The old scout stands in line at the clinic

The old scout stands in line at the clinic

I married a pro-vaxxer, which is good to know after all these years — we never discussed vaccines during courtship — and in addition to her respect for science, she has the patience to track down clinics online and spend time on Hold and so now I am vaccinated. I sat for fifteen minutes so the nurse could see that I didn’t faint or show distress and I wrote a poem.
The clinic that offers vaccine
Resembles a well-run machine,
I got my shot,
Sat down, was not
Dizzy or hot or pale green,
No aftereffects,
Loss of reflex,
Skin wasn’t waxy
So I hopped in a taxi,
Went home to my wife,
Resuming my life,
Which still is, thank God, quite routine.
Isolated, as monks, but serene,
Trying to keep my hands clean.
I was not asked for a credit card at any point, or a Medicare card, so evidently the country is slipping into socialism, as Republicans predicted, but I am too old to argue, I obey. Young people wearing badges told me which line to get in and I did. A young woman who said she was a nurse gave the shot and I didn’t ask to see her license. Nor did I ask for assurance that the vaccine did not contain a hallucinogen that would make me accept the Fake News: I already accept that Joe Biden was elected president and that Trump supporters invaded the Capitol on January 6. It’s too laborious to believe otherwise. This is Occam’s Razor, the principle they taught in high school science: the simpler theory tends to be true. You’d have to devote weeks to working up a new theory of massive electoral fraud by Venezuelans and Antifans buying thousands of MAGA hats to storm the Capitol, and at 78 I don’t have the time for that. The vaccine may extend my lifetime but there are no guarantees.
This is the problem with getting old: you’re forced to face up to mortality and so you cut back on your commitments. I probably could be a decent tennis player again but I’d have to devote twenty hours a week to the effort. Ditto soap carving, stamp collecting, and the study of coelacanths. It’d take too much time so these must be left to younger people, along with dread and dismay. Too time-consuming.
More and more people around me are dying and it’s never the ones I wish would expire. I have four people on my wish list whom, as a Christian, I should forgive but I don’t because (1) they haven’t asked and (2) forgiveness will not change their loathsomeness, so instead I wish for them to go live in Alabama or Mississippi and perhaps secede, and meanwhile I dread the phone ringing, for fear that one of the righteous has fallen instead.
I keep in close touch with several octogenarians whom I think of as an advance party, just as Custer had a band of Crow scouts at the Little Big Horn who knew the territory, and when I ring up my scouts and ask, “How are you?” I want to know what 83 and 85 and 87 feel like from day to day. My cousin Stan is my oldest scout at 89 and still walks and exercises and has all his marbles — when I spoke to him last week, he twice corrected his own grammar — so I hope for eleven more years, fully marbled, which makes me cheerful and cheerfulness is the key to the kingdom. I avoid dark topics such as global warming and the demise of democracy — and leave those to the young who will have to deal with them.
I watched some of the Senate trial and I worry for my country, that we’re deciding finally who we are but I’m a back issue. I was 21 when President Kennedy was shot and a great deal died in Dealey Plaza, and then the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, and the Ambassador Hotel in L.A. My grandson, who just graduated with honors from college, came long after all that and is fascinated by politics and is ambitious to dig in and more power to him. I’m living in the liberal tribal reservation of Manhattan’s Upper West Side and so I know nothing. My mission is to live gracefully and be amused at mortality and keep in touch with the people in their 50s and 60s looking to me for guidance. No complaining. Be useful. Every day you make your partner laugh is a good day.

Posts to the Host

(Email comments on the column The pandemic: one man’s appreciation, Feb. 8, 2021)
In your latest, you mention “weird ideas about fraudulent elections” but if you were entirely honest with yourself (not just for show), you would have been outraged if the “evil Republicans” did half of the nefarious things your saintly Democrats pulled in the last election. The only difference, the media doesn’t report on it and the media for better or worse is a huge arbiter of public opinion. They control the narrative beautifully and I must add sinisterly. One man’s beautiful is another man’s sinister and it shouldn’t be that way. It should be the seeking of truth irrespective of personal bias. That isn’t what we have. You know it and I know it.
Thomas M. Cook

You may know it, sir, but the truth is that I don’t. I know something closer to what I learned in school, not nearly so dark and conspiratorial as what you know. I prefer my version. GK

Snow and shrieks of joy resonated with my sledding adventures in the present. I am 73, a native Minnesotan, and my grandsons, Lucas, 7, and Jacob, 5, love playing in the snow in our old-fashioned runner sleds, the earliest, a Comet, circa 1955. These go much faster and farther than the plastic dishpans that inhabit most sledding hills. I steer, one jumps on my back and off we go. Pure joy for both of us.

We take a break to toss snowballs, then they proceed to roll down the hill. We have so much fun and they regard me as an equal playmate albeit “old” as Lucas reminds me. We’ve had them twice per week since infancy. We read books, build with Legos, Lincoln Logs, Erector set, play games both formal and invented. Zero screen time. Not by edict but habit. They never ask to watch TV or play video games.
Freezing in Minnesota,
John Drewitz

John, you’ve succeeded in bending time and creating a warp and giving your grandsons the benefit of it. They will remember these bright days even when they become video game developers and no longer read books. I’m envious to hear about good grandpas, having been a negligent one myself. GK

I read your columns with joy and appreciation. They are a good reminder of the USA far from the trumps and the thugs attacking the Capitolium. I wish my English was better so I could write with more eloquence and admiration.
Kind regards,
Arvid Höglund, Sundsvall Sweden

Thanks for your note. (Tak for dit brev.) My Danish is worse than your English so I won’t subject you to it. I’m glad to have a reader in Sundsvall. I married a Nilsson whose people came over from Småland. Their great-grandfather was a streetcar conductor and their grandfather was a violin teacher, and all four siblings are violinists, so they’ve come up in the world. I went to school with some Hoglunds who probably had to drop the umlaut because Americans can’t say it. GK

I never had the luxury of spending a month with someone (to the exclusion of all others), but I’ve often said that if you can get through a three-day road trip without wanting to commit murder after twelve hours, your marriage and/or relationship has a good chance of surviving.
Marjorie J. Birch

Jenny and I did a two-day road trip, Minneapolis to New York, a night in Toledo, and we carried a painting that had to ride flat in the back seat, which meant that I, in the passenger seat, was pushed forward and couldn’t recline and so I had to stare at all of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, which put me in a sour mood. No homicidal impulse, only an urge to heave the painting out the window. We listened to some Chopin piano CDs and got tired of them pretty quickly and we ran out of conversation and I felt disabled afterward, but we survived. Months together in an apartment are no problem after that two-day trip. GK

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