PENIS PARAGRAPH!
Yup, that’s all. That’s what a friend said to me in response to “Vagina Monologue” in last week’s blog title.
Penis Paragraph … snicker snicker … funny … Ha Ha…
Funny – not Ha Ha – is growing older, developing wrinkles and sagging skin but not being tuned in enough to see it.
It’s funny because inside myself I’m the same kid who jumped out of bed this morning (it is 1967, right?) when I smelled Mom cooking bacon in the kitchen. Thanks Mom, you’re the best!
After I eat the crispy delicious bacon I run to the bathroom before school starts and I look in the mirror.
OMG!
YIKES!
How the hell did my Dad hijack my face while I was sleeping? Back To The Future. Balding … hair sprouting from my ears and nose. Yup, it’s pretty clear that I’ve changed.
After absorbing the shock that I look different … I begin to realize that NO, I’m really NOT the same kid inside that I was back when JFK was shot … or JR was shot … or Reagan was shot … I’ve changed and my label has changed.
I used to deliver newspapers and flip burgers as a youngster, then migrated onwards to growing smelly bacteria in a lab. All different labels.
Now I pour shots in my new job as a bartender. That’s putting on a new label.
When you retire or quit a job, or are fired or downsized, you peel off all the labels …
I’m an architect, I’m a chef, I’m a doctor, I’m a plumber.
Labels get peeled off like dirty old underwear.
You shower and all the remnants of who you once were are washed away, ready to pull on a clean new pair of whatever.
The old way of retiring meant you went commando, no fresh underwear, no changes, just sitting on the front porch waiting for the Grim Reaper to waltz up your driveway in the twilight of your day …
Nowadays, most retirees put on some sort of crisp, fresh underwear. My latest pair says BARTENDER on the front.
I’ve been alive for 21,265 days… at this point, I’m a dim spaceship travelling through the galaxy and one day my light will be extinguished.
One of the great things about modern medicine is that our light can burn dimly much longer than it could 100 years ago… we have better telescopes so we can extend our reach. Most of us want our light to burn a bit longer so we can try on a new pair of underwear.
Re-invention, whether at my age, or much younger, is about extending our reach from inside ourselves.
… Adapt and you might get a fresh pair of underwear
A hundred years ago, you were born to a farmer, or a butcher.
And if you were a boy you lived your life as a farmer or a butcher and your obituary was a short one. One pair of underwear.
If you were a girl? Well, you awoke each day as a homemaker/farm wife, looking after your husband farmer or husband butcher, making all the decisions that mattered without him every realizing it. One pair of underwear.
Today is different and exciting and scary because we’re not only choosing to change our underwear but in many cases, we have no choice.
Job security is spinning wildly out of our galaxy and we can’t bring it back. Reinvention is happening, like it or not.
I began my lab technology career sticking needles in peoples’ arms, sucking out tubes of blood and then testing it in an Auto-Analyzer machine that took up half a large room. I finished my career 37 years later sitting in front of a powerful computer, sucking data out of a machine that was smaller than my desk.
CH-CH-Changes! We all adapt in one form or another, like it or not.
And if we want the most from our lives… the most contentment, the most satisfaction, the most happiness … we need to be adaptable enough to accept and embrace (most) change … none of us is so strong as to hold back the surging tsunami of technology.
Wrinkled crows-feet eyes or smooth as a baby’s bottom forehead, change in each of our lives is perennial as the sun rising.
Attitude is the distinction.
A fresh change of underwear always feels good… like crisp, clean sheets. Mmmmmmmmm.
Everything and anything seems possible.
And that my friend is this week’s PENIS PARAGRAPH!
Man On The Fringe 
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