The Brains of the Outfit - An Appreciation

You might think that retiring means you just stop working and start sitting around doing nothing.  Actually, I have been not-exactly-retired for 21 months and have been sitting happily around doing pretty damn little.  But now that I need to really-really retire, I find myself too frequently inadequate to the complications of the task.  My brain, which once was an object of personal pride and could cope with the Rule Against Perpetuities while idling, now is bowled over by puzzles like, "Which line do I sign?" and "Where did I leave my pen?"

I'm faced with two potential explanations.  One, maybe my brain is poaching in the Florida heat and has lost its fizz, like a glass of beer left in the sun while I search for another bag of nuts.  Or two, maybe my former mental effervescence was an illusion in the first place.

Here's what happened.  I had to update all kinds of estate-planning documents to cover the unlikely possibility that I can't spend everything I own before I am cast adrift on the proverbial ice flow. Oh, wait, wrong climate.  Tar pits seem more appropriate right now.  Anyway, you get the idea - the kids would like some of the proceeds if I'm not using them.  (They hasten to deny this, but if they're not lying now, they will be eventually.)

It wasn't the technical complexities of the Living Will and Last Will and Testament that unhinged me.  It was the typing and assembly of what turned out to be a staggering pile of paper that did me in.  Activities that I once tossed off as "ministerial" suddenly grew fangs and claws.  Paper jammed.  Ink ran low.  Staples punctured flesh.  Two dozen finished documents deviated from standard English in ways that I would not like to be remembered for into perpetuity.  That word again, perpetuity.  Like me, it takes on weight as it ages.

Truth be known, I deviated from standard English while shredding useless Powers of Atorney [sic], lapsing frequently into Anglo-Saxon and middle French, heavy on gerunds.  I am multi-lingual, to a point.

Why did this never happen to me when I was practicing law with the Big Guns in Hartford?  I have one word for you - Nancy.  For 20-plus years Nancy apparently dealt with all these issues in background, well below my puny threshold of attention.  So when I directed (no less) that Motions to Dismiss and Certificates of Service appear on my desk, they did.  Properly typed, proofread, copied, collated, stapled and some other things that I probably still am missing.  With envelopes.  Was I impressed?  Nah.  Piece of cake, right?  Um, no.

I have fretted more in the past week than I did in 20 years in Nancy's uncomplaining care.  Well - mostly uncomplaining.  Turns out she was the brains of the outfit, and I didn't even know it.  Thanks, Nancy.  I hope my replacement knows how lucky he of she or they are.  But more likely they won't get it until they need to type their own retirement papers.

Newt

Friends of Friends of Friends

I am a somewhat reluctant denizen of Facebook, mostly because people who I know or knew or who know who I know or knew (and so on) keep inviting me to be their Friend, and I haven't the heart to say, "No," or even sometimes, "Who?"  So when I check into FB from time to time to see if my children are still out there, perhaps even having children - or more children - of their own, I get to see what everyone I know and everyone who they know (etc) are doing.  (I know this is hard to read, but work it out somehow; it's a complicated story line.)  Mostly what all these not-really-related people are doing is mundane.  Going to Mickey D's for dinner - check.  Sun rose again in the east today - check. 

But then, there are the outliers, renegades whose purpose in life is to perplex and befuddle.  I especially like pictures that Friends and Friends of Friends (etc) post, usually in some misguided effort to convey to the cosmos WHO THEY ARE.  For instance, here is a guy who knows a gal I know - or at least knew - who is shock absorbers:

And a guy I know and sometimes love (because he makes great gumbo and sells great beer) who also just happens to be of the breakfast persuasion:

t

Yup - bacon & eggs, tomatoes, sausage and other stuff - and beer.  Your basic Full English Breakfast.  Speaking of beer, here's a guy who is a beer:

After that it gets - um - odder and more personal.  Got muscles?

Folks, I am related to this person by accident of blood.

Here's someone I am not related to but love dearly, with friend:

Here's a lady who knows someone who I know, in the process of discovering that babies are not born; they just fall out of the sky:

Finally, I know someone who lives - if you want to call it that - in the desert.  He has smelly friends:

You might think these pix were culled from months of peculiar Facebook postings, but - I tremble to observe - these are all current pictures.  Inevitably - ineluctably even - more like them will arrive on tomorrow's Facebook page.  I am going to have to ask my friends to start hanging around with a better class of Friends.

