Sex, drugs and guns

Listen I’m 83; went to an all boys high school; all boys navy and attended college in Illinois with 30,000 other veterans and six (maybe seven) girls.

As you might guess I’m an expert on sex.

To make it even worse I had a terrible case of acne and was initially rejected by a blemish-proof Naval Air Corps. X-ray treatment on my face and back put me in a new light, however, and I went on to win The War.

You betcha.

After college I entered the publishing business (don’t do it) and discovered girls.

A major surprise of my life was that girls actually talked to me and a modest few went even further.

Did I mention that I am now 83?

There is a superbly surprising amount of sex on the telly (I’m British at heart) which awkwardly, to me, recalls a time you were thrown out of school for even thinking about what you appreciatively see every morning, noon and night on the tube, internet and street.

Can this be true?

Regretfully yes. The female of the species is now wearing what Jane once wore in pursuit of Tarzan or was it Eve and Adam. At 83 you get this sort of thing mixed up.

All I can say is “we’re not in Kansas any more.”

Good or bad? Damned if I know.

Regretfully, did I mention I was 83, I know more about drugs than sex these days.

I take several pain pills each and every day for a neck that appears to be made of sawdust. I also self-inject Enbrel for arthritis and will soon be pushing a needle into a muscle to provide the testosterone that used to be There, but no longer is.

And no I’m not going to be drawing a picture. I draw Social Security and a modest few VA benefits.

I once took several of the highly publicized oxycontin drug pills while recovering from the placement of a brand new right hip, fresh out of the box, into the area where hips are often placed. My wife tells me I went mildly nuts.

Frankly I had no idea Rush Limbaugh and I had so much in common.

The new hip beeps at the sight of a walk-through surveillance monitor and without encouragement or threats I quickly remove my shoes, boot-leg copy of Microsoft Word and any placebos I might have. My wife worries about the possibility of my blurting out incriminating evidence concerning a college-level exam in Atomic Physics. (Also known as Introduction to Ametiza 8.0)  “Keep very quiet,” she explains.

Every now and then the monitor fails to beep and I have a conference with the controlling authorities. The powers that be are seldom (never) anxious to discuss a non-beeping monitor while those standing nearby are nervously noting facial similarities to Richard Reid, the shoe bomber.

Opting for compromise they place me on their “desperate for love” list and move on.

The beep machine does not beep and never has beeped because of my neck which has approximately 17 pounds of what the machinery is seeking to dominate through accurate beep control. I don’t often provide tips for the Osama bin Laden crowd but this could be more helpful to them then Glenn Beck or even Sean Hannity.

Dr. John Watson wrote about this in his famous Holmes epic, “The hip and/or neck that wouldn’t beep in the night.” (Barnes & Noble: $8.70)

And now you know why my good wife and I divorced for a brief period in our fifty years plus relationship.

“One more pun and you’re out of here,” was a major element in the Primary Reason for Separation Document.

Aside: Roughly ten small children from a Fort Lauderdale Elementary School were packed off to a hospital yesterday for overdosing on something. I don’t believe it was model airplane glue.

As to guns for you and me?

I was a radio gunner once and, undoubtedly, the worst shot in the long and glorious history of the Naval Air Corps.

In short put me down as Dubious.

The idea of being the only armed man at a Tea Party or Birther Convention doesn’t particularly worry me since I wouldn’t be caught dead at one.

I suppose there’s a better way of saying that but other than restricting gun ownership to people with IQs above 70 I have no reasonable solution.

Recapping.

Subject               Attitude              Score

Sex                      Pro                       2 daughters now residing in Seattle.                      

Drugs                   Con                      Two 10 mg. Oxycodone daily.

Guns                    Con                      I do have a List* and it is quite long. 

Baseball                Pro                       Marlins in five.

Republicans        Con                     42.7 million of them. Why?                                   

Democracy          Pro                       300 plus millions to zero.

