The intellectual equivalent of a ham sandwich.

Posts tagged ‘age’

Tomorrow Brad

Lately I have been trying to be a better friend to myself, aka Tomorrow Brad. You see, my absolute favorite person is Right Now Brad (RNB), and sometimes I have acted just for RNB.

“I feel like if I slow down for a second I will realize I’m already stuffed … Better eat faster!!”
-RNB

RNB can be a real jerk to Tomorrow Brad, as you can see from the above quote. And don’t even get me started on RNB’s sleeping habits.

“Oh man it’s midnight? Well I’m already gonna be tired tomorrow so I may as well watch one more episode …”
– Classic RNB

Here’s my revolutionary idea: acting on behalf of Tomorrow Brad more and more. I feel like this is the part about being an adult that no one warned me about.

When I was younger Tomorrow Brad and Right Now Brad saw eye to eye on a lot of things. Right Now Brad might say, “I should get Taco Bell!” and so I would. Then Tomorrow Brad would say, “Later we should eat half a pumpkin pie! While you’re out for Taco Bell pick up some more whipped cream!” The two would high five and all was merry.

Now Tomorrow Brad acts almost immediately in reaction to Right Now Brad. “Oh man,” Tomorrow Brad says 10 minutes after finishing Taco Bell, “that was such a bad idea …”

Maybe getting older isn’t about maturing or becoming more intelligent, but instead feeling the repercussions of bad ideas with force and surprising speed. Running miles on end, then eating fast food for dinner and staying up late to play video games was a dream Saturday only a few years ago … Today, it is a recipe for sadness.

Let’s hear it for our future selves, the most demanding friend you have.

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Du Jour of the Week

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Habit Unobserved

“The men helped my father into the coach first, and then my mother, a reversal of their usual and ritually observed manners, which seemed to me final and devastating.”

This is a quote from Tinkers by Paul Harding. It inspired this little ditty. I’m just picturing an elderly couple getting into a car (an anonymous elderly couple, most certainly no one I’m related to …).

Habit Unobserved

She helped him into the car.

They were heading to have brunch with two of their children, and their children’s spouses, and one or two of their grandkids if they had the time. It would be a nice meal. The food was always good there, and it was good to see family and be able to catch up (not that they caught up, because they generally told the same stories).

It was just that she helped him into the car.

She looked at him and he smiled at her. Or did he? She may have just pictured it. The smile she saw wasn’t the same smile that he gave now. The smile she saw was the smile she’d started seeing many years ago. The smile that was him. The smile that was so much more than a smile because it was his charm, his wit, his personality. That smile had grown to be her, too. It was no wonder she saw that. But, no, if she stopped and thought about it – but, no, let’s not do that.

Of course she helped him into the car. That’s what you do. You take care of the people you love. Over the years you don’t even notice some changes because they come gradually and then you stop, you look, and oh, you’re the one helping him into the car now. Well, a little joke about this will be funny. Who’s the gentleman now, hm? You both laugh. The next time you make that joke it’s still not that funny, but you laugh. And the joke will be made a number of times but it’s part of a new ritual. A ritual that you’d rather just look over, so you stop the joke.

It’s going well. This is nice. You just move along fine and, oh, like a stumble you ignore that little mistake, and want it so badly to be a stumble but you know that – no, you can think about it later, be polite you’ve got plans.

And then you go home and make more plans.

Things are busy and it’s really not that bad, and, well, you’re doing everything you can do. And part of that is helping him into the car, and that’s all it is, nothing else.

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Short Short Stories

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