As 2009 arrives like a grizzly bear at a campsite, knocking down everything in its path and then eating the campers, I find myself strangely at peace. It's a peace that comes from knowing that millions of people have subsisted for years, and quite happily, while living in small grass huts and eating only berries and twigs.
And if they can do it. . . .
Gallows humor dominates conversations with my 50ish and 60ish friends. Thoughts of retirement at 60 or 65 have been scuttled, replaced by prayers that we won't be laid off and can work until we're 80. Once-grandiose talk of "travel" now means taking buses when we're forced to sell our cars.
A generation that once romanticized communal life will now find out what it's like to live 14 to a house. It was much more appealing when everyone was 22 instead of 62.
Oh, I don't know. When I was 22, older women were, well, old women. Now that I'm 63, there's a lot more gorgeous gals around than there were then. True beauty remains, if not youthful looks. We're all, well, most of us anyway, smarter now and have more to talk about than we did. My single sexagenarian friends say that Golden Years babes're a lot easier to talk into the sack, too. Livin' in a house full of 'em might not be so bad... (I can afford to talk like that. Mrs. G doesn't read this shit. Heh.)
Oh, for the privacy of the cardboard box in the bushes near a freeway overpass! A place to call my own.
Note to Obama: Better get hot on the infrastructure program. We're gonna need more overpasses and bridges...
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