Epistle 24 – Avast, Ye Lubbers!

Ahoy, mate! Belay the cut o’ yer jib, or when the bos’n unfurls the yardarm, you’ll walk the plank! Down t’ Davey Jones’ locker with ye. We’ll hoist the Jolly Roger by the 2-bell watch or me name ain’t Long John Silver! Arrgh.

As you can probably tell, I’m on the high seas. I don’t have a peg leg, but I do have an artificial hip, which is almost the same thing. I also don’t have a parrot on my shoulder, but there is one on my Tommy Bahama shirt. And, I’m feeling quite salty. Or maybe it’s the margaritas from the Mermaid bar. When one is aboard a cruise ship in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, swashbuckling comes naturally to us old salts.

If the truth be told, I have been Shanghaied on an . . . um . . . er . . . business trip. That’s it—a business trip! Honest! After months of suffering through the lunacy of the politicians and the bankers, a handful of us decided the best course of action was to take our wives and plunder ye olde shoppes of the Yucatan. If we can’t do anything about the US economy, maybe we can help Mexico.

If nothing else, exchanging the pirates of Washington and Wall Street for the Pirates of the Caribbean should certainly be safer and more profitable. I don’t understand why the Spaniards kept looking for El Dorado when there were all those gold and silver shops in Cozumel. Maybe they didn’t like the tourist prices but Columbus was a tourist, too, right?

Anyway, back to my tramp steamer where I have been liberally sharing the wisdom of my many ocean voyages (this is my second) with the lubbers who don’t have my sea legs. The adventure of the high seas is fraught with peril, and the first danger of the deep is the buffet line when you board.

One false step there and you could be trampled to death. And then there’s the threat of diabetic shock from a sugar overdose at the chocolate extravaganza. Of course, there are also all those plump torsos scorched beyond recognition on the pool deck, but somehow those manage to regenerate new cells from the smoke in the casino.

But none of these terrors of the deep can match the wrath of the old toughs who invade the library everyday right after breakfast to play cards with the same people they play cards with everyday back home for free. Occupy their table and God help you.

Which is exactly the crime on the high seas for which I have been found guilty. I have to leave now because a scurvy crew of old, gray buccaneers is marching me off the plank. Arrgh!!

We Will Win

Jonah and the Whale

. I’m a Christian. More specifically, a back-sliding Lutheran. But in a much larger sense, I’m a child of the same God that 3 of the great religions on this earth worship. While I believe in the Bible’s New Testament, I relate more to the rascals, wars and heroes of the Old Testament. The older I get, the less I search for organized religion and the more I search for spirituality. Lord knows the Baby Boomer Generation could use a little spiritual help about now . . . and a little humor wouldn’t hurt either.

. Which somehow brings me to Jonah. I can’t recall ever doing the right thing on the first try. Why is the right thing always the hard thing? God told Jonah to go to Ninevah, but he thought all the Ninevites were dirtballs so he bought a ticket on a cruise ship in the opposite direction. Bad idea. Now God had to whip up a storm and have the crew toss Jonah overboard. Then God had to have a whale, which was just minding his own business eating a plankton sandwich, swallow Jonah whole and take him back to the Middle East. How would you like to be inside that whale while he did whatever whales do?

. Sure enough, the whale spit old Jonah back on shore, probably covered with gooey inside whale stuff, so he would finally get to work on Ninevah. Maybe all Boomers don’t do things this way, but I bet most of us can relate.

Take avocado-green appliances, for instance. God didn’t want avocado-green appliances in your kitchen ruining your appetite. God wanted doctors to wear avocado-green smocks in operating rooms so they could ruin your chances of survival. In either case, if you spit up, nobody would notice.

. The point is that there were Boomers somewhere out there who knew better. Just like there were millions of Boomers who knew better about gas-guzzling cars. But instead of overcoming our addiction to pumping gas, we invented attack vehicles that could intimidate a Sherman tank.

. Up and down, back and forth, finding our way in spite of ourselves. That’s the Boomer legacy. Maybe we aren’t covered with whale goop, but it sure feels like that after the Great Recession of 2008. After a lifetime of this nonsense, I’ve finally lost patience with us. As an early Boomer, I was trusting in the rancid masses to come along behind and drive my property values to outrageous levels so I could spend my golden years in the lap of luxury.

But what did the masses do? They booked a cruise in the opposite direction and ran smack into the worst financial storm since the Great Depression. Instead of minding the store, they did what they have always don (aka whatever the hell they wanted), and the system tanked. My “retirement plan” of mutual funds and Florida real estate, which seemed like a hell of an idea at the time, went south without me.

. Of course, I’m not alone. There are millions of us–bald, fat, middle-aged veterans of more good times than any generation in history, wondering where the whale will spit us up. We could gnash our teeth, but they’re getting pretty worn.

We could pull out our hair, but there’s precious little of that left. So we blamed Wall Street, the government, the banks, the crooks, the Arabs, and everybody else but us. Sadly, it didn’t help. We have met the enemy and it is us. So there is nothing left for us but to go to Ninevah . . . finally.

. Personally, I think the whale should spit me out on the French Riviera. I’m sure God has important work for me there. Boomeritis never dies.

We Will Win

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