Teddy bears

A Tumblr acquaintance, Wooferstl, posted recently that his childhood teddy bear was lost sometime in the 1990s. In its memory, he bought alife-size Costco teddy bear. He posted this photo of himself with CostcoBearrecently:

I know the feeling.

I had a hideously ugly teddy bear when I was a kid. He was stout and had a strange just-been-strangled expression, but I loved him beyond measure.

He lived in my mother’s house for a long time after I left home in the 1970s, but I brought him back to live with me again after her death, and now he sits high up on a bookshelf in my bedroom (with his very own stuffed animal to play with), looking down on the passing scene:

He spent a lot of years in my mother’s basement, seeing nothing but her doing the laundry once in a while. Now he sees me getting ready for work, and coming home and changing clothes. This is at least more interesting for him, I hope.

He is full of something like sawdust. He is not cuddly. But he’s my childhood friend. (I think he belonged to one of my siblings, but I’m not sure. He certainly looks ancient.) He was with me in my childhood – he played with me and slept with me – and now he’s with me again, in my twilight years.

I’d like to pass him along to another child, but he’s not much of a toy; he smells funny, and he’s not cuddly (as I said).

He’s aging, just as I am.

I hope that, when my time comes (not anytime soon, I hope), he'll want to go with me.

I’d like to have him along for the ride.

---

My memorandum book

---

I’ve tried all kinds of memory aides. But now I’m just writing things down.

I have a nice little memorandum book in my pocket, in which I write everything down: things I have to do at work, random thoughts, ideas for a blog, things to send to people, Christmas gifts.

I used to rely on my memory. Such a nice big powerful six-cylinder memory it was!

But now it’s gone. Between age and alcohol and blows to the head, it’s gone.

So I’ve come to rely on surrogates, like my little memorandum book.

My little memorandum book is great, so long as I remember to carry it with me. And a pen. (I still have to remind myself to keep those two things with me.)

The system’s not perfect yet, but it’s working. I’m remembering things.

But I ask myself: what happens on the days when I forget my memorandum book?

Apocalypse. Disaster. The universe itself may cease to exist.

Pray for me, children.

---

The pleasures of the elderly

---

“Did you see ‘Scaramouche’ on Turner Classic the other night?” I asked Apollonia the other day.

“What? Yeah, I think I switched past it,” she said. “Who was that? Rory Calhoun?”

“Nah,” I said. “Stewart Granger.”

We both laughed. “Same thing,” she said.

“I’ll say,” I said. “I think they were the same person. Maybe he was Rory Calhoun on Mondays, Wednesday, and Fridays, and Stewart Granger on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.”

Now we were both laughing like idiots.

Off in the corner there was a table of younger staff members, listening to us. They stared at us as if we were patients in an asylum. We were aware of them. But we kept laughing. No, more than that: we laughed even harder because they were staring at us.

Questions:

·        Does any of the above make any sense to you?

·        Do you know who Rory Calhoun was, or Stewart Granger?

·        Does “Turner Classic” mean anything to you?

It’s a habit of the elderly to mumble and cackle over the past. But this is a game we elderly people like to play: making reference to things that happened long before the other people in the room were born. It’s a way of getting even with those young people, with their music and their slang and their television programs that we’ve never heard of, and their texting jargon that we still haven’t quite figured out.

This is one of the great pleasures of the elderly: to make younger people uncomfortable.

---

The face of winter

---

Springtime is back in Providence, and – I don’t know – it never cheers me up. When spring comes, I almost always feel tired and lethargic. There’s a feeling of: Here we go again. And a feeling of: How many times do we have to do this?

Anyway, I have been a little fatigued lately, and it has affected my usual good looks. I took a glance into the mirror at the office the other day, and I gasped: I looked awful. My graying hair was standing up in all directions, and my complexion was pale, and I was hunched over like an invalid. My god, I thought. I’m Old Man Winter.

It’s awful, because I know inside that my spirit is still young. And then I look into the mirror and see a crouching horrible gargoyle looking back at me.

I just passed the age of fifty-five last year, and it made me thoughtful. Partner and I still have a few years together, I hope, before my bones begin to crumble into sawdust, or before the next asteroid hits.

We will stumble on together for a while, at least, in happiness. Every day together is a blessing.

I only hope Partner can endure seeing the face of Old Man Winter first thing every morning for a few years more.

---

Treasures

 

---

Everyone has treasures put away. I still have some of my early-childhood books, and a big box of (mostly Canadian) pennies. Total worth: not much, really.

 

 

But I have a little box in which I keep my real treasures.

