December 28, 2021: I Take It Back -

I was on a Zoom call today, meeting two twenty-somethings who are going to inherit some volunteer work my friend Alison and I now do with high schoolers. I liked the twenty-somethings, and I think it will be nice for future high-schoolers to have people who are closer to their age than Alison (mid–to-late forties?) and me (mid-sixties). It was a good call.

Alison was thanking them for volunteering, and she said she’d been afraid that only an older person would offer to take over, since retired people have time for such things, and I started to laugh because I’m retired, and poor Alison was trying to extricate herself, and she said, “You know what I mean!”

I said it was okay if she wanted to just say she didn’t want someone old taking over, and she said - by way of ameliorating things - “You are a warm-hearted person who is somewhat with it!”

So there you go: a warm-hearted person who is somewhat with it!

I am very tempted to swap out my planned headstone inscription (“She Did The Best She Could With What She Had”) for this new encomium.

(I want to defend Alison, here, because she was trying to say she was afraid somebody who didn’t really LIKE high schoolers might take over, someone who was highly judgmental, or who disapproved of young people who use singular “they,” and so forth. She had a point. She just got her foot lodged in her mouth, is all.)

For the record, I’m fine with singular “they.” I wasn’t always, but I’ve changed. Old dog, new trick. If I said something at some point about not liking singular “they” -- and chances are excellent that I did --I hereby take it back.

People sometimes quote me to myself, and they rarely choose to quote something nice I said. Usually, it’s funny but…pointed. I rarely remember uttering these sharp little quips, and I often want to take them back.

I want to take a bunch of opinions back.

In my youth, I frowned upon campers, trailers, RVs, basically any camping rig that people used so that they didn’t sleep in a tent, or on the ground, under the stars. Now we have a little old trailer, not a winter model, but three seasons of the year, it’s the best thing ever. A bed! A table! A sink! I apologize to the people I sneered at, and I hope they never knew I was sneering.

Our dog got a new winter coat, because he gets cold when he goes tramping out with Rick. I am reliably informed that long ago, I did not like the idea of dogs wearing sweaters. I’m told I was “skeeved out” by them, which doesn’t really sound like me (to me), but having strong views on such things DOES sound like me, so I’m not arguing. I forgot the aversion long ago, and now I am really glad our sweet pooch gets to have some added warmth.

I used to object to people who said “passed” or “passed away,” or any other euphemism in place of “died.” And I used to object to men who said things like, “My wife and I are pregnant.” (I didn’t mind “my wife and I are expecting a baby,” but “we are pregnant” made me shake my head. Buddy, you are SO not pregnant, trust me.)  And I used to lose it when anyone – but especially George W. Bush - pronounced “nuclear” as “new-kyoo-lar.”

Actually, I still can’t handle new-kyoo-lar. But I’m mellowing out on “we’re pregnant” and “she passed.” I haven’t adopted those locutions for myself, as I’ve adopted trailers and dog coats. But they don’t rankle. I’m adapting.