Roger's Story

Nice Day..  blue sky smiling at us.. not  a cloud in  that sky...


Earlier this  year, Roger Angell wrote a piece for the New Yorker.  Roger has had an affiliation with the New Yorker and still has, even though he is in his nineties.  Let me make some comments on this wonderful piece that he has written, and recommend that you catch a copy of the New Yorker for February 17 & 24, 2014, and read this great article for yourself.


"Check me out.  The top two knuckles of my left hand look as if I'd been worked over by the K.G.B... arthritis.."  (Several knuckles in my case.)


"Now... if I cover my left, or better, eye with one hand, what I see is a blurry encircling version of the ceiling and floor and walls or windows to our right and left but no sign of your face or head: nothing in the middle... but if I reverse things and cover my right eye, there you are, back again...Macular degeneration."  (Just like the Macular degeneration that I have.. in the same eye.)


"The lower-middle sector of my spine twists and jogs like a Connecticut county road... this has cost me two or three inches of height, transforming me from Gary Cooper to Gepetto."  (Four inches in my case.)


"I'm not yet dead and not  yet mindless in a ... facility.  Decline and disaster impend, but my thoughts don't linger there.  It shouldn't surprise me if at this time next week I'm surrounded by family, gathered on short notice... to decide what's to be done with me.  It must be this hovering knowledge (of impending demise) that makes everyone so glad to see me again. 'How great you're looking!  Wow, tell me your secret!' they kindly cry when they happen upon me crossing the street or ... departing an x-ray room, while the little balloon over their heads reads, '... he's still verticle!'"


Roger has had a lot of disasters in his life, and a lot of nice times with his wifes and two daughters; one of each has pre-deceased him.  His stories about his relationships are delightful, entertaining and informative.. in my humble opinion. 


He does own up to being a complainer.. especially when he is ignored, which is evident when he tries to enter into a conversation with groups of younger men.  (Not like in China or Japan, where old age is venerated...  I have a problem in restaurants now.. waiters ignore me and forget  my orders.  Obviously its they who are really having the problem.. it couldn't possibly be me.. right?)


Roger also reveals: "I've also become a blogger, and enjoy the ease and freedom of the form: it's a bit like making a paper airplane and then watching it take wing below  your window."  (Yes, that's it.)


Roger also says:  "The thoughts of age are short, short thoughts.  I don't read Scripture and cling to no life precepts, except perhaps to Walter Cronkite's rules for old men, which he did not deliver over the air: Never trust a fart.  Never Pass up a drink.  Never ignore an erection."  (I must apologize for that to my children and grandchildren.. and also for the following jokes that Roger likes to tell, even at age 93.)


(I shortened this one.)  The teacher was asking her students what kind of work their fathers did. One little boy said: "My Dad is dead."  The teacher said: "Oh, I'm sorry.. what did your Dad do before he died?"  The little boy seized his throat and went: "N'gungghhh!"


(I shortened this one too.)  A couple had been trying to have a baby for years and finally it happened. At the hospital, the wife told her husband to stop by the local newspaper and arrange for a birth announcement to tell all their friends the good news.  Early the next morning she asked if he had done the errand.
"Yes, I did," he said, but I had no idea those ads were so expensive."
"How much was it?"
"It was eight hundred and thirty seven dollars. I have the receipt."
"That's impossible, you must have made a mistake. Tell me what happened."
"The clerk gave me a form to fill out and I wrote down all the pertinent information about the baby and handed it back.  She counted up the words and said, 'How many insertions?'
I said twice a week for fourteen years, and she gave me the bill.  O.K.?"


(Finally, Roger says:)  "Getting old is the second-biggest surprise of my life, but the first, by a mile is our unceasing need for deep attachment and intimate love.  We oldies yearn daily and hourly for conversation and renewed domesticity, for company at the movies or while visiting a museum, for someone close by in the car when coming home at night...everyone in the world wants to be with someone else tonight, together in the dark, with the sweet warmth of a hip or a foot or a bare expanse of shoulder within reach.  Those of us who have lost that, whatever our age, never lose the longing..."


I can relate to Roger's story and I hope you can too.