 

 

One is a stone I found when I was maybe six years old. It’s a perfect spiral made of quartz, and I knew even then that it was extraordinary. I know now that it’s a real fossil: some casting from a long-dead creature that burrowed in the mud. All of my uncles collected rocks, and I accused them (at the age of six!) of planting it so that I could find it, and they all denied it. I think, after all these years, I believe them, because in the rain and mud of Washington state, how could they have planted it and been sure that I’d find it?

 

 

Another is a cheap plastic coin I got in a bag of Fritos sometime in the early 1960s. They were doing a space-exploration series; I think I had John Glenn and Alan Shepard too. But I really only liked Laika the Russian space dog. Poor little thing: shot into space, and never seen again. I still have her coin, and I still remember her.

 

 

Also a little plastic Bible, about the size of a raisin. If you look into the little lens on the bottom, you can read the Lord’s Prayer. Miraculous!

 

 

Also a plastic cigarette, actual size. The filter comes off, and it’s a pen.

 

 

All these stupid little things were precious to me in my childhood. I’ve managed to hang onto them for fifty years!

 

 

And, at least once a year, I get out the box and check to make sure they’re all still there.

 

 

Because they are still precious to me.

---

 

 

 

Candy

---

I have written about Apollonia and her sister Augusta. There is also a third sister, named (for the purposes of this blog) Agrippina.  

 

 

(All great comedy groups come in threes. Think of the Ritz Brothers. Think of the Marx Brothers. Think of the Three . . . well, you know who I mean.)

 

 

Anyway: “So we’re in the hospital,” Apollonia says. “It’s very late. Agrippina says, ‘Go get me some candy. Licorice. I want licorice.’ I said to her: ‘It’s after midnight. Where in the hell am I going to buy licorice for you?’ And, very calmly, she says: ‘Go to a movie theater.’”

 

 

Apollonia and I are silent for a moment. “That’s brilliant,” I said. “I never would have thought of that.”

 

 

“Yeah, well,” Apollonia said wearily, “listen to this. I said: ‘You think I’m gonna go out to a movie theater and get you licorice?’ And she says: ‘Yeah. And I want that kind – you know? – with the pieces that are all different shapes. You know. With the little candies stuck to them.’” Apolllonia goggled at me. “What in the hell was she talking about?”

 

 

“Allsorts,” I said, quick as a flash.

 

 

“What?” Apollonia croaked.

 

 

I was sitting in front of my desktop computer at the time, so I quickly Googled an image (see above). “Licorice allsorts,” I said. “My favorite. I loved them as a child. Not commonly available. Buy them when you can.”

 

 

“Oh my God!” Apollonia moaned. “You know about this stuff too!”

 

 

That same day, I went to two CVS locations, and a Bed Bath & Beyond, and a RiteAid, and two other places, and I’m still looking for licorice allsorts. (I’m sure they’re available online, but that’s like shooting fish in a barrel. I want to find them in the wild, in their natural environment.)

 

 

When you’re a child, what do you want? Candy. But adults won’t let you have it.

 

 

The most wonderful thing about adulthood is that you can buy yourself all the candy and toys you like, and no one can stop you or say no.

 

 

I will find licorice allsorts. And I will buy a package for Agrippina, and five or six packages for myself, and maybe some bubble gum for Apollonia (she’s a big Bazooka fan, though she will settle for Dubble Bubble).

 

 

And we will all be childishly happy.

---

 

 

Running to school

---

Back to school, kids!

 

 

My walk to work takes me past the University’s day-care center, around the time when parents are dropping their children off in the morning: lots of noisy kids, parents driving, parents walking. I like the walking parents and children best; they’re almost always holding hands, which is very sweet.

 

 

A few years ago, I saw a father and daughter walking hand in hand toward the center, when all at once the little girl saw someone she knew – some friends, maybe – and let go of her father’s hand, and started running toward the school, excited to join the fun.

 

 

How long has it been since you were excited enough about something to run toward it?

 

 

Ah well, ho hum. It’s part of the magic of childhood.

 

 

We outgrow it.

 

 

(Sadly enough.)

---

 

 

Senior discount

---

The other evening, after one of my old-ladyish treadmill workouts at the Boston Sports Club, I went over to the Eastside Marketplace next door to buy  a rotisserie chicken and a couple of tomatoes. I was still glowing with perspiration from my quasi-workout, and I thought I looked terribly buff and macho.

 

 

Imagine my surprise when the checkout girl gave me the senior discount without even asking me for my ID!

 

 

This was one of those landmark occasions. Remember the first time you didn’t get carded in a bar? Remember your 21^st birthday, or your 30^th, or your 40^th? This was kind of like that, but slightly more funereal.

