One Thing or Another: Are We There Yet?
By Mark McNease
It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.
“Who was that masked man?”
– The Lone Ranger
I’ve learned the past year that it’s possible to forget what someone looks like without a mask, as well as to marvel at the face of someone I’ve never seen without one. In the grocery store where I work four days a week, masks have been omnipresent for over a year now, especially among those of use who work there, euphemistically called ‘associates.’
I wear a mask because I’m required to, and because I care about my community, my family, and bringing this all to some kind of end. But I don’t like it. In this case, ‘hate’ is not too strong a work. My glasses fog up. I breathe my own spittle. And I often wonder, as we enter the post-vaccination stage, how long we’ll have to keep wearing them, and how much of it is requirement and how much is conditioning. I imagine we’ll find out as states begin to eliminate mask mandates and companies follow suit. I will add, with emphasis, that not getting the flu last year was a big plus. Masks are uncomfortable and often annoying, but they have helped us minimize our contagious disease transmission to an amazing level.
One Thing or Another: Are We There Yet?
By Mark McNease
It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.
This column was always intended to be lighthearted, even in its most serious moments. Sure, I look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all. I even ponder death now and then, since it’s pretty much the end point for all of us. Where we go after that, if we go anywhere, is not something I spend much time thinking or worrying about. I have appropriate clothes for any destination, or none at all, in case it’s especially hot.
But 2020 was so difficult, so groundbreaking, like a sledgehammer outside my bedroom window, that it stands unique among the years of my life. And now, two weeks into a new year, it’s still here! The same election we would normally have moved beyond by now, accepting it as part of the political bargain we make for living in a country where people are allowed to vote, keeps hold of us as if to prevent our escape. The frustrations of lockdowns and limited interactions and one-way grocery store aisles and the politicization of absolutely everything has us frayed within an inch of insanity. And that’s just Tuesday!
One Thing or Another: The Old Normal
By Mark McNeaseIt’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.
I believe we will look back on this time, perhaps calling it The Great Pandemic of 2020, or something equally grand to match a cataclysm of such scale, and view it as a before-and-after moment in our lives. We have those throughout our journeys on Earth, when the paths we’re on are disturbed by eruptions or implosions, or deaths that leave us without parts of ourselves: a parent abandons us to the whims of human existence, a loved one says goodbye for the last time, or doesn’t manage to say anything at all before a final breath.
One Thing or Another: An Economy to Die For
By Mark McNeaseIt’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.
Have a grandparent to spare? Now’s your chance to volunteer one in sacrifice to the economy. All positions available!
Who needs old people, really? What do they do besides eat, talk about how hard it is to get old, drive RVs across the country, and bother people with questions about the simplest techie things? Think of all the good use they could be put to as frontline workers in the apocalypse.
That’s the thinking in certain conservative circles these days. The Lieutenant Governor of Texas, Dan Patrick, started the doomsday ball rolling when he said he’d be willing to work to save the economy for his grandchildren. I wasn’t aware he hadn’t worked before, or that he wasn’t getting paid while he sat around saying these things, but that’s another matter. The idea caught fire, especially among wealthy pundits and Republicans who have never been, and will never be, essential workers … like grocery store clerks, nurses, police officers, and baristas. Something tells me they know they won’t actually have to risk their lives for their grandchildren, but it sounds heroic. Things that sound heroic but have no chance of happening are favorites with men who fancy themselves soldiers, having avoided any real wars. It’s cool to say you’ll take a bullet, especially for future generations, when the gun’s empty.
One Thing or Another: Panic in Aisle 9
By Mark McNease
It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.
This one’s for posterity, since the terms ‘coronavirus’ and ‘covid-19’ will hopefully be behind us in a few months.
Who needs that much toilet paper, seriously? I can understand a couple of 12-packs, but an entire shopping cart? Are these people planning on being housebound for the next month? And what do they expect the rest of us to do—the ones who don’t think filling our garage with paper products is the best use of resources at a time of national crisis?
I’m not one to take a pandemic lightly. Not only am I at the age most ripe for paying the steep price of negligence, but I care about my friends, neighbors and co-workers. A good Corona beer joke seemed acceptable a couple of weeks ago, now, not at all. I’ve always been one to admit what I don’t know, and I don’t know, as most of us do not, how this will play out. Will we see a surge in people running to the emergency rooms, overwhelming our healthcare infrastructure and exhausting our healthcare workers? Will fatalities begin to pile up, expanding exponentially as this novel virus spreads like a silent, gaseous killer among the population?
One Thing or Another: Chew On That
By Mark McNeaseIt’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.
“You can miss the color of someone’s eyes, or the shape of their nose, but a grin with no teeth dares you to ignore it.”
You know you’re getting older when half your teeth have abandoned you, leaving your mouth like homeowners who’ve found a better neighborhood. You want them to stay. You offer incentives (“No more sugar, I promise!”), but they leave anyway, wiggling their way from the root up until they either fall out or get pulled out by a dentist who’s been lecturing you for ten years to use an electric toothbrush.
One Thing or Another: Cruise Control (All Aboard!)
It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.By Mark McNease
“There’s something very depressurizing about boarding a cruise ship. The daily, mundane, pressures of life that bear on you the rest of the time are suddenly lifted, falling away like a jacket let slip from your shoulders.”
Spending time on a floating hotel was never high on my wish list. I no more imagined going on a cruise than I imagined climbing the pyramids at Machu Picchu or hiking the Appalachian Trail. I didn’t have anything against them, they were just things other people did, feature stories in travel magazines I read when I was still flying by choice and not necessity. Then I met the man I’ve spent the last twelve years with, and cruising entered my life. That can happen when we enter relationships: if you enjoy the unexpected, meet the person of your dreams.
My first cruise was just three nights over a Labor Day weekend, out to some cay and back. I didn’t just like it. I loved it. Cruising quickly became a favorite way to vacation for me. I also like spending nights in hotels for some of the same reasons: no chores, no clean up, no appointments, unless it’s a massage or a shave/facial combination. Cruising is that times twenty, with the added bonus of feeling young at fifty-nine on a ship of retirees.
One Thing or Another: Not So Fast (Age and the Morning Routine)
It’s always One Thing or Another … a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.By Mark McNease
I hope my morning routine hasn’t stretched to an hour when I’m seventy, and I certainly hope I can accomplish it unaided. I’m trying.
I used to be able to get up, shower, dress, and ready myself for another day faster than the opening theme song to the morning news. By the time the anchors announced the top stories, I was pouring my second cup of coffee and adjusting my tie, fully prepared to meet the demands of a stalled career.
How does anyone without superpowers accomplish this? Was there a phone booth in the bathroom, into which I hurried one minute and emerged from the next scrubbed and presentable? Or was it youth itself? A youth that extended into my fifties before vanishing into the mists of a morning routine grown longer by the year?