ABOUT ME

About me:

Around here, Paradise by the Gulf, the lifestyle is somewhere between laid back and laid out. The average age in this lovely retirement community is seventy. Because I'm well above that mid-line, I never buy more than three bananas at a time. 
 At age 95 the comedian, writer, actor, and director, Carl Reiner, had a running gag about life as a nonagenarian. “Every morning ... I get the obituary section, and see if I’m listed,” he explains. “If I’m not, I have my breakfast.”
That's me, too.
Here I am at 87 on the downslope of the Bell Curve for Age, rapidly closing inon the flat-line portion, looking for some way to be useful. Maybe keeping a record of what I'll be going through as I relearn what real noise, including my own voice, sounds like will be helpful to others who are hearing impaired.    People used to tell me I sounded just like Jimmy Stewart instead of the John Wayne in an oil drum I hear now. Not as many tell me that anymore, but maybe there are fewer people old enough to remember Jimmy Stewart.
    You're beginning to see where my priorities lie, right?

The humorous side of life has always been my choice. Perhaps I was dropped on my funny bone as a baby. I'd like to think I entered giggling rather than squalling. I want to exit laughing. But not just yet because I'm scheduled for a Cochlear Implant which should significantly improve my hearing, and possibly, at this late date, open a few doors I haven't stumbled through already.
    Except for the time we were the world's cutest baby, most of us are stuck with not becoming famous and live out our days that way. A few of us become “infamous,” but that's another life entirely.
    Like many (if you are still twenty-something.) I pictured myself riding the crest to notoriety. “Riding the crest” is a great goal at that age and a pretty fair objective if you're able to ride a surfboard at any age to our beautiful beach. “Multi-millionaire by age 30” may be a goal, and a legitimate one in some fields such as basketball, football, baseball, golf, tennis or other pornographic careers.
    However, for most of us, that kind of talent passes us by, even if we have a solid education – or with the more athletic of those occupations, as little as possible.
    If only I'd flunked Long Division and gotten an extra year to hone my skills in college, I might be up there, too, instead of looking for my next "lateral arabesque" as described in The Peter Principle by Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull, published back in 1969. Now 49 years later, that book is in the top 50 in one Amazon Best Seller category and the top 100 in another.
    Thanks to my co-author, Barney Davey, my best selling book, How to Sell Art to Interior Designers is #153 in its category. Of the other eight I've written solo, the best ranks #272 with the balance kind of dribbling down to the least. The Feel Good Church, at #338 is the one I like best and think the funniest. Considering a book has to be in the top 100 in it's category to make anything more than lunch money, that's not much of a dribble for someone my age. It would only be noticeable on my shirt front.

    But I'm digressing - one of my strong points these days. The inspiration for keeping this journal has come about because of the unstinting help I've received from the professionals, company reps and mentors I've consulted.