 

 

Evidently I look old. I employ a lot of college students, and I have come to accept that I am usually older than their parents. (I have also come to accept that I have been working at the university longer than my student employees have been alive. I get a kind of perverse kick out of it, and I think so do they.)

 

 

But “senior discount.” Just think about that.

 

 

And the cashier didn’t even ask me

 

 

To be fair: it was Tuesday, which is “senior discount night” at Eastside Marketplace. The old trout behind me in line had to be at least a hundred and fifty years old. The checker (who looked maybe twenty) made the simple assumption that we were both there to take advantage of the “senior discount.”

 

 

And who doesn’t love a discount?

 

 

So, on the upside: I saved fifty cents on my rotisserie chicken and hothouse tomatoes.

 

 

On the other hand: people look at me and think “He’s old.”

 

 

Oh dear dear dear.

---

 

 

No one thinks old people are funny

---

Apollonia and I were laughing ourselves sick the other day, trying to remember that stupid song that Strawberry Alarm Clock sang back in the 1960s.  “O god,” she croaked.  “I just thought of another one.  Remember Question Mark and the Mysterians?”

 

 

“O god,” I groaned.  “What did they sing?”

 

 

She Googled it quick as a flash. “’96 Tears,’” she said, and we began hooting with laughter again.  I started to sing: “’I’m gonna cry, cry-cry-cry – “

 

 

Suddenly Apollonia stopped laughing and became almost solemn.  “Have you noticed,” she said, "that we just kill one another?”

 

 

“No kidding,” I said, wiping tears of laughter from my eyes. “We’re both hysterical.”

 

 

“And have you noticed,” she said, “that no one else laughs when we tell our little amusing stories?  Everyone gets very quiet.  They wait for us to calm down.”

 

 

“So they don’t get the jokes,” I said. “To hell with them.”  (Actually I didn’t say “To hell with them.”  I was far ruder, if you see what I mean.)

 

 

She smiled.  “Yeah,” she said.  “To hell with them.”  (She also used the ruder expression.)

 

 

It’s a privilege you gain as you get older: the right to laugh yourself silly over stupid things that kids just don’t understand.  They just haven’t lived long enough.

 

 

They’ll figure it out, if they live long enough.

 

 

In the meantime: to hell with them!

---

 

 

Older and wiser

---

 When I was a kid, I had no idea what the adults were talking about most of the time.  I wanted desperately to figure out what was going on.

 

 

In high school, and in college, I realized that – inside – I did not feel like a grownup.  I was faking it.  I monitored everything: what I said, what I did.  And I fell short.

 

 

Graduate school: even worse.  I felt like a terrible poser, and completely inept as a human being.

 

 

Then working in a real job, and then in the Peace Corps, and then working again.  Inside, I still felt five years old.  I managed to fake it once in a while, but I still felt like a kid.

 

 

However:

 

 

Recently I took a friend to lunch, and she told me, in her funny rushing confidential way, the very sad story of her mother's recent passing.  And I commiserated with her. 

 

 

And I realized, about halfway through, that I didn't need to worry about acting like a grownup anymore. 

 

 

For one thing, I'm just too old to worry about it anymore.  And that's one of the secrets I didn't know: you don't learn it.  It just happens, with age and experience.

 

 

And for another thing, we were talking about deaths in the family, and cleaning the house and throwing things away and dealing with grief and guilt. These are things I know first-hand.  No problem.

 

 

So, at last, I find I can talk and act like a grownup.

 

 

And all I really want to do is be a kid again.

 

 

Go figure.

---

 

Stuffed animals and senile dementia

---

I have always loved stuffed animals: they are goofy and cute and soft and they make comfortable pillows.  I still have my childhood teddy bear, which (after so many decades) is now completely hideous; it sits high up on a shelf in my bedroom, in comfortable retirement, surveying everything.  It saw a lot of hard work back in the 1950s and 1960s, and it needs its rest.

 

 

What (or whom) do we have now?  A shark, from Ikea, three feet long.  A little scruffy dog, presumably a Golden Retriever puppy, ten years old (not a puppy anymore!), going a little bald now.  A mangy fat polar bear we won at Dave and Buster’s (he didn't have good eyes, so I glued google eyes on him, which are a tremendous improvement). A disreputable purple platypus who tries to sting the other animals.  A lion from FAO Schwarz in New York City, who thinks he’s better than everyone else.  A black rat, also from Ikea, with buck teeth and a long hairless tail.  A small moose from Clark’s Animal Farm in New Hampshire, the baby of the family. 

 

 

And many more. 

