Entry 568: Old People

We got a knock on the door the other night around dinner time.  Lil' S1 answered it, because he loves answering the door, and I heard a voice say, "Can you go get your daddy for me?"  It was my next door neighbor.  Her husband had fallen and she needed help getting him back up.  It's funny when it's on a campy '80s commercial; it's a lot less humorous in real life.

I put my shoes on and hustled over there as quickly as possible, finding, indeed, a fallen old man crumpled in a hallway.  I asked several times if we should call an ambulance or something, but she assured me that once he got back up he could manage on his own.  He also has a broken shoulder -- not from the fall, it was already in a sling -- so it was hard to get a grip on him, but I was able to get under him and grab his belt loops and hoist him back up on his feet.  His wife gave him his cane and then he ambled over to the toilet (the closest seat) and sat down, completely enervated.  I made his wife take down my number and then I left.  I felt like I should have done more, even though I know there was nothing else to do.

Of course, when something like this happens, I start thinking about my own parents (who seem to still be holding their own, physically and mentally, thank goodness) and also about my own mortality.  I didn't have a full-on existential freakout, but I did think about myself at his age (assuming I get there; I'm planning on it, but you never know).  I just can't imagine degenerating to that point -- brittle-boned, unable to stand, exhausted after a few steps, barely able to speak.  I think about it, and it's, like, fuck, maybe Hemingway had the right idea.  But that's too bleak for me.  I'm an optimist at heart.  So, to cheer myself up, here's a list off the top of my head of some inspiring accomplishments by old people.

• Buck O'Neil, the iconic baseball personality, was touring the nation, giving interviews, championing the Negro Leagues Museum and pre-integration Black ballplayers right up to his death at age 94 in 2006.
• The oldest living major league baseball player Eddie Robinson recently started a podcast at age 100 about his playing days.
• Robert Marchand rode a bicycle 15 km (about 9 mi) on his 107th birthday.
• Carl Reiner wrote three memoirs in his 90s and was active (and cogent) on Twitter and other media until his death at 98.
• Grandma Moses didn't start painting until 78.  (Note: I don't really know who Grandma Moses is.  This is just the example I always hear cited of somebody starting a new trade at an advanced age.  I should read her Wikipedia page... done -- interesting enough.)
  
• Writer and running enthusiast Malcolm Gladwell beat his friend (a 27-year-old) in a race by running a 5:15 mile; Gladwell is 67 years old. 
• George Foreman rewon the heavyweight boxing title in 1994 at age 45 and defended it a year later before retiring.  This is my favorite old person sports feat, because Foreman did it in one of the most physically demanding sports and because it doesn't require the "for an old person qualifier."  He was heavyweight fricking champion!  Not of the senior circuit, of the entire sport.  That's amazing at any age.  He knocked out a 26-year-old to do it.**  It just goes to show the true power of meat grilled at a slant. 
• A lot is made of Joe Biden being an old president at 78, but Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is two years older, and her California counterpart in the Senate, Dianne Feinstein, just turned 88. 
  
• Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős was one of the best and most prolific problem solvers until he died at 83.*

I think what this list shows is that you can't beat death -- we're all going to go sometime (relatively soon, too, if you think about it) -- but you can put up an admirable fight with a little determination and probably a lot of luck.

*Erdős was fascinated by the subject of his own death and would frequently reference it in casual conversation in his old age.  He supposedly once said, "I want to be giving a lecture, finishing up an important proof on the blackboard, when someone in the audience shouts out, 'What about the general case?'. I'll turn to the audience and smile, 'I'll leave that to the next generation,' and then I'll keel over."

**It's a pretty crazy fight (highlights here).  Foreman survives haymaker after haymaker from the then champion, a lefty name Michael Moorer, and then knocks him out with what looks to be an ordinary right cross.  It goes to show how much power Foreman had.  The thing about those really big dudes is that their punches often look weaker than littler dudes because they don't have that same quick pop to them, but they are usually way stronger.  It's physics -- mass matters.  

In other news, we hit the pool pretty hard this weekend.  We went to our pool Friday afternoon and then today one of Lil' S1's classmates had a birthday party at a different pool.  It's fun, except Lil' S2 can't really swim yet, so we always have to go in the pool with him, or watch him like a hawk to make sure he doesn't get in over his head.  It's hard to just chill and chat with the other parents.

