Archives for August 2025

Am I the only baby boomer wandering around at 3:30 in the morning? I don’t think so. Apparently baby boomers are more susceptible to sleep apnea at this stage of their lives. If your blood pressure has been dropping and you’re tired all the time, or (you’ll love this one!) you stop breathing momentarily in your sleep, you should see a doctor.

Insomnia and sleep apnea occur more often as you get a bit older and heavier. Things get flabby and the parts start to loosen up – like your airways!! Yikes.

If none of these symptoms hit home, maybe you’re just as stressed out as the rest of us who are awake in the early hours. According to those who measure things, about three fourths of baby boomers surveyed say that they get less than eight hours of sleep a night, and one in six has difficulty falling asleep. You made it through crying infants and out–all-night teenagers and now this?

Just the noise of the cat puking in the living room can wake you from a sound sleep. Then as long as you’re up cleaning the floor you might as well get a glass of water. And after the water it only makes sense to go to the bathroom. Maybe then it’s a good time to plan that fantasy trip to the Greek Islands. Should you go with two or three days in London on the way to Athens? Has anyone sent you email in the middle of the night? You never know. If I’m up they could be up. It’s only midnight in LA…but they go to bed at 8 pm don’t they? You could get off the computer and go out on the sofa to watch TV. Home improvement shows are perfect for putting you to sleep. You start watching Amy the carpenter on Sweat Equity reruns and wake up twenty minutes later with drool on your chin (sorry about that Amy).

All the health gurus say you should get eight hours of sleep but what if you never slept that much? What if you’ve been getting by for years on six hours?

I’d like to help you with this problem, but I’m going back to bed.

(This is a Best of BoomSpeak post from some time around 2014)

Jay Harrison is a writer and creative consultant for DesignConcept. 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.

“Strawberry — Naturally Flavored with Other Natural Flavors.” (Lifted from a cereal box.1) It’s hard to find a better bit of obfuscation out there, meaning Legal went above and beyond in making Marketing toe the line of provable claims.

Just what does “Naturally Flavored with Other Natural Flavors” actually mean? Does it mean natural strawberry flavor, along with other natural flavors? Does it mean the cereal is naturally flavored with other natural flavors (just not necessarily strawberry)? And why not make it more direct with “naturally flavored with natural flavors”, or even “naturally flavored”?2 Heck, a comma would end the confusion.

The ingredient list revealed not one mention of strawberry, unless it was hiding among the scientific poly-syllabic chemical names at the bottom of the listed contents. Natural flavor shows up- as just that- without further explanation.

Taste-testing revealed that not only are there no dehydrated chunks of strawberry present, the flavor is anything but strawberry-like. Maybe there was an astringent element, but that could have been the age of the soy milk3 used to accompany it.

So what might the flavor actually be? I suppose one could add a tablespoon of dirt and call it a natural flavor, but not for lubricants along the production line. Perhaps they hang a pint of strawberries over the bagging machine and hope occasional molecules of strawberry essence drift to the cereal below. It is truly a mystery. But this doesn’t have to be a single rant; there are three other such “flavors” to try.

1. We live in litigious times so I‘m hesitant to expose the maker or the cereal in question.
2. Honestly, the less ambiguous you make it, the more open you leave yourself to an irate retiree with too much unplanned time on his hands trying to generate interest in a class action.
3. Oops, I may have stumbled into another food borne controversy. If there is no actual milk in soy milk, can it still be called soy milk? See also: almond milk.

(From the Best of BoomSpeak, 2019)

Garth Fromme bears no actual malice toward the Quaker Oats Company, but he does get miffed at chicanery no matter its source. He is in his fourth life, still struggling to deal with this unnatural state called “retirement.” 

It was like watching a movie without sound. We had a window seat inside the air-conditioned restaurant. A couple sat at an outside table, slightly lower than us. It was a body-reading experience. The man, two-day beard, white, maybe mid-twenties, faced a woman, perhaps Latino, around the same age. Neither wore wedding rings. They stayed connected with each other with eye contact, body language. The guy was cooler, more constrained. The woman wriggled her feet, leaned forward, finger-played the hair alongside her face. No cell phone fiddling, people watching, blank-eyed self-absorption for either of them…a focused encounter, a serious date.

Was I being voyeuristic? Hell, my hearing aids weren’t doing the job in the noisy restaurant. I could barely hear the conversation between my wife and our two friends across the table. I grasped maybe two or three words in a sentence. I could tell the topic but not the content…just a bit better than the silent mimes outside. I was busy observing and filling in the blanks on two fronts.

I’ve made movies. The story elements are mostly non-verbal—setting, clothes, music, make-up, gestures, action. Words are important but dialogue is only one component. I saw a Japanese movie once that had only four words, titles actually – winter, spring, summer, fall and all the rest was action. A study in cinema as storytelling.

Our food finally came and our table conversation slowed down. Outside the woman and guy kept engaging. The guy, a study in non-verbal minimalism simply nodded from time to time while the woman leaned forward working subtle smiles and engaging eyes. I suddenly had the feeling that I was a fan at a soccer match where folks on the field deked, dodged and shot while us in the stands clapped and passed the popcorn.

So, in effect, I was in the middle of two silent movies absorbing gestures and facial reactions, smiles and laughter in a vacuum of dialogue. Our friends smiled and nodded gentle affirmations. The guy outside, however, never smiled while the young woman really worked the scene.

When they finally got up and left, I wondered if they had a future together; if she would continue to absorb his every word, send so much attention, so many signals, his way. It was working so far.

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. Read more at https://freefloatingstories.wordpress.com/