 

 

They talk.  (Well, we make them talk.)  They say outrageous things.  They fight with one another.  Sometimes they get married.  The polar bear likes to ride the shark.  The dog and the polar bear are rivals.  What can I tell you?  I’m a child.  I love my stuffed animals, and I still play with them, and I don’t care what you think of me, so nyah.

 

 

Not long ago, while walking to work, I found a very small stuffed lizard on the sidewalk.  It’s about three inches long, all done in bright colors; I think it was probably a keychain item, or maybe a backpack tag.   I carry it in my pocket every day now; I bring it out at opportune moments, and it insults people.  Just the other day I brought it out and it told my work friend Cathleen to shut up.  She was completely bemused.  “You know,” she said, “it’s amazing.  You’re in your fifties, and you’re still playing with stuffed animals.”

 

 

“This is nothing,” I said.  “If there’s a program on TV about polar bears, the polar bear has to come and sit on the bed and watch it with us.  And comment on it.”

 

 

Cathleen groaned.  “When you finally get senile dementia,” she said, “it will be spectacular.  I can just picture the nursing-home staff coming into your room, and you telling them to talk to the polar bear, because he’s not very comfortable.”

 

 

“If the polar bear lives that long,” I said.  “He’s not looking so great these days.”

 

 

She groaned again.  “You’re losing it, kiddo,” she said.  “Very, very quickly.”

 

 

Probably she’s right.

 

 

I'll have to talk to the polar bear about it.

---

 

 

Nearsighted at Christmastime

---

When I was just a kid, and my nearsightedness had just manifested itself (I had German measles around the age of eight, which apparently damaged my eyesight), Christmas was wonderful.  The lights on the Christmas tree were dazzling: swirled together and blurred slightly, as if filmed through a Vaseline-coated lens.  It made “Christmas magic” seem like a real thing.

 

 

I haven’t thought of that in years.  Except:

 

 

The tradition of Christmas lights has never really died here in Rhode Island.  Some communities – East Providence, for example – have whole neighborhoods that blaze with huge displays: reindeer, multiple Santas, wise men, polar bears, penguins, the Virgin Mary, all in multicolored lights.  It is a wonder and a miracle.

 

 

I noticed last year, and even more so this year, that this seems to be growing more widespread.  For a while, the more staid communities only had white lights, or blue, or none at all.  Now people are using those wonderful big multicolored lights that we had when I was a kid, and they’re beautiful.

 

 

Hey! I thought last evening, while walking through the neighborhood and admiring the neighbors’ lights.  I bet, if I take my glasses off, they’ll be so much prettier.  Just like when I was a kid.

 

 

Well, like so many other things, this little morsel of Christmas magic has been taken from me.

 

 

My eyesight has worsened considerably since my childhood.  I knew this, of course, but I figured it would make the swirl of multicolored lights even more interesting.  Trust me: it did not.  It made them sickeningly awful.  White lights turned into a nebulous blur; blue lights were nightmarish.  Multicolored lights were dominated by red and orange tones, and looked like bloated dying masses of stars, pulsing and heaving inward and outward.

 

 

Man, I put my glasses back on real fast after that.

 

 

There must be a moral in this somewhere, I suppose.

 

 

Happy Christmas season, kids!

 

---

 

 

All my students

 

I hire university students to answer the phone for me and greet visitors.  The job is very much in demand, as it's not very demanding and leaves them lots of time to read and study.  You'd think it was a clerical job, but it's not really; it's mostly about customer service.  They have to be able to talk, and elicit information from people.

 

 

I try to find students who are charming.  During the interview process, I just try to converse with them, and see where the conversation leads.  If they're talkative and cute and funny – well, that's just what Doctor Loren ordered.  I need them to be able to draw people out, help them express themselves; a lot of callers and guests aren't quite sure how to phrase their queries, and need someone patient and sympathetic.  Our students need to be able to participate in a dialogue.

 

 

I myself am not so good at this.  I monologue, I lecture, I hector.  Look at this blog!   It's a one-way conversation, isn't it?  All my own work, all my own words.  Blah, blah, blah!  I love it!

 

 

But I am not so good at the ol' give-and-take.

 

 

Which is why I am so grateful for those patient charming students, good and thoughtful listeners.

 

 

Last summer and fall, I hired a wonderful young woman, very tall and willowy, who was incredibly diligent and very helpful and very patient.  The callers all fell in love with her.  The deliverymen – UPS, FedEx, coffee, pest control – were all transfixed by her.  The FedEx Ground guy, who was six-five and well over three hundred pounds, used to just stand and look at her from a distance, as if he were afraid to come too close.  She is in Washington now, coming off her first job and entering (I think) her second, and she still writes me faithfully every two months or so, and I am delighted to hear from her.