Lil' S1 went off a high dive today for the first time (we don't have one at our pool).  He didn't hesitate or anything.  He just went right up and cannonballed off.  He's a pretty competent swimmer now.  The only thing I have to worry with him about is getting tired or goofing off.  Today he was playing in the deep end with his friends, and they were stealing each others noodles, and I had to intervene a few times and tell them not to do that.  Roughhousing by taking away a 9-year-old kid's flotation device in ten-foot water just didn't seem like a good idea to me.  (One thing I like about our pool, as opposed to the one we were at today, is that there isn't really a deep end where kids can play.)

I swam laps yesterday for the first time in, I dunno, 15 years?  I think the last time I went was the campus pool in grad school.  It's such a hard workout for me.  I had to stop for a little breather after every length.  (Meanwhile the old woman in the lane next to me is going nonstop and doing kick-flip turns.)  It felt pretty good though, and it's a low-impact exercise which is a welcome change-up to the fight class I took on Thursday.  I think I'm going to try to add swimming to my regular workout schedule.

The only thing I don't like about it is the chlorine really irritates my skin, and I get really bad swimmer's itch if I go in a pool too frequently.  That's the main reason I didn't play water polo in high school.  Well, that and I didn't want to go to practice at 6:00 am, which is when the pool was available.  I quit football because the helmet hurt my head, and I never played water polo because I have sensitive skin and don't like to get up early.  I never realized before how much my fussiness affected my athletic endeavors as a youth.

Alright, that's all for tonight.  Until next time...

Entry 567: Juneteenth

There was no school today to commemorate the new national holiday, Juneteenth.  It's cool and all, but it would have been nice to get more than an evening's notice.  We literally got a text at 6:01 pm last night informing us school was cancelled.  S and I already had light work days scheduled (the kids had "graduation" ceremonies we wanted to attend -- or rather that she wanted to attend and I felt compelled to attend), so we were able to handle it, but still, that's harsh on parents with elementary school kids.  Maybe you go ahead and make the announcement now but the actual observation doesn't start until 2022.  I mean, I can't imagine working-class Black parents (of which there are many in DC) were very excited about losing their childcare on such short notice.

In general, however, I am in favor of Biden making Juneteenth a national holiday.  We need more awareness about the history of slavery and its abolition in the US.  Kids learn about it a little bit in history classes, but not very extensively.  I didn't even know what Juneteenth was until I watched an episode of Atlanta a few years ago.  So, I was, like, 41 when I learned.  That's not right.  We need more Black history in school -- actual history -- not just performative paeans to Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks every February.

Unfortunately, however, the Republican party seems to be trying to turn "critical race theory" into a culture-war weapon, which doesn't bode well for a robust Black history curriculum.  Critical race theory is such a nebulous term it's absolutely going to be coopted by Trumpers (the same way as "cancel culture") to mean anything that they don't like, regardless of how true or merited it actually is.

I think most people, especially those who lean right, just don't want to (or can't) confront how truly awful slavery was.  I think they think of it as really bad in the same way that the oppression of women was once really bad.  But it goes so far beyond that.  It literally goes into worst-atrocities-in-human-history territory.  I mean imagine "owning" people and forcing them to do work for you and being allowed to beat (and even kill) them if they don't do it.  And you could also rape them -- maybe not totally legally, but who's going to stop you?  Think about those stories of children being kidnapped and locked away for years on end, and everybody's reaction is What kind of sick fuck could ever do that to a fellow human being?  But how is what American heroes like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Hancock did any better?  When people talk about not wanting to deify our founding fathers because they were white supremacist slave-holders I completely get it.  I agree.

The flip-side of this coin, however, is that the worse you recognize the past to be, the farther it means we've come since then.  This is something a lot of people on the left need to take to heart.  Too many liberals suffer from progress phobia (a term I heard credited to the science writer Steven Pinker), whereby they are scared to acknowledge the undeniable fact that things are way better for Black Americans than they used to be, and very likely they are getting better still, slowly but surely, as I write this.  For some reason, it's gauche to say this, and when you do you have to give a five-minute caveat beforehand: Certainly racism still exists today, there are widespread discrepancies in the treatment of Black and White people in so many areas, including schooling, housing, and policing, we still have a long way...

Well, I set out to talk about going to the pool, and pumped out a 500-word tangent on slavery instead.  I'm going to hit a few more topics, lightning-round style and call it a night.

