“A Pirate Looks [Back] at Fifty”

               (Once again, apologies to the memory of jimmy Buffett.  Know you are missed by parrotheads everywhere…)

Granted, I left fifty I the rear view mirror a couple of years ago, so I’d be looking back at it – but, who said I had to be looking forward at it, hm?

Been reflecting on a phrase that gets thrown about quite a bit – “ignorance is bliss.”  As I’ve gotten older (starting at about age 12, really,) I’ve been learning more about how the world works, how deranged people can get.  And, the more I learn, the less happy I get.  It’s an inverse relationship.

It really started about age six, with my mother’s third husband and his two spawn.  Because of him, I had ten years of abuse.  Because of his two idiot sons, I learned to fight two opponents when I was six years old (I also learned that the man alone in the fight has a great advantage – anything you can hit is on the other side.  And making them hit each other saves effort for you.  So, I’d set ‘em up to hit each other – until I got to where I could throw them at each other…)

I always found it amusing when mom would bring home the rock salt for the water softener – half-dozen or so 80# bags – and the three of us would be assigned to unload it.  I’d go down, lay one on each shoulder, tuck one under my right arm, and walk away.  They’re both looking at one bag (the same between them…) looing about as confused as two monkeys trying to fuck a football…  (Granted, each of them could fuck up the moving parts of a rock, so there was that…)  They were all proud of the bodies they were developing in gyms from working with weights.  I didn’t care about my physique – which I got from just plain working.  Which allowed me to carry 240# of rock salt when I was only 170# myself.  Or what allowed me to carry 4500# of brick & mortar helping a friend’s father build a barbecue (I was the hod carrier – I went faster than he could keep up with.  Then we went and I got my picture up on the wall in the pizza place because I ate an entire “Maximus” pizza by myself, with breadsticks, and asked what was for afters…)

(The problem with lifting weights is that it’s all programmed motions, and you end up with those programmed motions when you try to work.  Not everything had a grab bar with a load on the ends, or is shaped like a dumbbell or a kettlebell.  Some stuff is awkward – comparable to holding up a 20-kg anvil, straight-arm extension, by the horn.  Try it sometime.  Even a 10-kg anvil is a challenge…  Since I didn’t lift weights as a rule, I didn’t have programmed motions, and no muscle memory.  This allowed me to work in whichever direction was most efficient – and it still allowed me to build a good deal of strength!  The footy team hated me when it came time to do the weight training unit in Phys Ed, because I’d just calmly run right past them.  Eight hundred pounds on the squat rack?  Three sets of 20.  Twenty-one hundred pounds on the hipslet?  I’d do more, but I ran out of plate.  Four sets of 25.  I was big, but I had massive legs…  I was so happy when BDU pants hit the surplus market, I was tired of taking darts out of oversized pants to make them fit – 33” thigh, 28” waist, 50’’ chest.)

(Yeah, I wander.  If you haven’t figured that out by now, now you know.  I leave my wanderings in, in the hope that they entertain, and possibly provoke thought.  Besides, if I’m writing it, there has to be a reason for it, don’t you think?)

So, as I’m leaving fifty well behind, and my wife is staring hard at seventy.  The upside is that she hasn’t seen the things I’ve seen, and doesn’t know most of the things I know.  So, she has an easier time being happy.  For this, I am pleased – if one of us can still be happy, best that it be her.  I don’t want her to know the things I know, and there’s a good reason that I haven’t told her everything I carry around in my head.  I do not wish to burden here.  There are things I will never tell anyone – my burden is mine alone to bear, I don’t want to be responsible for wrecking anyone else’s happiness.

So, what does make me happy?  People.  Specifically, women.  I have always preferred the company of women.  However, it’s not all women that make me happy, even though I do generally prefer the company of women over the company of men.  Specifically, there are only a few specific women that can make me happy.  Y’all know who you are.