It’s come to my attention recently that, in spite of my best efforts, I keep getting older. So far, it hasn’t been a problem. What is a problem is a tangential effect of aging that does hamper me from time to time: My brain is turning to mush. It doesn’t in any way affect my ability to turn out this column for The Voice. I don’t have oatmeal leaking out of my ears, or anything like that, as yet, anyway. But I fear something is going on.
The other night, while I was online searching for the location of the most recent Elvis sighting, I stumbled into Facebook and ran across someone from my old neighborhood. Even after 55 years and cataracts, I recognized her from her picture. We’d worked together at an Eagle food store. She was a lovely, young, cashier and I was a stock boy who used to bag for her when I drooled in to the grocery sacks. Even though she was one year older than I was, we had some mutual friends. I knew where her house was because I used to deliver papers there when I was a kid. I even knew her old boyfriend.
Now for the mush brain part. I sent her a message about our mutual employment and she asked where and when we worked together. I told her we both worked at Eagle. She said she never worked at Eagle. Not to be put off and settle for her incorrect answer, I said maybe it was Dominick’s because Dominick’s eventually bought the Eagle store. She asked where this might have been. I took out my azimuth, looked outside, and gave her the precise location. She said she never worked at Dominick’s. She went on to name the grade school and high school she attended, when she was graduated and when she got married.
I had to stare at my computer screen for a while because my mouth mentally dropped open and I mentally pounded my fist on my forehead until my mental knuckles hurt. I wrote back that I knew those details because they were part of our small talk when we worked together. She restated the fact she never worked at either of those stores. Far be it from me to insist that her brain must be turning to mush, I resigned myself to the fact my brain had become a corn meal breakfast food.
We continued a couple more back-and-forth chit chats about mutual friends from the old neighborhood, aging, then clicked off on our separate ways. She was pleasant and polite and never suggested that I should lobotomize myself with a corkscrew because she was apparently communicating with a creature from a different species. Although that may be true, I can’t let this go. I have to believe her when she says she couldn’t have worked with me. So what does that say about me? How would I know facts about her and recognize her on Facebook if we never made contact except on the job at a store where she never worked? Do-do-do-do, do-do-do-do (that’s the theme from Twilight Zone playing). Aliens obviously have had a hand in this somewhere during the last 55 years and most likely lobotomized me with a corkscrew already. If my brain truly has been corkscrewed and is becoming porridge, the only thing left for me is to run for public office.
Speaking of mushy brains, public office and The Twilight Zone, I bet The Donald wishes he could enter there after the week he’s had. It’s doubtful even Rod Serling could help him. I think Donald’s discovered you can’t run the government like you run a crooked business. As of this writing, he’s already spent 303 days on the golf course. Perhaps he’s thinking he should have stayed on the Florida links and not let his ego take over and coax him to throw his hat in the ring for the presidency. I’m sure it seemed like a good idea at the time. Hey, Donald! When you’re done tweeting your fingers off, I have a corkscrew you can borrow.