You have made similar mistakes and you have regretted it.
So you can understand how I feel about recently mentioning in this space that we brought home from Florida the 12 or so rolls of toilet paper that Marsha always has on hand.
Since that column appeared I have heard unusual scratching noises down near the back door at night. And a member of the Camden Chamber of Commerce sent me an email asking me how much I’d take for just one roll.
A third-grade teacher up in the County is looking forward to conducting classes over the internet. She says, “It should be really sweet seeing 22 children at one time on my screen. For the first time in my teaching career, I have the beautiful POWER to MUTE them ALL.”
How have you adjusted to the new social distancing? Can you now vacuum your floor in a fraction of the time it used to take? I can when I’m alone, and it’s not because cadres of smiling friends in muddy boots no longer tramp on our carpets every day. It takes me less time because I can no longer see the dirt. I’ll finish up and my young trophy wife, Marsha, will say, “Look, you missed all this over here. Don’t you see it? Don’t you see it? Look. It’s right here – and over there.”
She’ll point at our blue carpet and if I bend over so my nose is about 2 feet from the floor, I’ll see what might be a microscopic cracker crumb. Epiphany. It is not until you get a blue carpet that you realize that most of the dirt in your house is white.
The seeing problem overlaps onto my computer work because my good old XP computer crashed, and my new laptop has such a tiny screen that it’s hard to tell the difference between a comma and a period.
Some of the letters look a lot alike, too, and one can enlarge the text only so much.
If you know what we’re talking about here, you might remember visiting the home of an elderly person who was once an immaculate housekeeper – and noticed that she didn’t get all the food off your plate or glass the last time she washed it. If she was your grandmother, did you buy her a dishwasher?
The older you get, the more exciting life becomes. What children don’t understand is that an EKG would show no difference between an octogenarian’s trip to the bathroom and a teenager on a first date.
This afternoon I put on a pair of reading glasses, picked up a book, stood up, and took a step toward the door.
The entire world whirled around my head and I almost fell down. I grabbed the bureau, gasped and closed both eyes.
When I opened my eyes – well, I can’t explain what I saw because the short circuit in my brain was going crazy trying to figure things out. It can only be described only as a blur of colors. It was something I’d never experienced before.
I quickly took off the glasses and discovered that one lens had fallen out.
If you ever run out of whiskey or drugs, poke one lens out of a pair of reading glasses. Put them on and it will get you through the night.
As I write, we are enjoying one of those beautiful April days that make an old man glad that he lives on the coast of Maine. We are able to look out at the clear blue sky and the sun smiling down on 47 degrees and really appreciate it – because we know that in two short weeks we’re in for a solid month of cold, driving rain and we won’t get a garden in until mid-June.
Being of a certain age has a lot going for it. On a nice day in April at the age of 80 you struggle into your snowmobile suit and take a nice long walk around the farm.
Four years later on a nice day in April you struggle into your snowmobile suit and sit down for five minutes. When you get your breath, you stand up, take it off and have a nap.
Marsha and I discussed the pandemic. I told her that should I die, I do not want a Celebration of my Life. I want an old-fashioned funeral with wailing, gnashing of teeth and rending of garments.
Marsha said, “I wasn’t planning on doing anything.”
The humble Farmer can be heard Friday nights at 7 on WHPW (97.3 FM) and visited at:
www.thehumblefarmer.com/MainePrivateRadio.html
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