Summing up: I am against anything Sarah Palin, John McCain, Newt Gingrich, TeaBaggers, Birthers and Fox News is for.

And by the way, in my lifetime we have always had a Fox News. 

In the Midwest it was the Chicago Tribune owned by Colonel Robert R. McCormick who impetuously noted the new president was Thomas E. Dewey. Nationally it was Henry Luce’s Time Magazine that had a nasty habit of rewriting material furnished by reporters – roughly 180% to the right. In Orlando, FL it was the Sentinel published by Martin Anderson, a friend of LBJ who basically believed farm workers were overpaid. In the California of the 1930s, 40, 50s and 60s – the Los Angeles Times quite regularly named the next governor – without notifying the voters. There were, of course, many others who made up the news to suit themselves.

Fiction has always been easier to write than non-fiction.

Warren Langer 

http://warrenlanger.wordpress.com

warrenlanger@att.net

Still Liberal at 83

Was it really different back then?

Warren Langer

By back then I refer to the 1930s when I grew up in The Bronx.

First off The Bronx was not, and I’m pretty sure about this, the slummy, desolate area you picture.

We lived on a parkway with a playground on the other side of our street. My school was a hundred yards away. (And yes, I have told my children about walking miles through the snow.)

There were large parks and ball fields everywhere.

All of our parents, save one, were immigrants. The offspring of That became a lawyer and Broadway actor who studied the Olivier part in England.

Our parents were totally occupied in making a very modest living. My father made $32.50 walking up and down buildings selling insurance.

The non-immigrant was an accountant with a teacher wife. He had played baseball in college and tried to teach us some of the basics.

A losing cause.

Our parents basically left us alone.

We played basketball night and day and friends and acquaintances played for CCNY, LIU and NYU. They were damn good; one was on the team that sold out at CCNY in the first great basketball scandal. He was good, but not good enough to be bribed.

We traveled downtown to The Roxy, Paramount and Radio City movie palaces to see a film and a headliner on stage.  By ourselves.

We saw The Yankees play. By ourselves.

And we traveled to The New York World’s Fair. 1939 and 1940. By ourselves.

At The Fair we rushed in, took the brochures they would allow us to have and rushed to the next building. And then to the next building.

People tell me how much they learned from The Fair.

I basically remember a large brochure from Australia and a smaller one titled Why Burlington?

Not much to take from a Fiorello LaGuardia, Grover Whalen, Robert Moses inspired project but that’s what we did.

There were hundreds of brochures and I ultimately parked them at my brother’s house in Mount Vernon. He, of course, threw them away.

They’re now worth a small fortune. Hmm.

One good friend attended Music & Art High School and naturally became president of Max Factor and later Neutrogena.

Another ran the paper at De Witt Clinton H.S. and ultimately the educational side of PBS in New Hampshire and later in San Jose, CA. A daughter is an army general.

I went to the Bronx High School of Science and developed a vaccine for the swine flu epidemic that was to arrive 70 years later.

I guess not!

I went into advertising and publishing and was never heard from again.

Back to the question. Are things different now?

There was a war on the horizon and it took most of us; a limited few fatally.

We came back and many of us prospered.

We grew up in Depression Years but never really faced hardships. In some respects we didn’t realize we were poor.

Kids now face drugs and guns. Virtually all of them.

Guns we knew from the movies. (I became a radio-gunner in the Naval Air Corps, flew from here to there and back again. I see the mountains of Afghanistan and tremble.)

We smoked and believed we were Humphrey Bogart waiting for Ingrid Bergman.

The streets of today are dangerous. A check of the 6 PM Local News tells you all you want to know about drugs and guns, streets and roads.

Let your children go miles away by themselves?

I don’t think so.

The kids of today face incredibly more danger than we ever did.

People may have been evicted from their houses back then but we didn’t know any of them. People may have been killed but we didn’t know them either.

Frankly it was a more cheerful time then. The future really did look bright.

I’m not sure about that today.

 

http://warrenlanger.wordpress.c0m