SENIOR SADISTS

So it's a ladies' lunch. It's an organization, so there is a speaker to give meaning to the occasion. There must be a program, and afterwards there's coffee and cake. And conversation of course. Someone mentions gardening and a radio master gardener who advises on pest control. One woman says that her home and garden have been beset by red squirrels. But she sets a live-catch trap and baits it with peanut butter. She used to have her son come and shoot the captured squirrel, but one day the son was away, and when she checked the trap 24 hours later , the squirrel was dead. So now, she says, she doesn't bother to call him anymore. She just lets the squirrels die. When I say the poor things must die from thirst, starvation, heat, cold, whatever, she answers that it only takes them 24 hours to die. The meeting concludes with the National Anthem and a prayer.

THE BODY OF AN AT/AT

The large gray plastic body lies in my living room looking like the next of kin of the dinosaurs. It's a Star Wars All Terrain Armored Transport of 1970's vintage, recently retrieved from the attic. It looks kind of ghostly, lying on its side, legs splayed and mouth agape. The four-year-old has finished playing with it for today, and seems to have lost interest after applying his own set of rules as to how to play with this toy. The AT AT is not the only ghost in the room. Vivid memories of the original owner surface, and the long unheard childish voice which once commanded the beast echo in the room. I can not bear to look at it any longer. I wish someone would put it away someplace.

ONCE THEY WERE ANGELS

"You sound shrill; what's the matter with you?" When you answer the phone, that's not what you want to hear.Why is it that someone asks that question?

Older people are happier. Yeah, right!

Old people are more content because they no longer have much capacity to enjoy the things they used to aspire to. They lack the health, money, means, and most importantly the time to savor what once made them happy, so they settle for the little things in life, and delude themselves into believing that what they have is just what they wanted.

WOODEN LEGS AND HOLLOW HEADS

This week on The View, Whoopi said that when she drank, she could hold her drinks as she had a wooden leg. Everyone chimed in on the discussion that followed as if she had used the correct idiom. No one ventured to suggest that she might mean a person who could tolerate alcohol has a hollow leg. But maybe they're afraid to mess with her.

Michelle O. and the Dixie Chicks

What does Michelle have in common with Natalie Maines-----lack of pride in their country.

Yuck.

I just heard a speaker refer to lack of urban development as a cancer eating away at our cities. I think that type of statement is cruel and meaningless. People who have cancer do not need to be reminded that it is ugly and destructive and try their best to cure the disease or learn to live with it as long as possible. To exploit a dire illness to make a political point is at best thoughtless and at worst demeaning and demoralizing. And the metaphor of a city as a cancer patient is artificial and cheap.