 

 

Last winter and spring, I hired a young man named Ethan.  He was a wise guy, clever and funny and very good with people on the phone; he graduated with a degree in public policy in May, and checked in with me just a few weeks ago from California, and I think he is doing just fine for himself.

 

 

Last summer I had a young medical student, and then a huge football player, and they were both wonderul with people, both on the phone and in person.  Now I have a small group – a new graduate student in public policy, and a graduating senior in medicine, and a grad student in something political I’ve never quite grasped – a little of everything – and I just love listening to them talk to people.  They are so goldurned good at it!

 

 

Excuse me.  I am having a Mister Chips moment right now. 

 

 

I don't know how teachers do it.   I'm too soft.  I'd be in tears the whole time.

 

 

Twenty-four years at the same job!

---

I began working at Brown University in August of 1987, a little more than twenty-four years ago.

 

 

If I make to my twenty-fifth anniversary next year – and then to January first of 2013! - I will receive a gift from the University: a chair, or a mirror, or a gift certificate. My choice! Also some extra vacation time, so that I can go shopping for a coffin.

 

 

Some years ago I hired an office assistant who was (at the time) just shy of her twentieth birthday. She was born in 1989, two years after I started at Brown.

 

 

And of course it continues. One of my recent student assistants, Noah, was born in 1991, only a little more than twenty years ago. (I think of this as the “Goodbye, Mister Chips” paradox: those of us who work in education keep getting older and older, whereas the students never age at all. The seniors graduate, and are replaced by freshmen, and so on, and so on. You keep hoping for the students to grow up and mature – and they never quite do, because as soon as they mature a little bit, they're gone, and they're replaced by new – and younger – and less mature – students.)

 

 

Ay caramba!

 

 

Noah finished his stint in the office in mid-August. He enjoyed his time with us, I think; it was his first summer job away from home, and he spent most of his weekends with his friends doing all kinds of young athletic acrobatic things. We all enjoyed him too, because he was young, and we liked listening to his stories: it was a chance for all of us to relive what it felt like to be young, and have the entire future be open before you.

 

 

“This isn't bad,” Noah said one day. “Working, I mean.”

 

 

“Ah,” I said. “Because, for you, it has an end date. For me, not so much. The end date is probably when I die in my office chair.”

 

 

Noah laughed, but a little uneasily. He could hear the slight bitterness in my voice.

 

 

But what am I complaining about? I'm happy. I have a good job, in which I feel productive. I'm advancing the interests of a prominent university. I make enough money to get by.

 

 

But Noah is looking out into a future of infinite possibility.

 

 

And I am looking out into a future of – what? More of the same. Until I die of a stroke in my chair. Until -

 

 

Oh, let's stifle that.

 

 

Here's to another twenty-five years of the same!

 

---

 

Golden years

---

The other day I was coming down the stairs in my office building, and a woman about my own age, who has worked for the University almost as long as I have, was coming down behind me. We didn't converse; we just occupied ourselves with our thoughts.

 

 

We were both walking very methodically. When you're our age, you don't dash down the stairs. You take your time.

 

 

Finally, about halfway down, I said (without turning my head): “I never dreamed this would be how I'd spend my golden years.”

 

 

She laughed aloud. “It could be worse,” she said.

“Exactly what I was thinking,” I said.

 

 

Who knows, in his/her twenties, what he/she will be doing in thirty years? I was telling a story not long ago, and I began with: “When I came to Providence thirty-five years ago . . .”

 

 

OMG!

 

 

Most of the people in my office weren't born yet!

 

(This, if you can't tell, is a blog about getting old. I write these from time to time. They are a pressure release, like the little steam-vent on a pressure cooker.  They keep my head from exploding.  So bear with me.)

 

 

I had a haircut recently. You remember my barber: he's a sweetheart. We talked the whole time, mostly about real estate in downtown Providence. When I got out of the chair, I looked down and saw huge wads of gray hair on the floor. “Oh my god,” I said wanly. “Look how gray I am.”

 

 

“Don't complain,” my barber said, who must hear this kind of comment all the time, and who is mostly bald. “At least you have hair.”

 

 

But – do you know what I mean? I'm inside this rapidly-aging body, here, now. I'm a husk, for heaven's sake! I feel dry and evanescent, as if I'm becoming transparent.

 

 

And here's the bitterest joke of all: my soul, or whatever it is inside me that's looking out through these dull nearsighted rheumy eyes, is still young.

 

 

Ah.

 

 

Try explaining that to someone who's younger than you.

 

---