• We went to the pool today.  We got a summer membership to one some other families from school go to.  It's not a super chichi country club pool or anything like that.  It's pretty bare bones (and the bathrooms are actually kinda gross -- at least the men's is), but it's affordable and it's a pool, so it's quite nice.
• I started up online Scrabble again.  I might start playing tournaments again too.  I need some time to build my skills back up though.
• I also joined my neighborhood fight club.  One of the other dads from school is a boxing enthusiast, and he has a little set-up in his garage, so he's been holding makeshift workout sessions for me and another guy.  It's pretty awesome, actually.
• Remember in a previous entry I said Lil' S2 is really good at math?  I shit you not, he solved the following problem in his head correctly with absolutely no help: The zoo has 112 types of reptiles and amphibians in their exhibits.  There are 72 types of reptiles and the rest are amphibians.  How many more types of reptiles are there than amphibians in the exhibits?
• The correct answer is 32, if you're not as smart as a five-year-old.
  

Until next time...

Entry 566: Some Followups

The plumbing work in our basement is finished and the giant trenches have been refilled.  The "only" thing left to do is the recarpeting/retiling.  Well, that and cleanup.  Everything in our basement has a thin layer of dust on it.  It would have been nice to get a heads-up from the workers so that we could have put covers on some things (and it also would've been nice if they closed the doors to help confine it), but whatever.  If they fixed the issue, it's all good.  That's my one and only criterion on whether or not they did a good job.  If never hear that gurgling sound, and if I never to clean up shit-water, again then they did fantastic work,* and I'll gladly de-dust the entire basement myself.  (Okay, that's a lie, but I will pay somebody to do it.)

*According to the city inspector this company is "the best in the business."  If he was trying to make me feel confident about their work, he did the exact opposite.  He made me wonder if they were in cahoots.

One thing I was thinking while looking at the mounds of dirt in our basement: Why don't they put in access panels under the flooring to sewage lines?  I'm sure it's a cost thing; everything's a cost thing.  But it just seems so ridiculous to have to jackhammer through the foundation to fix something like this.

Oh, if you're wondering what the ultimate cause of this all was: roots.  Whoever laid the pipe originally used an ill-fitting joint, and over time roots squeezed in there and clogged/destroyed a large section of the line.  I really like trees, but their roots sure do fuck shit up sometimes.  

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The kids' baseball seasons are over -- yay.  Lil' S2's last game was a lot of fun, actually.  It went by super quickly and the kids played really well.  It's coach-pitch, so I lob them some balls, and if they miss five or six in a row we put the ball on a tee.  This was the only game of the season in which we didn't use the tee at all.  (For the not-so-good kids I have to aim at their bats, and I was really hitting my spots.)  Lil' S2 hit the ball on the first pitch both times he was up, which is either a huge improvement or a total fluke.  (He told me on the ride home "I didn't do it on purpose.")  Either way I'll take it.

Lil' S1's last game, on the other hand, was kinda a disaster, mitigated only by the fact that it was a playoff loss, so the season is thankfully over.  In this league it's machine pitch, and they have strikeouts, and Lil' S1 struck out his only two times up, including once with the bases loaded and two outs.  (I was really counting on the kid who came up before him to make the third out of the inning, but he somehow made contact and got on base for the first time all year -- terrible timing.)  He just looked so bad, anemic, halfhearted swings, and he wasn't even ready to bat -- he was lying under the bench and the coach had to holler at him to get him up.

I didn't say anything immediately after the game, but later I asked him how he thought the season went, and we had something like the following conversation.

Him: Pretty good.  Except the last game we lost because of me.  If I got a hit my last time up we would have won.

(I don't think that's actually true -- I think they lost by quite a bit -- and I suspect he was more going for pity points than he was genuinely sad about it.) 

Me: Yeah, but it didn't look like you were even trying to get a hit.  You just kinda waved the bat softly through the air.

Him: I was trying.  I'm just not very good at hitting.

Me: That's because you never practice.  You never ask me to play, you never play with your friends, and you don't really participate on your team.  It seems like you don't really like playing baseball.

Him: I do like it.

Me: I don't think so.  One of your teammates told me you said that you were losing on purpose.  It's okay if you don't like it.  You don't have to play next season.

Him: [On the verge of tears] I want to play! I like it! I want to play!

Me: Well, you'll be in a higher league next year, and it's even more competitive.  So, you'll have to get better and you definitely have to put more effort into it.  I'm not going to spend two hours every Saturday to watch you tepidly swing at baseballs.

Him: What does tepidly mean?

