Archives for April 2023

When I walk downtown in our city, I pass the Medical School. I guess we need it to produce a steady supply of doctors, to competently handle our ongoing medical issues. But then when I watch television, I see a concerted effort to medically educate the general public. I’m talking about all the health-related commercials. Just the superb animation alone, used to show the workings of our vascular, neural, skeletal and other systems, is enough to make a layman think he has completed anatomy 101. Computer artists take us on journeys through veins, bowels and electrical pathways in the service of solving or at least alleviating distress and dysfunction with their specific patent medications. These value-added ads are a much more sophisticated version of a carnival huckster offering cure-all nostrums by the bottle. Viewers who grew up on Sesame Street flashes of information, feel at home with the gorgeous visuals, graphs and progression from ‘the heartbreak of psoriasis’ to clear skin in thirty-second info-bursts. Who needs to dissect corpses like Hippocrates (he of the oath) and anatomical artists like DaVinci to grasp the intricacies of body systems? “We saw it on television, doctor: ‘This is the letter C for Cold, Constipation and Cramps.”

And then there are the ads related to mental/emotional conditions. It’s enough to get viewers wondering what’s wrong with them if they aren’t depressed, sleep deprived, suicidal, forgetful or addicted to one substance or another. OTC comfort meds for colds, throbbing sinuses, itchy bottoms and gippy tum… what a relief they are! get addressed with more ads.

An additional bad side effect of medicinal ads is the list of side effects rattled off in a near unintelligible rush in the last three seconds of the commercial. Any hypochondriac worthy of the name will register every single one and whisper, ‘thanks for reminding me.’

To anchor my point, have you noticed that you almost never see a doctor wearing a lab coat, x-ray in hand, endorsing a medicine in a commercial anymore? There’s no need. We are all expected to be our own doctors. We’ve just been shown how our bodies work (or don’t) and what treatment/medications we require. Doctor authorities are currently relegated to guest appearances on evening news shows speaking to breaking developments in pandemics and other health issues too fresh for ad agency animation.

And just in case your aches have momentarily subsided, a good ad can quickly remind you of all the age-related throbs, pains and disabilities you might expect—if you don’t yet have them.

Retired trainer, and writing instructor, Joe Novara lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Writings include novels, short stories, a memoir and various poems, plays, anthologies and articles. In, Pinata Belly, and other tales of later love, Novara reminds of the limits and ultimate hope for online dating sites.

You may have seen a recent article about the Dollar Tree manager in Indiana that was fired for posting a sign that said they wanted to hire only baby boomers.

Let’s back up a bit. Why is this store chain called Dollar Tree? Do dollars grow on trees? Does everything in the store cost only a dollar? Hah!

Okay. Back to the store manager. The sign explained that she was apologizing for closing the store and blamed the closure on the 2 cashiers that just quit. They quit because the manager would not allow them to be accompanied by their boyfriends during their shifts. She also suggested that you not hire Gen Z’s because they don’t know what work actually means. All of this information was posted publicly on the store window.

Much of the reaction to the news story blamed Dollar Tree for having such high-turnover jobs. So, it’s not really a Gen Z problem, it’s a crummy job problem.

Not to kick the Gen Z’ers while they are down, but like many other baby boomers, I had some really, really, crummy jobs. Starting with summer jobs and right on into a post college job, I withstood some awful work experiences. But I persevered and did so without the aid of a girlfriend joining me at work, though that might have been interesting.

I’m not going to defend the Dollar Tree manager’s actions, but I did find it bizarre that cashiers wanted their boyfriends to hang around with them for an entire shift. Don’t these boyfriends have their own jobs? Or are they (pardon the pun) shiftless?

Do baby boomers make better workers (hypothetically) because they are more compliant (read gutless) or tolerant of poor working conditions? That would suggest that we were push-overs and these Gen Z’ers are just standing up for their rights. Nah. Not buying that. I do think that attitudes about work have mutated as the generations have progressed. Young workers are more likely to expect greater satisfaction and stimulation now than boomers did in their early work experiences, or even with late-in-life part-time jobs. Back then and now, it’s conceivable that we were just happy to be earning a wage.

It’s not a very scientific assumption, but I’m going to posit that the seventy-five year old greeter at Walmart is happy to be making whatever he’s getting per hour. And if he’s lucky, his girlfriend is somewhere in the back of the store working the returns counter.

