Today is Sunday, May 18 and there are only 166 days until Halloween.  You should start looking for Halloween bargains on candy and costumes soon. Today we remember the birthdays of Joseph Butler, Frank Capra and Rick Wakeman.  On this day in 526 St John I ended his reign as Catholic Pope, in1860 the Republican Party nominated Abraham Lincoln for president and in 1964David Frost interviewed Paul McCartney on BBC. It is Flag Day in Haiti, in Uruguay it is the observance of the Battle of Las Piedras and tomorrow will be Victoria Day in Canada.

There is not one specific thing that I want to talk about today so I am just going to make some random observations.  One thing I wanted to note is that, in a way, we are lucky we do not have the flying cars we were promised at the New York World’s Fair and on the Jetsons.  Based on the way people drive, we would be in danger of being hit by falling car parts after all the mid-air collisions there would be.  Newscaster: “Bob Everyman was struck by a fender that fell off a flying car today, while walking to buy lottery tickets.  According to witnesses,the two cars collided while trying to merge from the river corridor into the local city air lanes.  Mr. Everyman suffered a broken shoulder.  He decided it was not a good day to buy lottery tickets.”

I hate to be repetitive, but it drives me crazy to listen to people speak.  Is it that hard to say words correctly?  One that gets me is the word “for.”  It is pronounced like the number – four- not like the tree – fir.  Another word that people have a problem with is “escape.” For some reason they want to add a k, making the word ekscape (or are they adding an x for exscape?).  Either way it is wrong!  People reading commercials for TV should take a few moments to look over their script to be sure they know what they are selling or talking about. I heard a commercial recently that referred to the disease spinal bifida.  Somewhere along the line someone should have caught that.

Again,repetition, but you must have figured out by now that I dislike stupid commercials.  I also have a problem with things that should have been caught and were not, like the error with the disease I mentioned before.  I saw one commercial, and I must say that I do not remember what they were selling, but toward the end, a woman gently caresses the cheek of her husband.  What got me was that she had a piece of fuzz stuck to her thumb.  No one saw that when they were reviewing the commercial?  I noticed it and I wasn’t really paying attention.

I realized the other day that I am becoming my father (shudder).  I was telling my grandsons about when I was young and worked at McDonald’s.  I started talking about prices and how burgers were only $.19 (I do miss the cents symbol), fries were $.15, etc.  It suddenly occurred to me that I was starting to sound like my father.  He was always complaining about how expensive things were and how much they used to cost. We used to make fun of him and often welcomed him to the 20^thcentury.  Fortunately, my grandsons are not that rude, yet.  It worries me that soon I will become more forgetful, my hearing will get worse and I will stop trimming my nose and ear hair.

Here is another thing I noticed recently that is age related.  Young guys in their 20’s and 30’s go out without shaving and they have that unkempt look that everyone thinks is so cool.  Once you get into your 60’s that doesn’t work anymore.  Recently I was getting ready to go out and run errands.  I took a shower,but decided not to shave.  I have been shaving almost every day since I was in 7^th grade and I decided not to for a change.  I used deodorant and a little cologne, put on an ironed shirt and jeans and went to get my chores done.  In several stores I noticed people looking at me and seeing I had not shaved. They started to avoid me like I lived in a box under the highway and had been using my pants for a toilet. 

I saw a guy the other day who had to be in his fifties. He was sporting a mullet hairdo, made more attractive by the fact that his hairline had pulled back from the front of his head leaving just one of those little hair islands in the front.  He was wearing cut-off sweatpants shorts and a t-shirt that had not seen the inside of a washing machine for some time.  He,too, was going with the unshaven look, but he was also going with the uncombed hair look and the lack of dental hygiene look. I can only hope that people from the place he escaped from found him and took him back with them.

I was at the doctor’s office the other day and saw something that disturbed me.  There was an older gentleman coming out ofthe building.  He was using a cane, was not able to stand up straight and, even with the cane, was having difficulty walking.  It took him several minutes to negotiate the ramp to the parking lot and a few more minutes to get to his car.  I thought he was going to get inthe passenger side, but no.  He was driving!!  Now I know why we see so many silver alerts.

For those of you who do not know what a silver alert is, it is a notice sent out when a senior citizen is missing.  The highway department puts up notices on the electronic signs on the highways giving the car make the missing person was driving and the license plate number.  It is hoped that someone will spot the car and call it in … but I digress

 Guys like this get into a car, start to driveoff and realize they can only make left turns because of their physical disabilities.  They will ultimately get home, but will have to get there by way of Ohio.

This week our fact tells us that about 21,000 commercial airline flights are scheduled daily in the US with only about 5,000 planes available to fly them.  That might explain why the airlines are never on time.  Since they are charging for everything (I’m surprised the rest rooms are not pay toilets) they should be able to get a couple more planes, don’t you think?