same as Betty’s Golden Years….

If you look in the phone book — okay, if you Google up local acupuncturists — first name you find will be AA Acupuncture. I know, seems unnecessary to stick a couple of A’s in front of the name to get first billing. I mean, how many needle therapists do we have near the South End? But worse, the double A’s conjure up Alcoholics Anonymous so maybe this business is possibly a 12 step program for needle addicts??

I made the mistake of asking Rhonda, the sole owner and practitioner, that very question. The darts she sent from her glaring eyes convinced me she might apply her skills to funny bone repair, nothing I was going to suggest out loud for fear of more than her frowning disapproval — and besides, I have always had a phobia around syringes, vaccines and most any penetrating sharp pointy objects. I can’t watch an injection. Not my own, certainly, not even the ones on TV or in a movie.

So the thought of dozens of twirling little needles punched through my skin and rotated, well, not likely Rhonda will be seeing me professionally soon as one of her patients. Or victims.

Nevertheless … I have friends who do let her pierce them. Back pain, joint pain, tennis elbow, erectile dysfunction, you name it. When traditional medicine fails, who ya gonna call? They’ve tried prayer, couples therapy, hypnotists, drugstore supplements, chiropractors, weight loss drugs, cannabis and more liquor. Why not Rhonda and her magic needles?

And besides, most claim positive results. For awhile anyway. Maybe it really works, this acupuncture, or maybe it’s just placebo, does it really matter? And if there’s therapeutic result in administering pain, well, consult your dominatrix, it might work too. Although you might consult your spouse first….

A study cited in the morning’s lying press showed statistics that kids were less likely to do drugs these days. The thesis these researchers had come up with was they were doping themselves on social media, a steady drip of dopamine pleasure, nearly constant in their waking, if somnambulistic, hours. Social media as narcotic….

You live down at the tail end of an island far from the tentacles of Facebook, you forget sometimes you’ve set yourself adrift from the continental shores of 21st century modernity, but as the riptides sweep you away and the land lines tear loose from the walls, those messages from the Mainland become fader and more indistinct, Morse code from telegraph poles rotting in the relentless rains.

For a confirmed xenophobe, this desire to stay in constant contact with strangers and family and friends is bemusing, like stuffing messages in bottles all day long and setting them loose on the tides. I had a buddy back in high school who was a ham radio operator tapping out code to other hamsters overseas and across the globe, who stayed up late in his room on the chance that meteorological conditions were ripe for some far away contact. “I talked to a guy in England,” he would tell me the following morning.

“Whadja talk about?” I’d ask. Invariably, nothing much, just name, serial numbers and rank. Where they lived. Age, maybe. I guess we just have this desire to make contact, to let someone know we’re out there, that we’re not alone. Same reason we send radio signals into space. Same reason we write blogs. Ironically, my buddy the ham radio operator slowly became afraid of human interaction of all kinds, what the shrinks call agoraphobic. I tried getting in touch with him some years after the last time I saw him, but he’d lost his job, moved away from his house in Missoula and now even Google can’t locate him. I imagine him holed up in some desolate place, tapping Morse code late into the comforting night, listening for an answer from folks he’ll never have to meet, all his bottles crashing onto lonesome beaches in places he’ll never see.

Now I love used car dealers as much as the next guy. You put an alligator in a white shirt, cheap shoes and some black slacks, give him a commission for every victim he drags into the sewer lagoon, I think you got a pretty accurate image. It’s a dog eat dog world, we all know that, but even in the jungle the beasts of prey don’t take smirking joy at dragging down their dinner. A used car salesman, he takes the kill the way we take a joke.

Just when I thought there was pretty much no lower bar these reptiles could belly down to, along comes Missionary Motors in town. What lemon would Jesus drive? You know, if he was thinking of trading in the donkey. Got a nice Calvary Cross where the T is in Motors. I don’t know if these folks read the chapter in Trump’s favorite book or not, the one where Jesus turns over the tables in the temple where the merchants had set up shop, but I sort of doubt it. Course neither has Trump so maybe they can be forgiven, no pun intended. But there’s something sacrilegious about using your religion to sell cars. Or mattresses. Or real estate. Or breakfast cereal. Or just about anything else outside ecumenical material. If you ask me….

I wonder what we would think if Moslem Motors rolled into our fair city and set up shop. What would Muhammed drive? Mostly I think he would be driven out of town. Which is where I hope Mission Motors goes next.

A few years back I stopped to get gas at Elger Bay Mega-Shop and was accosted by a guy in a panel truck with a fish on his tailgate and a business name stenciled across the side: Hiz Biz. Hiz being, you guessed it, God. Me, I had a fish too, but inside the fish it said DARWIN. He asked in an accusatory way if I knew what that DARWIN fish meant and I said I had a pretty good idea, something to do with evolution if my memory served me well. He spluttered, “They sell those fish at the erotic bakery in Seattle!” I said, “You could have slapped me with a mackerel, but what’s your point?” He told me they baked cakes that looked like penises.

“This will come as sad news,” I said, “but why would I care? It’s a free country.”

I guess it’s a slippery slope, freedom. And maybe I need to shut up about selling cars for Jesus too. Or Muhammed. You got to buy em from somebody.