Jay Harrison is a writer and creative consultant for DesignConcept. You can also visit his author page here. His newest mystery novel, Rio Puerco Demise is available on Amazon. His first mystery novel, Head Above Water, is also available on Amazon. But that’s not all. You can also purchase the Best of BoomSpeak on Amazon.

I’m a wee bit obsessive about games and hold myself to a high standard. Fear of failure is a real affliction, and I’m not sure I have that, but I do dread losing at anything, and it seems to have gotten worse since I retired. Not getting those wins at work, so I work hard at my play time just to see if I measure up.

Seriously, it’s a curse. If I wake up in the middle of the night, I look at the light outside to see if I can guess what time it is. And yes, I feel good when I get it right.

I especially dread playing bad golf. More so since I retired. When I was working, I could explain it away by saying I don’t get to play enough. That excuse doesn’t fly anymore.

It’s not that I mind other people playing better or winning. But I’m mad at myself for not being as good and just want to go off alone to sulk. On the bright side, maybe I’m finally starting to reverse the trend. Last week our women’s league played on a muddy course saturated by rains, and it was tough. My partners and I agreed ahead of time we would laugh at bad shots.

Let’s just say we laughed a lot. I posted one of my worst scores since I learned to play the game more than 25 years ago. When we got to the parking lot, one of the women said, let’s have a drink for making it through that! She had a little flask and plastic glasses and poured us each a tiny shot of butterscotch liquor (which is delicious). We drank it right there by our cars.

Then I joined the group inside rather than exiting the scene with my head hung low, and we had a pretty good time laughing about how horribly we played. I have to say it was a much better way to end a bad round than my usual pity-fest.

The very next morning, as I was playing Wordle in bed, I lost a game and broke my 159-day streak. I thought I’d be devastated, but I surprised myself. I actually felt relieved. Perhaps the universe was sending me a message. Play for fun – not everything has to be a test.

I wouldn’t say I have a pathological diagnosis, and you probably don’t either, but for some of us, the fear of failure can be greater than the excitement of winning. And it holds us back.

Retirement is as good a time as any to try to recover at least a smidgeon of that wild abandon we had before life knocked us around. However, I don’t want it all back, because I seriously did some dumb shit when I wasn’t scared of anything.

After seeing the upside of losing, I feel kind of free. More relaxed. I’ve always dreaded a complete collapse of my golf game, and it happened. It wasn’t all that bad. The experience helped me understand it’s one thing to fear losing. The trick is to shrug it off and work harder at losing the fear.

Donna Pekar is an aging badass (for real) who lives in California and writes Retirement Confidential.

Kindle in hand, I scrolled for a book I had purchased recently, to share with my son’s girlfriend.

“I bought it on Amazon, so if it is not here, I can find it in my Amazon account,” I said.

“Did they not have it at the library?” she asked.

“I’m sure they did, but I wanted it on the Kindle for traveling.”

She hesitated, reluctant to speak.

“What?” I asked.

“It’s just that you can borrow the digital books from the public library, for free, through the Libby app.”

I stared at her. My reader universe suddenly tilted on its axis.

“It’s free?”

“Yeah. I mean you have to wait sometimes like a regular library loan hold, but you don’t have to go to the library or anything, you can just request it through the app, download it to your Kindle when it comes in and return it when you finish. I can’t believe you didn’t know. You read more than anyone I know!”

This technical tidbit stopped me in my tracks. Free digital book loans? A voracious reader, I was never without a book, and regularly dished out 12 or 14 or 15 dollars apiece to purchase books for my Kindle. I happily tucked the device in my bag for trips or waiting rooms or car service appointments.

I remained skeptical, and continued my cross-examination.

“And it’s free?”

“Yes!” Sydnie said, “I find all the bargains, even books,” referring to her bargain hunting prowess.

I hopped up and down. For years, cognizant of our budget, I had carefully regulated what I purchased for my Kindle, placed holds on new ones at the library, waiting weeks for copies to be available, and scoured second hand book stores for others. At a rate of several books a week, I could rack up huge bills if I was not careful. Suddenly, my book money was liberated.

“Show me. I want to put it on my phone right now!”

Within minutes I set up my Libby account and requested several books from my local library. I knew I would still invest in treasured reads.

Until then, I would embark on countless adventures, traveling back in history, around the world and into fantastical universes, on my Kindle. For free.

Carol O’Day lives in Los Angeles.