So I’m standing in Taco Bell and give the cashier behind the counter my order and the cashier asks if I’d like their: “Senor Discount.”
I figured it was some new promotional thing Taco Bell was doing to sell the six ingredients that go into the dozens of items they have on the menu. I’ve always pictured a Los Alamos lab of fast food where Taco Bell-funded scientists tinker all day with ground beef, cheese and flour tortillas until one of them says: “Eureka! This time we put the taco inside the burrito!”
I mean, face it; it’s all the same shit just put together in different combinations.
So I asked what the hell a Senor Discount was and the cashier straightened me out: “No, I said Senior Discount.”
That uncannily accurate assessment of my age pissed me off so much I thought about climbing over the counter and kicking the cashier’s ass, except I would have needed a step ladder and someone to hold onto to get all the way over without falling, would have been winded when I got to the other side and the cashier was a sweet girl who looked like she weighed about 92 pounds and was just doing gramps a favor.
All things considered I decided to stay on my side of the counter and take the discount.
I’m on a fixed income.
Hearing loss
So once I got over the fact that this cashier had the temerity to guess my age correctly I decided it was my fault; I’ve got tinnitus in my left ear which I don’t notice until I hear the word “tinnitus” and then I think about it for the next 10 minutes, so if you have it, too, my apologies.
Keep reading, maybe I can distract you.
Having what sounds like a radio signal being sent into outer space to let beings in another galaxy know we’re here continually buzzing in my left ear night and day can make it hard to distinguish words when people mumble, which you guys do a lot.
Enunciate or I’m going to have to limit my friends to people like Richard Burton, John Gielgud and Anthony Hopkins; and two of those guys are dead, so get with it and work on those diphthongs.
But despite my hearing loss, I will never…and I mean never…wear a hearing aid. That’s just giving up. And if it causes you to burst a lung trying to communicate with me, I can live with that.
Just yell into my right ear and we should both be OK.
Hair loss
I can still grow it, but apparently my body doesn’t have enough energy left over to give my hair any color. According to the internet – and when has it ever been wrong – hair pigment comes from two types of melanin; eumelanin and pheomelanin.
So I’m guessing it’s kinda like a general who decides he has to abandon an objective on the flank to reach the objective in the middle.
“I’m trying to keep this guy’s heart beating while the dumbass eats Taco Bell and you want hair color? Screw that, reassign the hair color guys to sector four and start clearing out those arteries”
One more thing about hair:
The idea of a Supreme Being is severely undermined by the fact that just about the time it stops growing on some mens’ heads it starts growing out their ears, nose and eyebrows. That’s just bad planning.
Nothing is more deflating than having a young, attractive woman cut your hair and then ask if you’d like your eyebrows and ear hair trimmed. It’s so depressing that afterwards I sometimes go eat comfort food.
Taco Bell immediately comes to mind.
Memory loss
I have vivid memories of things that happened in elementary school, but misplaced my garage door opener about a year ago and still don’t know where I put it. Maybe I’ll find it and Amelia Earhart at the same time.
My short-term memory has me checking my car doors to see if they’re locked three times before I walk away.
I once – and I’m not making this up – was on the second floor of my house, needed three things from the basement and made myself a list so I wouldn’t forget what I needed by the time I went down two flights of stairs.
I recently attended a Trivia Night and when I got home discovered my pants were unzipped and I never used the bathroom while at the restaurant. So I guess I walked in, ordered a slice of pizza and played trivia for several hours with Little Lee just a pair of boxer briefs away from making his first public appearance if you don’t count that night at a friend’s hot tub in the late 1970s.
I knew that New York Mets pitcher Noah Syndergaard’s nickname was “Thor”, but if the question had been, “What elderly gentleman is currently walking around with his barn door open?” I would’ve have looked around the room and tried to pick out the moron.
Knee replacements
I just had a friend announce he was getting both knees replaced to which I responded: “So they still can’t do anything about your head?”
Since he was getting both knee joints replaced I asked if they could make him taller; we all seem to be shrinking so maybe he could come out of the deal 6’ 10” and dominate the YMCA pickup basketball league.
My friend declined my idea and he might be right: if he were 6’ 10” it would make certain parts of his anatomy look even smaller and who needs that at our age?
But that started me thinking about my own left knee which is pretty screwed up from football, skiing and baseball and throbs and aches when I walk too far which is my main form of exercise these days.
But I’m afraid if I only replace my left knee and it works more efficiently than my right, I’ll do a reverse NASCAR and constantly make right turns.
I’m not sold on the idea, but if my knee gets any worse I might look into what it would cost to get it replaced.
But only if I get the Senor Discount.