Wandering Toward My Shifting Self

Main Street

 

 “A diller, a dollar, a ten o'clock scholar!
What makes you come so soon?
You used to come at ten o'clock,
But now you come at noon.”

“Is K#1up there with you?” On a somnolent summer morning my wife called up to my home office. “Its lunch time and I can’t find her anywhere!”

We mobilized. My wife took K#2, her two year old sister, and checked with the immediate neighbors. I searched the business streets on the perimeter of our neighborhood. In a short, but anxious, time, I found her.

Ensconced with an ice cream cone at the Dairy Queen, she was entertaining a gaggle of adoring teen age girls. All’s well that ends well!

Almost! K#1 absolutely refused to eat lunch. And who’s to blame her. Mom served ‘healthy food’ and was strict about sugar treats. It was rare in her young life to have an ice cream cone – and for lunch at that!

And now the rest of the story!

K#1 adored reading books. On that summer morning she was certain about three facts. Her sister would only play dolls, could care less about books. After a year of kindergarten, she knew school was a place of books and reading. Even though Mom drove her to and from school, she knew the bus ran on Main Street between her corner and the school yard. A reasonable solution was to walk down to the corner, get on a bus, and go to school to read books.

The bus driver recognized a five year old shouldn’t be getting on the bus alone. He brought her into a store by the bus stop. The woman behind the counter recognized her and told the bus driver, “She belongs in the neighborhood. I’ll take care of her.” When some teen age girls from her church walked by the store, she hailed them. She gave them some money and said, “Take her down to Dairy Queen. I’m sure her parents are looking for her.”

I don’t know how many jobs those owner operated storefronts on Main Street generated. I do know their ‘eyes on the street’ provided security for the neighborhood they served.

And so K#1’s solo adventure onto Main Street ended in a treat not a threat.

That was Chicago 1963.

Today small business owners hire security guards to protect their stores against theft, rowdiness and occasional gunfire from mall walkers.

Paying Bills

The afternoon mail brought an itemized bill for my last eye treatment. The supplemental co-pay had gone from $5.38 for my last one six weeks before to $109.78 for this one.

I wasn’t shocked or even surprised. I wrote out the check and put it in the mail.

Like many Americans my health insurance has come through my employer. When I went on Medicare, the supplemental insurance with a large private corporation was automatically deducted from my pension. Pretty much medical costs have been on automatic pilot without much worry. I wait for a final billing and write a check.

True fact! During cancer treatments there have occasionally been glitches. Not too surprising with the multiplicity of doctors, technicians, clinics and hospitals, labs and different billing systems involved in the several month long treatment. Usually my spreadsheet records and a few patient phone calls or visit with local accountants clears up the glitch. The money side of our health care has not been a major stress point for me.

I’ve had Type 2 Diabetes for 30+ years. I’ve gone to the same primary care doctor about every six weeks for tests and checkup for 20+ years. I’ve taken the same one-a-day pill for 10 years.

Like many supplemental health insurance plans I get my pills from a mail order lab in 90 day increments. Again automatic pilot stress free process. They have my credit card number; my doctor renews my prescription once a year by fax.

Until 2009! In February for my first 90 day renewal of the prescription, my long time co-pay of $12 rose to $16. No big deal. With my second 90 day refill my credit card was charged $66. Whoa Nelly! My third 90 day refill charged me $160 co-pay. I await December and my final pill refill of the year with financial fear and trembling.

The other day I got a robo-call from my senator’s office promising a No vote on the proposed Healthcare Reform. He explained that if it passed I would see a sharp increase in my co-pays.  Our local news reported my senator’s campaign fund received north of $400,000 from the Health Insurance Corporation headquartered a couple of blocks from my condo.

Ah Welladay! I certainly don’t want my co-pays to go up more sharply than they have in 2009. It’s nice my senator wants to protect me from a sudden big rise in supplemental co-pays. Somehow keeping the government out of Medicare doesn’t make me smile with relief.

Condo War

The Battlefield: I live in a recycled building. Built in 1920 with white columned wide front porch, ten foot ceilings and marble fireplaces, it was a gracious single family home. By the mid-1980’s it had become a rather beat up student rooming house. A local realtor bought it, gutted it and made four modern condos. When we moved in to the 1200 square feet of what had been the formal parlor and the sun parlor, we enjoyed the ten foot ceilings and marble fireplace, but rejoiced in the comforts of a top of the line modern two bedroom condo.

War Declared: In early April, I turned off the TV. In the ensuing quiet I thought I heard water dripping. A quick tour before going to bed, revealed nothing. A few days later on a luscious spring afternoon, I discovered a rapid drip over the bookcase next to the fireplace. I called the ‘Difficult Lady’ upstairs and was told, “It’s none of my business. Call your insurance agent!” As spring turned to summer, the drip increased to a daily seven gallon flood.

Battle Tactics: One day early on: a knock on my door revealed DL, her assessor and her furnace and air conditioning guy. DL marched through my place, inspecting every room. The air conditioning guy over by the leak convinced the assessor that the water could not come from a broken pipe upstairs, but had to be from a loose shingle on the roof.

It’s a fact. Condo insurance is a complicated business. We each have insurance policies for our ‘inner’ space. The Association has a policy for the ‘outer’ space. The space between walls is a legal ‘free fire zone.’ I soon found myself pinned down in crossfire between her condo agent in Lexington, KY, my local agent and a distant overall building agent on a web address.

Final Battle: So it went back and forth until I hired a contractor. He opened the wall, discovered a cracked drain pipe from her furnace condenser. He needed one hour in her place to replace the pipe. I called DL upstairs to report this simple resolution to the five month war. The plumber and I listened to a screaming tirade that basically said, “No way will I let you into my place. I have my rights!”

