WE'RE PEOPLE TOO

For more years than I like to admit, I have railed about getting older and becoming irrelevant. Boy, I am fed up hearing it. Imagine how everyone else, even people with unlimited patience, must feel. My kids. My friends. Complete strangers who make the mistake of remembering me. Like Webb, the co-owner of a B&B in Maryhill who fell into the trap when he said: “You’re Larry Solway. (my VISA card says “Lawrence.”) “I always liked your commentaries.”

Here I go again!

He may have said “I always listened to your commentaries.”
My other response is, thinking to be funny by poking fun at myself: “You’re not old enough to remember me…etc.”

What my friends are most tired of hearing, especially those who by some miracle that has passed me by, are still working, is: “It’s terrible to become irrelevant. I’m not out-of-touch, but no one believes me.” Hey Larry – stand that up against your constant railing about “kids” (anyone under 40) who are hotwired to their IPods or spend hours text messaging, or have conversations that display rank indifference to the “real” world. No wonder they think you’re irrelevant!

I have had my time in the spotlight. I used it. The spotlight went out. Whatever happened, it happened. It is a fact. No amount of elderly carping will change it.

I have had an awakening. (Here we go again you say!) Not an epiphany, a kind of eureka moment of sudden discovery, more like a dawning, a slow and steady arrival of light.

Last week my wife and I went on a brief tour of some of Ontario’s prettiest country, the area generally referred to as “Mennonite” country – the rolling lush farmlands north of Kitchener, which is where I met Webb at his B&B. After he realized who I used to be he asked: “Are you still on the air?” It’s a question I am always asked. My reply, trying not to sound irritated: “No one asks me any more.”

Whining gets you nowhere. It closes more doors than it opens. It makes me think of dismissive comments like: “You want a friend? Go get a dog.”

Originally this was going to be an Email to someone at CBC Radio to present an idea for a show called “We’re People Too.” Not, I pray, another advocacy program trumpeting the rights of seniors and threatening government with Grey Power political action.

No. It would be about older people, for older people, but even more, for the families, the caregivers, and the ones like my own family, who all too often have to listen to me rail against real and imagined ills. Intolerance is still one of my major (?) assets!

There is a great need for younger people (by that I mean “youngsters” in their 40s and 50s) to learn how to cope with older folks while we older folks learn to cope, not just with each other, but with a very fast-changing world.

I wrote about all this in the book “Don’t Be Blindsided by Retirement.” I have tried to take charge of my life. There are millions like me. There are more millions who will soon be like me, And there are today millions who are care-givers because they are family. I want to turn this dialogue into a regular radio show which would include other seniors, geriatric specialists, and especially the kids and families of the CARPing generation. If you have a contact button you could push - I'd like that.

As Joan Rivers always says: “Can we talk?”

WHAT'S HAPPY ABOUT HALLOWE'EN?

Is it just me? Or have we gone completely daffy? I can understand Merry Christmas or Happy Birthday, but what on earth are we doing wishing everyone a “happy Hallowe’en?
Every time there is a special date on the calendar we break out in joyous greeting – signifying absolutely nothing. I am waiting (but I haven’t looked recently so this comment may be obsolete) for the greeting card folks to start printing cards to welcome in Hallowe’en.

I have to bet that not one in a hundred of the cutely dressed up little kids (reflecting revenues in the billions for people who make rubber masks and broomsticks) have any idea what the night is all about.

Quite frankly, neither did I. Well, I knew, but I didn’t recognize what I knew. It was when my wife and I happened to be in Paris one year on November 1st and many of the shops were closed. One restaurant had a skeleton staff. “Why,” I asked naively. The person serving us seemed a bit taken aback: “Mais Monsieur, c'est Toussaintes(I’m not sure I've spelled it right.)
“Of course,” I said, faking forgetfulness.

In France, where the anticlerical movement has a long history and where Descartes and his early Existentialism overshadowed the Divine and led generations of Frenchmen in another spiritual direction, one would not expect so much religious observance.
But here it was. Of course, if the night for goblins and ghosts and witches is actually All Soul’s Day night and the following day is All Saint’s Day, then the day has meaning.
But I suppose the “celebration” is as misdirected as the fact that the Easter Bunny has replaced the Cross as a symbol of Death and Resurrection. Perhaps it’s the overriding pagan influence on religion. The bunny is a sign of sparing and, being a very fertile, fecund creature, a symbol of re-birth. I’m not quite certain why the Danse Macabre of Hallowe'en is pagan, but it probably is.

Having just finished reading (in fact - trudging through) The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown, I developed a larger understanding of the relationship between ancient wisdom and present-day religion. Brown, once he establishes his patented method of suspense, embarks on a tedious, lengthy, preachy look at “The Word” and the wisdom of the ancients and how it has transmuted itself into modern beliefs. (I find that to be an oxymoron - there is nothing “modern” about some of the things people believe so devoutly.)

While I’m at it – how come so many Canadian TV news people call it “Hollow e’en?”
Oh well, they are part of a generation that has grown up being educated by watching
U.S. TV. “Hollow” and “Hallow” I think, are still two different words.

Aha! In one gestalt moments I see it all. The truth is revealed. In fact the American pronunciation reflects the truth: the day and it’s meaning have become quite “hollow.”

So to you – Happy Hallowe’en. Happy Labour Day and Happy Ides of March.