Newt

On Being Young

I thought to jot a thousand words on being young.  And about my sweet granddaughter, Katy, who is nine.  And about her sweet great-grandfather, Bill Flaherty, who will be ninety  February next.  But perhaps the picture will suffice.

Newt

The Professional Cynic Meets Silverstein

I have been a professional cynic for so long that I had begun to think cynicism as essential as bone and blood.  So when Kathryn strolled up the jetway earlier this evening, I was struck by how grown up she had become at the age of barely nine, MP3-player and tween magazine in hand, hair streaked fetchingly red but so sophisticated.  My granddaughter has more air miles on her than I had when I was 30.  Now she flies solo, moving with confidence through Tampa International toward baggage claim, grandfather and great-grandfather in tow.  If the mark of good parenting is independence and confidence, Katy's parents are beyond good.  A blue-blood cynic would say this is a visit by a tiny adult-in-waiting.

After coffee and bread pudding - Katy declined the coffee, although she does indulge from time to time in a bit of decaf -  we began preparing for what will likely turn into a week-long game of Risk (the Game of World Domination, it says), parceling out game pieces and deciding that a layout on the coffee table will be least intrusive.  "We flew over Orlando," she says.  Florida is the Land of Disney, but she will settle for Busch Gardens this trip.  And, I hope, a few things she does not expect.  At nine, she is so much harder to impress, you know.

As we sat reading our respective historical novel and tween-zine, I thought perhaps we might read to each other.  The inimitable Shel Silverstein quickly became the weapon of choice.  I read "Captain Hook"; she read "Hug O' War"; I read "Sleeping Sardines"; she read "Listen to the Mustn'ts":

Listen to the MUSTN'TS, child,
Listen to the DON'TS
Listen to the SHOULDN'TS
The IMPOSSIBLES, the WON'TS
Listen to the NEVER HAVES
Then listen close to me --
Anything can happen, child,
ANYTHING can be.

She read with conviction, with authority. 

Bedtime drifted around naturally. "Do you still like to cuddle before sleep?" I asked.  "Mm-hmm."

Lie in your granddaughter's bed, wrapped around all that innocence.  Then tell me you're still a cynic.

Newt

Scene on the Beach

It's crazy season in Pinellas County - Spring Break - when the beaches fill with sex-crazed, nubile coeds who have flown or driven in from colder climes.  It's a happy time for those of us who cruise the sugar-soft sand wearing mirrored sunglasses and trying not to look like the dirty old men we are.

If you come - I'm talking to you, you dirty old man - here are some things to look for.

Ground zero for nubiles is Clearwater Beach.  It is no coincidence that Gulfview Boulevard, which parallels the beaches, is heavily laced with pedestrian crosswalks.  The road was, after all, laid out by dirty old civil engineers.  And the sovereign law of Florida requires motorists to yield to pedestrians pedestriating the crosswalks.  I can burn off a gallon of gas at a crosswalk, just waiting to yield to nubile pedestrians.  My wife gets impatient wondering why we are standing still in the road for no reason she can discern.  Motorists behind me get equally antsy, with blue-haired old ladies anxious to get on with it and their dirty old husbands wanting to take my primo spot at the crosswalk.

Walking the beach is far more scenic, of course, and I develop an acute sunburn every year about this time.  Do you know that if you hold your cell phone out in front of your face and talk to it, people never suspect you're really taking pictures? At least, I don't think they do.

For newcomers - dirty old men on their first visit, that is - you should know about the beach volleyball courts set up near Pier 60.  All the static sunbathing in the world does not beat nubiles in motion. In teams of six or eight.  One man's opinion, all right?  Well, no, actually.  You see, beach volleyball is a game whose rules are made in France (I'm not making this up).  If you subscribe to the Official Rules, as most dirty old men should, you get a rule book with this picture on the cover:

Well, as you can see there are a lot more nuances to Spring Break than meet the eye - or maybe not - but I must be getting on to it.  Till next time.

Newt