Car Seats

      Nowadays, when you set out to take an automobile trip with a child under six or seven years of age, before you set off, you must strap the kid into the car seat.  Failure to do so may result in a heavy fine or in a worse case, injury to the kid.

       It wasn’t always thus.  One of my earliest memories stems from an automobile trip.  We were headed for town for whatever reason with my Dad and my two older brothers.   

     I was wandering around on the back seat with a new pair of shoes.  Well, not new, new to me.  Dad started slowing down to turn a corner on the country road.  I tried to balance myself and the unfamiliar shoes caught on each other, or I stepped on a shoelace, or something.

     Down I went between the two seats.  With help, I regained my perch on the back seat.  I uttered what must have been one of my first attempts at a sentence:  “’Tit over shoes, hurt hiney.” 

       The concern of the other passengers was dispelled and there was great laughter.  My phrase was repeated several times.  When we returned home from the town trip, the “boys” had to repeat the entire episode to our mother.  Everybody laughed again.  I was a hero!  I enjoyed the limelight for a brief while.

       There were no such things as seatbelts in those olden days.  We free-ranged around the back seat.  The seat backs of the front seat of our old Chevy were worn with kids standing between the seats and leaning on the front seat back.  Also on the back of the front seat back, a couple of round rope-like straps designed to be coat hangers, I guess, dangled uselessly by one end, the other end having been torn out by using the ropes for handles by the youthful passengers.

      For a few years,  seven of us loaded up whenever the family all went, such as to church or to visit our Aunt, Uncle and cousins, three of us in the front seat, four in the back.  Among  my least-favorite memories is a trip home from church on a cold winter day, Dad smoking a cigarette with the windows all rolled up against the bitter cold air.  The smoke-filled air was a guaranteed headache for me.

      There were some advantages of not being strapped in.  For a year or two, I could stretch out on the shelf behind the back seat, under the back window.  On night trips, such as coming home from a basketball game or from a 50-mile jaunt to visit the cousins, I could retreat to that bunk and go to sleep.  It left room for the other three back seat passengers to stretch out a little, too. 

      But then there was always the wakeup call, when I had to leave my cocoon and face the night air on my way to undressing and falling at last into bed.  Oh, those good old days!  Good, if you don’t look at the stats on death and injuries from automobile accidents in those good old days.

     For all the complaining about, and from, kids in car seats, it is better now, at least from a safety aspect.  Anyway, most cars no longer have that shelf behind the back seat.  Kids have to sleep sitting up.  And there are no “knee fights” as back seat passengers attempt to stake out their territory.

 

“Oh, I Forgot”

 

     These days I spend an inordinate amount of time doing one of my least-favorite things—looking for something. “Dang it!  Put it back where it belongs!  Then you won’t have to waste time looking for it!”  But my words fall like the seeds among the rocks and never take root.

      Most of the time, I am looking for something the Goodwife can’t find, like cell phone or glasses, and other such things.  But not always is it the Goodwife’s fault.

        I went with her to a hair appointment.  I went equipped with a warm coat, my tablet, and my reading glasses.  In these days of CORONA virus, it’s not always possible to find a seat in the salon.  If you do sit inside, you can’t always read if your face mask is fogging up your glasses.

      So, I planned on sitting in the car and reading my current book (“1984” by George Orwell, never have read it before) while I waited for her to get her hair cut.  However, we “forgot” to check her text messages.  The hairdresser had texted to ask her to reschedule her appointment because she was way behind on that particular day.

      I only had about five minutes to get comfortable and delve into my tablet before the Goodwife was back.  Caught by surprise, I didn’t do a good job of stowing things before we took off again.  I hung my reading glasses by an ear piece on the top button of my shirt, just beneath my neck.

      When we got home, since we were dressed warmly and I needed a few more steps to reach my daily goal for the break-in of my new hip, we elected to take a brief walk in the more-than-brisk air.  Arriving home again after our constitutional, I grabbed my tablet from the car and escaped into the warmth of the house.  

     I removed my overcoat and started to take off my sweater, but where were my reading glasses?  They were no longer hanging from the v-neck of my shirt.  They must have fallen off somewhere.  Or did I remove them and put them somewhere unconsciously?  It has been known to happen.

      I looked here and there.  I stepped out into the chilly garage and gave the car a thorough search, looking between seats and console, under the seats, anywhere I thought the glasses might be hiding.  Nothing.

       I put my coat back on and retraced a few of our steps on our walk.  They could have fallen off while we were walking.  But we came and went the same way.  If they had fallen off while we walked, surely we would have seen them on our return trip.  Nothing.

       With the usual silent curses and frustration that losing something always brings, I gave the glasses up for lost.  Sometime later, I took off my jeans, the waist band of which rides somewhat uncomfortably on the top of my hip surgery scar, and started to put on my fat-lady, Wal-Mart lady sweatpants that I wear nearly all day most days.

     But wait, as I stood up to hang my jeans up and grab my sweatpants, something came sliding out from beneath my shirttail.  My reading glasses were sort of born again.  I grabbed them as they slid towards my thighs and sat down to complete installing my sweatpants.

