We're Not Exactly Getting Younger. 09/13/24

I don’t know about you, but I am not getting younger. Definitively. I used to love to run. And then it became walking. And then came a neuroma on the bottom of my left foot that made a long hike painful. Which led to a bicycle. Which led to an electric bicycle. Don’t get me wrong, you still have to pedal. But when it comes to a big hill (I live in the Hudson Valley so everything is straight uphill until you reach the bike path) it’s kind of nice. I put on the battery and an extra- strained face pedaling up the hill so the cars that pass me see an aerobic marvel and think to themselves stuff like, “Man, is that guy in great shape!” Shhh, don’t tell anyone my secret. These days, a big test of mobility is the ability to get in or out of a beach chair. When’s the last time you sat in a beach chair? They now come with backpack straps so you just strap up and walk to the beach. Then you take the chair off your shoulders and figure out how to set the chair up. Now a couple years back, we invited friends to visit us at the beach and noticed that some people have a lot of trouble getting out of said beach chair, names withheld to protect the guilty. You know when somebody’s having trouble getting out of the chair. It looks something like this. First the person tries a rocking motion, weight back, weight forward and…plop, back in the chair. Then my wife or I, or someone in a standing position, offers a helping hand or two. Now some eagerly accept it, while others (particularly men) say, “No, I’ve got it,” and then do another rocking motion, bigger this time, and proceed to fall forward on their knees in the sand and then refuse help to get up from the sand. After witnessing this a few times from a few different people we splurged and bought a higher beach chair. It worked great for our less mobile friends. Then one day last month I was unpacking the chairs from the car and the two chairs on top were the higher chair and a normal chair. We took them down to the beach. My wife scampered on for a walk while I, at the end of a great novel, plopped down in the higher chair. The one we use for our older friends. And you know what? It was good. I liked it. And the getting up part was a piece of cake (which is a weird metaphor. It wasn't anything like a piece of cake. It was easy, so why didn’t I just say that?). Okay, it was easy. Next time, it was back in the lower chair. I refuse to admit I like the high one better.

And on to our last comic in the Employee of the Month series. You know all the jokes about millennials. They don’t work very hard. They put quality of life above all else. They don’t want to work late. Come to think of it, despite being 71 years old, I was a millennial. Or possibly just lazy. John, on the other hand, opted for a four day work week in order to devote more time to his illustrations. Pro tip: don’t ever ask for a four day work week. You end up working five days for four days pay. Unless your boss happens to be a millennial. Then you’re golden.

Have a great weekend and we’ll be back next week with two new ones hot off the press (except there is no “press” but you get the idea).

Andy and John