Me: It means, like, in a weak manner -- not very strongly.

Him: Oh... I don't do that.  I am good!

Me: *Dissenting groaning noise.*

Him: Well, I want to play anyway!

Me: Alright, I'll make you a deal.  If you'll hit baseballs or play catch with me once a week then I'll sign you up for next season.  But you have to ask me.  I'm not going to ask you to do it.  At least once a week, deal?

Him: Deal!

That was about a week ago, and unsurprisingly he has yet to broach the subject.  It's so weird to me that he's so insistent on playing when he clearly doesn't want to actually play.  Maybe I just caught him in a weird mood, or maybe he just doesn't want to feel left out.  I don't know.  But it's going to be very strange if I have to compel my son to not play baseball.

Alright, it's 11:35pm.  That's enough for now.

Until next time...

Entry 565: Five Annoyances Ranked

5. Cicadas

They are out in full force now.  The foretold invasion is upon us.  It's impossible to leave your house without seeing, hearing, and stepping on cicadas (both dead and alive).  It's kinda gross and the noise is kinda irritating, but ultimately they're harmless.  Also, they'll be gone in about a month.

[A tree full of cicadas and an up-close shot of on one emerging from its shell on my shed]

4.  Busy Schedule

This kids sports schedule is relentless -- so many practices and games.  It's our fault for signing them up for too much -- Lil' S1 is doing both baseball and soccer and Lil' S2 is doing both baseball and swimming.  So, now we know for next time, but first we have to get through this time.  Hopefully both baseball seasons will be over this weekend.  Lil' S2's will end, barring a rainout (that's the other bad thing about baseball -- so many make-up games), and Lil' S1's will end if they lose.  For some reason they have playoffs at this age.  (Cue Jim Mora: "Playoffs?!")

I wouldn't mind if they were really into it, but they aren't.  Well, it's tough to say for Lil' S2, because he's so young -- he might like it when he's older -- but Lil' S2 has zero interest.  He's really social, so he likes hanging out with the other kids, but he just shows no desire in actually playing, or even learning the rules to, baseball.  He just wants to get together and goof off, which is fine, of course, but not in that context.  Youth sports are supposed to be fun, but they're supposed to be fun within the parameters of the game.  There are kids that actually want to learn and play baseball -- that's the fun for them -- and the kids who don't want to do this can spoil it.  I know this because I was one of the kids who wanted to take it "seriously," and I never liked it when my teammates sat down on the bases or threw dirt in the air or wore their glove on their head -- all things Lil' S1 does now.

So, S and I have to plan our weekends such that we're at parks at specific times to watch our kid goof off for two hours -- and I do mean two hours.  I have no idea why the games are so long.  A game a few weeks ago started at noon, and because the last inning was especially long (both teams have to bat), it didn't end until 2:15.  Why is everything so damn long?!*

*An exception to this is Lil' S2's swim lessons.  They're a half-hour on the dot.  We can leave and be back within an hour.  It's great.

 

3. My Dental Woes

My tooth -- or rather the gap where my tooth once was -- still doesn't feel right.  It doesn't hurt, necessarily, but it does provide me some discomfort.  It's hard to explain.  Also the wire retainer on my bottom teeth broke in half and one half came off, so I have this broken, jagged piece of metal in my mouth right now.  It's lovely.  

This might be higher on the list, but I have a follow-up appointment on Tuesday, so I'm withholding my annoyance in hopes things get resolved then.  I find things so much more annoying if I have to make a special appointment to deal with them.

2. Our Pipes

I'll probably save this one for a separate post, but here's how our basement guestroom looks right now.

 

"How is this not number one on my list?" you might be asking yourself.  Because it's solving the bigger problem of sewage periodically overflowing onto our basement floor.  Also, we found out insurance is going to cover a substantial portion of it.

 

1. My Back

A few days ago I was carrying the kids up the stairs (one on the front, one on the back), and I felt a little twinge in my back.  It was small and not very painful, but I knew instantly it was going to put me out of commission for a few days, because I've felt it before.  Sure enough, it's just been nagging me since then.  It's this weird muscle strain or something that feels like somebody is punching me in the back every time I shift my weight in the wrong direction.

Even though I know it will totally go anyway in a few days, it's number one on my list, because it's like, "why?"  Why did this have to happen now of all times?  At the precise moment I most need the stress relief of vigorous exercise.

This is definitely not the worst thing on my list, but it is, hands down, the most annoying.

Until next time...