I'm My Own Grandpa

The country comedy team of Homer & Jethro recorded a novelty ditty entitled "I'm My Own Grandpa" that has been rattling around my aging gourd lately.  I'm fairly certain it's because I have been finding myself slipping into codger speak a little more every day.  You know, stuff like: "I remember when Halloween pumpkins were 10, 25 and 50 cents; not EIGHT BUCKS!"  "Damn kids are playing that rap crap again!"  And, of course, my wife's favorite:  "How come they're hiring high schools kids as television news anchors?"

Going grocery shopping is excruciating for me.  Working as a bag boy for Oscar "The Watermelon King" Swanson at Swanson's Super Store during my high school days in the early 1960's left that era's prices etched forever in my mind.  The other carry out guys and I used to be able to come within a few cents of a customer's final bill just by eyeing their baskets as they pulled up to the check stand.  A $50 order would fill a typical grocery cart to overflowing and someone spending $100 invariably had at least two carts and required two of us to help them to their car.  These days, when forced to hit the supermarket, I look at what I have to purchase and simply give it a multiple of ten to estimate how bad the hit will be.  The same formula works for cars too.  A ride that was $5000 in the 60's is easily $50k today.  Houses need at least a ten multiple to make the price leap from the 60's to today.  Whoda thunk??

What got me thinking about all this was a recent study an expert on aging, Dr. Jan Vijg of Albert Einstein College of Medicine, who says that 115 years of age is just about the maximum limit of human longevity.  Of course some folks have exceeded that but Dr. Vijg seems to think that after 115 we're all pretty much competing with cabbages when it comes to being useful.  I tend to agree, although it could be a real challenge to see if my heart could absorb the amount of change and inflation a person would have to contend with to make it that far.  And, isn't that maybe why we are allowed the fairly standard three score and ten years most of us are dealt?  How much change is good for you?  Shouldn't there be some benchmarks that are immune to change?

Mark Twain said, "The two most important days in life are the day you are born and the day you discover the reason why."  Possibly it takes some of us as much as 115 years to come up with the why.

Now, what was I talking about?
Eight bucks for a pumpkin?!!
Now, when I was a lad that pumpkin would have been 50 cents and the farmer would have given you a ride home!