Crystal and Me

I would like to write in this idiotic blog more often but one of the problems is that most of what I would want to say has to do with getting older, being older, or some variation thereof. I have never really wanted to be so narrow in my blog interests and so I have posted relatively infrequently, not that anyone has complained, mind you.

Well, Christmas came about a week ago and I received a book as a gift. It's by Billy Crystal the comedian, actor, and sometime philosopher. I would tell you the name of the book but that would require that I stand and walk about twenty feet, so I will let you find that out for yourself.

I have always been sort of lukewarm on Crystal. He's funny, but in a decidedly Jewish sort of way. As a guy in his 60s, I'm only too familiar with such folks as Sid Caesar and Milton Berle. Also, I'm not much of a reader. I prefer television. But I decided I'd open the book and read a few pages. Anyway, I've got to tell you that about ten pages in, it's not a bad read. What's more, up to page 11 the theme is pretty much about getting old, specifically the downsides, of which there are many.

Not only has the book been a bit comforting in and of itself, but it has convinced me that if I want to write a blog entry concerning the tribulations of aging, I ought to go ahead and write it. Anyway, what I'm saying is that for those who have avoided this blog in the past, the future might give you all the more reason. We'll see.

Staying After School

On this past Friday afternoon I visited Mrs. Virginia Gilbert, a.k.a Miss Plimell. Miss Plimell was my 2nd and 3rd grade teacher. That was 1958 to 1960, a long long time ago. I was in the 2nd grade and Miss Plimell was in her second year of teaching. She was in her mid twenties.

I knocked on her door and her husband answered. He was an older gentleman and her second husband. The first one died about seven or eight years ago after something like 47 years of marriage. Dangling from my hand was a holiday gift bag containing a jar of raspberry preserves. I told him that it was a gift for Virginia. He asked me if I wanted to give it to her personally, and I said I would love to, if it were no trouble. He led me to a back room in the house that had a television. There she was, sitting in a recliner; my long ago teacher, Miss Plimell.

She is no longer 25, of course, nor was she in amazing health, but we chatted for a couple of hours. She is still pretty sharp for a person near 80. She remembered not only me, but many of her old students, who were my first classmates. I filled her in on what some of us were doing, and who had died. She had a few stories of her own concerning some of those students. She talked about her life and some of what had transpired through all the years. I was glad to listen, after all, she was one of my first teachers, and the only teacher I had for two years.

Anyway, she seemed glad to see me, believe it or not, and she asked me to return. I promised her I would. I will keep that promise.    

My Career Paradigm

This blog entry is really going to be just one long whine, so I'm warning any person unfortunate enough to come along its words not to read them. Okay, you've been warned.

I work at The Ohio State University. I started my employment there in 1974. I have always worked in the University Mail Department. We collect inter-campus mail, sort it, then redistribute it across the campus. In 1974 there was no email, consequently we were the communication hub of the university. Every morning five mail carriers would invade with a vengeance the university's approximately 120 buildings; hurriedly collecting the inter-campus mail. They would then return to headquarters where we would rapidly sort the mail for redelivery that same day. It could be argued that other than the university's various hospital departments, and the university police, we were the most important non-academic department at the university. More important than the landscaping or maintenance departments.

Things have changed. There were buildings that would receive several thousand inter-campus letters, flyers, etc., every day. That was once upon a time. Those same buildings now receive a few dozen. We have been murdered by the advent of email. This is not a new thing. We've been limping along for at least a decade. For ten years it has looked as if the higher-ups could close down our department at anytime. But that is not my complaint. My whining really starts now.

The guys I work with these days know our department is unimportant. Those in charge know the same thing, consequently the department is often assigned inferior employees when job openings arise. We no longer have a supervisor in our work area. Add these factors together and you end up with a lot of ugliness.

One day one of our delivery guys had a box weighing a few pounds to be delivered that day on his route. That guy was scheduled to take a vacation day the following day. I watched him pickup the box and evaluate its weight. He placed the box back on the counter and for a few seconds he just eyed it as his mind contemplated. Finally he muttered aloud, "I'm going to let this package wait until tomorrow's delivery."

I heard myself instantly bark, "No, you're delivering it today."

My uninspired coworker mumbled back, "It can go tomorrow. It doesn't make any difference whether it is today or tomorrow."

"Take it today," I ordered.

Just to be clear, I am a semi-retired, non supervisory, part time employee. But I guess even nobodies can get fed up.

To be fair, genuinely good employees treat the department with abject disrespect too. One afternoon there was inter-campus mail to be sorted but instead of doing that work, one of the truly hard working guys was sweeping the floor in the hallway. The hallway floor had a higher priority than did the mail.

This is hard for me to take; thus, this blog entry. What I find curious is that I should care enough for it to occasionally get my blood boiling. As I have said; the department clearly does not have high status, and I have never been a career-oriented guy. My self-worth, what there is of it, I have always gotten from other aspects of life. Still, shirking assigned duties can get me riled.

The good news is that I cannot go on much longer. This pain will soon end. I have been financially able to fully retire for a long time. I'm at the point where I no longer feel like setting the alarm at 6 AM without good reason. And of course the department itself is on its last legs. Still, I fall into distress with what my eyes behold. I have been victimized by a paradigm shift via technology. I might as well be assembling 8-track tape players alongside slipshod coworkers. Actually, that might be rather amusing.

Good Bye Pennies

There aren't very many common, everyday items I hate more than a penny. I've hated them for years. I have hated two pennies more than one penny, and three pennies more than two pennies, but there has always been a number, a tipping point where the pennies became tolerable due to their sheer numbers. For me, I think it has been approximately 10 pennies. I'd rather have ten pennies than no pennies. Of course I would quickly convert the pennies to a dime.

My hatred of the penny goes back to high school. In my high school, picking up a penny from the floor was considered very uncool. I was uncool enough without making matters worse, consequently I refrained from rescuing the wayward one-cent coin.

After my high school days, I went into the American work force. I bought a lot of snacks out of vending machines. Excluding the gumball machine, I know of no self-respecting vending machine that ever took a penny. Even when candy bars were a dime long ago, a candy machine would refuse a penny.

There is nothing so exasperating as feeling a hunger for an 85 cent bag of potato chips only to discover that the massive amount of change in your pocket is a quarter, four nickels, and six pennies. This happened to me a few days ago. I glared at those copper coins with hatred and frustration. They did not go back into my pocket.

Early this afternoon while at my workplace, I was pulling some keys out of a pocket when a couple of coins came out with the keys. I did not see the coins but I felt them land upon my shoe. Since they were not readily visible upon the floor, and coins being coins, I knew they had rolled under a nearby table. Not knowing the value of the escaped coinage, I decided to give a quick search under the table. After exploring around for thirty seconds or so on my hands and knees, I spotted two pennies. I immediately realized that I had lost a half minute of my life to two pennies, pennies which I did not bother to retrieve. To make matters worse, I hit my head on the underside of the table as I was backing out from under it. None of this modest tragedy would have transpired had my pockets been free of pennies.

At 1:06 PM today I made the decision to forever vanquish pennies from my person, automobile cupholders, and any other place where one or more pennies might be secured. From now on I will leave pennies in the change tray at grocery stores. Small numbers of pennies owed me will be charitably rejected.

I have quickly done the math and I figure if I live to be 95 (25 more years), and spurn all pennies until that time, I will be forfeiting approximately $4.62, depending on inflation. With a hatred like mine; it's worth the sacrifice.