     Emotions flooded me.  Shame, for losing my temper and cursing over such a trifle.  Relief that the lost was found.  Humor, that I could have been so silly, so upset by a trifle.

       I would like to continue with my story, but I have to accompany the Goodwife to Macy’s.  Yesterday, the lady at the bank asked to see her driver’s license so she could update our record.  We looked.  We ransacked her purse.  We checked coat and sweater pockets.  No driver’s license.

       Bring it in when you find it, the lady said, thus dismissing the forgetful old fools.  At home, we searched coat pockets again, car seats, anywhere she might have left it.  This time, I was able to refrain from curses.  But frustration took up residence, soon replaced by resignation.

     I began to search the reams of bureaucratic legalese on the state driver’s license website to see how to go about replacing a lost or stolen license.  After a few minutes, I decided it might be a chore better left for tomorrow.  We set about getting supper on the table.

     As we sat at the supper table,  Macy’s called.  They have a driver’s license, if you can identify it.

     My consolation:  A trip to Macy’s is probably better than one to the driver’s license examiner’s. 

     And so it goes.        

 

COVID Time

      Post-post OP.  So I went to see the doctor for my two-week checkup.  I saw the doctor only when he passed by us in the hall as we sat and waited for my X-rays to be developed.

     “How are you doing?” he asked.

      “Great!” I replied

      Then I saw the nurse.  It was anti-climactic.  I wore my “pajama bottom” pants figuring I would end up in a backless gown so they could remove the “stitches.”  The X-ray technician asked me to empty my pockets, my driver’s license and  my health cards, and pants-on, she lined me up on the target and snapped the picture.

     We were ushered into the little room and the nurse brought up the X-ray on the computer monitor.  She said it looked good.  She placed the X-ray they took while I was still in the operating room beside the latest one.  She said it was coming along nicely.

      Then up on the table I went.  She had me lower the waist band of my pants.  Then she pulled up the leg of my undies.  I held the undies up out of the way and she peeled off the “stitches” just like a band aid.  That was it, or nearly so.  She painted some kind of disinfectant on the wound and put some strips of tape over it.

     The “stitches” resembled a zip-lock bag, with a strip of tape on either side of the wound and held together with a sort of plastic zipper.  Pretty simple, and painless.  I was shaved as smooth as a baby’s bottom, as they say.  No hair-pulling.

      “When this comes off, don’t replace it,” she said referring to the newly applied tape.  Shower, ok.  Soaking, as in taking a bath, not ok.  Don’t put any oil or lotion on it, opposite to what the plastic surgeon told me to do.  She noted that I was not using walker or cane, and that I could raise my leg fairly easily when getting onto the table. 

       We were done, except for making an appointment for a six-week checkup in January.

      I have been to the physical therapist twice since surgery.  I seem to be listing to the right when I walk.  I hear from the Goodwife, “You’re raising you left shoulder.  Stand up straight.”  She also objects to my Walter Brennan imitation when I double pump my elbows when I take my first step or two, ala Papa McCoy in The Real McCoys.

      The P-T guy has me carry ten pounds in one hand and take five prancing steps, like a drum major.  Then I switch the weight to the other hand and repeat the steps.  An attempt to get me to straighten up and walk right?  Doing my exercises takes fifteen minutes at the most. 

     Then I am forced to join the rest of senior citizenry in trying to find something useful and interesting to pass the time during the COVID restrictions.  I can’t go for much of a walk yet.  I have built up to 5000 steps yesterday, but that doesn’t take you far on a warm afternoon.

     Yesterday, I sat in the sun and screened twenty pounds of wheat to get it ready for the flour grinder.  That was a pleasant, but eventually it cools off and I am back to finding a satisfying pastime.   

      Television, not much.  Vast wasteland indeed.  Unless you like to watch football, or old folks singing in order to raise funds for PBS, or fools airing their grudges in various court rooms throughout the country, or murder cases, etc.

       We have turned to games to pass an hour or two in the evening.  We play Cribbage where we get to review our elementary math skills, factoring the numbers fifteen and thirty-one.  And practicing fine motor skills, placing pegs in holes, sometimes a challenge using only one eye.        

     Then there is Scrabble, tasking our vocabulary and spelling skills.  A timer is necessary for this game, along with the Aunt Margaret quote, “P-uh-Lay!”  With only two of us playing, our scores should be high, but the stratosphere is safe.

     Yahtzee takes some logic and decision making and a lot of luck.  No dozing as the “bones” rattle in the cup and onto the table top.

       Closely related to Scrabble, Word Yahtzee takes vocabulary and spelling skills and some luck with throwing the “dice” with letters rather than dots.  It’s as noisy as Yahtzee, and the timer is also necessary to keep this game moving.

      We have also revived gin rummy.   There are a few other games with a sheen of dust in the game room in the basement, Skipbow, Rook.   We don’t have a Monopoly game.  We haven’t set up the card table with a jigsaw puzzle yet. 

      Someday, will we look back and say, “Oh, that was 2020 when we played all those games.  Those were good times”?

      Well, life goes on.  Stay creative.  I will try to practice what I preach.