Musings from Brian J. Noggle

So yesterday, as I was putting away two five packs of toothpaste in our master bedroom walk-in closet, I came to a discovery. Not that I am a hoarder, gentle reader, but in this the year of our Lord 2021, when you use one, you buy two, and the word “Limit” in a store means “Buy this many whether you need them right now or not.”

No; as I put the glued packs onto the high shelf in the closet, above my head but still reachable, I pushed them back, and they encountered resistance. I reached up there and found….

A… What, radio?

It turns out it’s a small wired speaker powered by three AAA batteries that you can plug into your Walkman or Discman to play them without headphones, I guess. I suppose it would work with an old iPod, too, as it has the 1/8″ stereo cord tucked under, so definitely designed for some mobile device.

I asked my beautiful wife if she recognized it, and she did not. It looks like a Bluetooth speaker, so I thought perhaps it might have been one that did not work well and that we abandoned. But as it’s a wired speaker….

It’s entirely possible that it’s been on that shelf ever since we’ve lived here, something that the previous owners did not see when moving out. I mean, I certainly did not see it from the ground level, and if I’ve brought a step into the closet to change the bulb, I didn’t look in that direction or it was behind other things. It damns me for not cleaning or reorganizing the closet in the entire time we’ve been here and for not repainting it, I suppose.

I just wish I’d find a trove of pre-1965 quarters instead of the normal sort of electronica I might buy at a garage sale with a modern quarter. Or I would have in days past; I’m not hitting many garage sales these days, and although I’ve gone to a couple estate sales in the recent months, I’m not accumulating the electronic bric-a-brac I used to.

In the review for A Bend In The Road, a book of poetry put together by a nursing home operating company featuring poems by its residents, I said:

Man, I remember nursing homes in the 1980s. Two of my sainted mother’s aunts ended up in a couple of different facilities, and the facilities were as cold and efficient as hospitals but with less care. It depressed me to go visit those old ladies–I was young then, and impatient. Times have changed now, though; one local senior living facility has been running ads showing a tatted up, goateed and mohawked pierced grandpa with big headphones on taking a selfie. One expects the new facilities are more fun, but then again, the ones that advertise in 417 are probably the nicer ones anyway; one would probably find my relations in more traditional centers.

I went through several copies of 417 we had on hand to try to find the ad in question to share it with you, but I could not find the full page ad nor remember the name of the place to look for the ad online.

But I got the new issue of the local slick this weekend, and Turners Rock has reduced it to a quarter page, which trims it a bit, but you can see whom they expect to live in their senior living facilities:

I guess he doesn’t have a mohawk after all. And we can’t see piercings, but they’re definitely implied.

You know, I’m not far off of eligibility for senior living facilities, but I can’t see myself downsizing that much. I have too many books yet to read and too many records to fit into a small apartment, and I am used to playing my music as loud as I want. But fifty-something is not turning out to be adulthood and elderliness that I remember from when I was young. I cannot tell whether that’s because my perception has changed as I have aged or whether being older has changed. Probably both, and both to a large degree. But, truly, truly, I say to you, most of the metalheads I know these days need Advil after a concert, not so much for hangovers but for body aches.

In a related note, they’re building a lot of senior living around Springfield, giant complexes with hundreds of units. Theoretically, many of those seniors will be moving out of their homes and putting them on the market. And builders keep building lots and lots of new single family homes. Who is going to live there? The population has been holding steady. We haven’t been cranking out babies to warrant this much growth (we only did one for me and one for you but not one for the bishop). Are the powers that be planning for a population boom from somewhere else (abroad or aliens?), or are they merely pursuing a build-build-build strategy not unlike China’s which will lead to an eventual bubble bursting?

I dunno, but I’m not taking out any home equity loans based on valuation that says Nogglestead has almost doubled in worth since we’ve been here.

My Facebook feed these days is about 70% ads and promoted posts from old Hollywood, random authors, and retro/nostalgia sites.

One of which recently delivered this up to me:

How many of you had pieces of furniture in your house in the 1970s?

Well, I did not have any of these in my house in the 21st century, but my sainted mother had two differently sized end tables and the coffee table in her home in the 21st century:

My brother inherited the items after she passed. I am not sure if he still has the pieces–I didn’t look too carefully the last time I was out there–but these are heavy and heirloom quality. After all, I am pretty sure that my mother inherited them from her mother in the middle 1980s or perhaps from her sister.

Regardless, I have to wonder how many of these nostalgia clickbait posts are written by young people who don’t realize that, as you get older, the past, especially the artifacts, come along with you. Or perhaps it’s just me, someone who relies on personal relics to connect to the past since so many of the people I knew and could corroborate my stories have passed on or don’t remember.

I was talking to the woman at the cleaners who handles my eldest’s JROTC uniform weekly about how time passes differently for kids versus we elder folk because each year is a larger percentage of their lives than ours. So a kid who’s fifteen, his fifteenth year is 7 percent of his life, and likely 10 or more percent of the life that he remembers well. Someone who’s going through his fiftieth year, the year is only 2 percent, and he might not remember much of it at all.

On Friday, Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise, explained:

I’ve long felt that I understood why this was. Let me give it a shot.

For a newborn, the second day it’s outside and breathing is 50% of its entire life. For a six-year-old, half of their life is three years – much more. It’s not a big percentage, but it’s much smaller than 50%. For a sixteen-year-old, half their life is eight years.

If you’re forty – half your life is twenty years. 1/8 versus 1/20? It’s amazingly different. We don’t perceive life as a line. We’re living inside of it – we compare our lives to the only thing we have . . . our lives. Each day you live is smaller than the last.

But that’s not everything.

As we age, novelty decreases. When we’re young, experiences and knowledge are coming at us so quickly that we are presented with novel (new and unique) information daily. New words. New thoughts. New ideas.

I have known this and have explained it to my sons and to everyone who will listen.

I have some photos rotating on my auxiliary monitor beside me; one crops up of the boys with medals for a middle school event. To me, it was very recent; to the boys, this was, what, 2018? A long time ago. By the time that period elapses again, the oldest will be out of the house, and the youngest will be, what, a junior in high school? The whole lives that they have known here will only be an interlude in my life, and the soon-to-be-over beginning of the rest of their lives. I’ve known this, too, for a while–I have been saying that we’re on the downhill slide since the oldest was nine. But it gets realer and realer in my imagination.

I already grieve for this time, even as I spend too much of it on work and other things or being frustrated/exasperated with them when I’m with them. Fortunately, I will only remember the best parts. And not my own, what, dread of our separation?