As the plumber packed up his tools, she appeared at the open door. It took five minutes of screaming to tell us; “I work every day. You lay around all day. I’m not going to pay for you to redecorate your room.”

The contractor contacted a city inspector. A few days later, he had a conversation with Difficult Lady. She called down and politely made an appointment for the workers to access her condo.

Two weeks after plumbers, carpenters, plasterers, painters and steam cleaners had finished rebuilding the bookcase and wall board and getting rid of the mold, the war was over.

Post Action Assessment: The contractor presented a bill for $5,552.71. She had not changed a furnace filter in years. This clogged the drain pipe. Trying harsh chemicals and brute force to clear it cracked the pipe. A one hour job became a major renovation project.

I’m grateful to live in “The Land of the Free and Home of the Brave!

DL exercised the personal freedom our government gives her.

The city inspector gave her courage to admit her blunder was ruining my living room and impairing my health.

If that’s ‘Socialism’, so be it!

This Thanksgiving Holiday, I’m grateful my government could protect my health and home from her Freedom to “Just Say No!”

 

Panic Noise

Sunday dawns cloudy and cool. Panic time! My coffee jar is empty. I drive through quiet streets to the nearest 24/7 Big Box grocery.

I pick up my coffee and decide to have breakfast while I’m there. I’m just finishing my generic eggs and sausage when a wailing siren shatters the cheerful chatter.

Clang! Screech! Panic! Kids cover their ears and scream. Mother’s clutch their babies and head for the door. People freeze with coffee cups half way to their lips. Some assault the food service manager with loud demands for an explanation. It seems an ‘hour of chaos’ until the store manager comes running full speed into the café brandishing a huge ring of keys. Quiet if not calm is restored.

A patron skipped out the emergency door to avoid paying for breakfast.

I paid my breakfast tab and joined the exodus through the front door. Got home in time to hear Sunday’s Political Pundits. Doomsday predictions of economic collapse triggered a cacophony of ‘pot calling kettle black’ blame.

"Oho!' said the pot to the kettle;
"You are dirty and ugly and black!
Sure no one would think you were metal,
Except when you're given a crack."

"Not so! not so! kettle said to the pot;
" 'Tis your own dirty image you see;
For I am so clean -without blemish or blot-
That your blackness is mirrored in me"

As happens with regularity in these discussions of governmental policy the defenders of America’s morality begin pointing fingers of blame and trying to shout each other down. The moderator usually sits back with a barely concealed smile at the noise. It does boost ratings.

The noise of hypocrisy is nothing new. The ‘pot and kettle’ ditty was popular at the end of the nineteenth century during Teddy Roosevelt’s presidency.  

Older yet are the words of Christ in the Bible, "And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?"

Out of the incoherent melee the words ‘Chinese Monetary Policy’ could occasionally be distinguished. I have no clue why the linking of China’s currency to the US dollar can cause a global economic collapse. I do know that the Chinese description of the noise of hypocrisy is older than the ‘pot and kettle’ ditty of Teddy Roosevelt’s era and even older than the words of Christ.

Are Chinese the culprits behind our falling off an economic cliff? Who knows? I do like their definition of the noise of hypocrisy: "Crow laughing at pig for being black!"

“Crow laughs at pig’s blackness” sounds gentler, less vindictive even a tad collegial! When I made a pot of coffee after all this TV excitement, I realized. Unlike the poor soul who precipitated the panic by skipping out on his breakfast bill, I paid mine. But walking out of the Big Box grocery in the post panic exodus, I had not paid for my eleven ounce ‘pound of coffee’. 

A Wonderful Life

I was enjoying a holiday dinner party in a private room of the Venice Inn. My cell phone rang. I fished it out of my pocket and went over to a corner of the room to take the call.

My granddaughter’s problem with student aid was broadcast all over the room. I was embarrassed.

Not at the inadvertent eavesdropping on family business. These were all longtime intimate friends. But by my klutzy ineptness with the phone!

Everybody laughed. Jim showed me the tiny button I had fumbled on broadcast position. I decided to research the new crop of cells.

The top eight really cool phones are not available in the USA. But of US phones I’ve narrowed my choice to Jitterbug J or 3G iPhone.

The Jitterbug J offers ease of use. A powerful speaker makes hearing easy. Large text makes viewing easy. Big buttons make dialing easy. Simple ‘Yes or No’ command buttons make operating it easy. There’s even a button to connect with a real live talking human 24/7. The animated boy phone and girl phone in TV ads tell me so.

The 3G iPhone on the other hand has no buttons. It offers a large touch screen and 75,000 helpful programs. A disembodied finger on TV shows me a whole new way of connecting to the world.

Which one?

Good Golly Miss Molly! Doesn’t the decision make itself?

The iPhone of course!

I can sit in my easy chair in a warm condo and have all necessary goods and services come to me with a touch of my finger.  I can explore a wide, wonderful world with 75,000 applications.

At 77 years old, I may not finish this exhilarating mission. No Problem!

I’ll bequeath my iPhone to my grandson. Unless he collects antiques, he’ll throw it in the trash.

By then, he’ll be sitting in a green biosphere, a nano chip embedded in his right hand pinky. A tap of his finger will activate an ethereal screen. Not only will poking this cyberspace image bring him all necessary goods and services. But he’ll never ever be bored. A gazillion options will keep him visiting the global village 24/365.

IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, IN THE DIGITAL MAGIC KINGDOM!

 

Right now my mission should I choose a new cell phone is to find a brick and mortar store. There I shall discern if the advantage of the Jitterbug’s big button, Yes/No simple operation is the real deal in the palm of my klutzy fingers.